Reflections

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a lot of things. Let me try and get some of them out. Bear with me!

First, my current position will come to an end on December 20^th and it won’t be renewed. My position is covering for someone else who was working for another office for a year and he has decided to stay there. They are reposting my position but they have changed the qualifications which means that I’m not qualified for the job I’m currently doing. This is frustrating and discouraging and while I understand that the direction of the organization is changing and so they are trying to hire the “right” people, I feel like I should be the “right” person. It is frustrating but I don’t have any bad feelings about my organization or my boss. I am trying to see this as an opportunity and a good learning experience.

So this leaves me in a familiar place of having to figure out what is next. I have been here before and I have learned over and over again that God is faithful. I really want to know what the plan is, what the big picture is and what my life will look like 5 years from now. Even thought I've been here before, I want control, security and to Know.

My small group back in Halifax talked about how our lives are a little like those connect-the-dots pictures you find in colouring books for kids. God knows what the picture looks like, but we only get to see the next dot.

The Psalmist talks about the Word of God being a light to his path and a lamp to his feet. I was reminded recently that he wouldn’t need a light or a lamp if he could see the path clearly in front of him.

Martin Luther King Jr. is quoted as saying that “faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.”

Part of me actually loves this. It might mean that I should get my head checked but part of me likes the variety and the unknown and new places and new things. Every time I’ve found myself in this position the next thing has always been great. Last time I was here I ended up in Burundi, and while that was hard it was also great. The time before that I ended up in Halifax doing my Masters. Also hard, but great. So I know that whatever is next, God has a plan and it may be hard but it will be great. A new place, (city, workplace, country who knows!), new people and a new challenge. Exploring a new place, settling into a new apartment and learning a new job. All of this is exciting and challenging and makes me happy and I enjoy it.

But part of me hates this. Part of me would like to stay in one place and be able to have routines and traditions. I watch my friends buying houses and having kids and settling into the rhythm of their lives and I get jealous. I would love to set down roots, have my own space that I can decorate and actually unpack all the boxes that are currently hiding in random places in my parents’ house and know that I will get to stay there and that my things will stay where I put them and I won’t have to pack them and move again. I want to have a vegetable garden and grow things and maybe can things knowing that I will be around to eat the things that I can. I want to connect with people and build new relationshipos. The idea of roots, of belonging to a place is so attractive to me.

I don’t know if I’ll ever figure out how to balance these sides of me but I don’t think I’m ready to choose one side over the other. In the meantime, I’ll continue to have faith that whatever is next will be great, even if it is hard. I’ll continue to take the next steps, remembering that God knows where the staircase is heading even when I don’t. I’ll remind myself that I don’t need to belong to a place, because I belong to Christ.

Long Over Due: Pictures

I keep meaning to post pictures from my trip earlier this summer to Mali and Mauritania. The internet connection was always too slow to post them while I was there. I am always happy to talk about my trip and the work that World Vision is doing, so please let me know if you have questions! Enjoy the pictures and if you want to know more about what WV is doing or if you want to sponsor a child in Mali or Mauritania go to www.worldvision.ca!

I got to meet colleagues from other offices inclugin Swtizerland and New Zealand at the workshop in Mali



Baobab tree in the distance on a hot sunny day in San, Mali

Hot and dry outside of San, Mali

Celebrations in a village in Mali

Eating lunch together on the road in Mauritania. Roasted Sheep in a communal plate. We ate it sitting under a tent in a town called Aleg.

I got to attend a community celebration for the completion of a water project in Mauritania. A water tower and solar pump provides clean, running water to 5 villages and a school.

The miracle of clean water steps outside of people's homes. People used to travel up to 5 km with donkeys and buckets to get water that was contaminated and often made their children sick.

A windy day in the Sahel, in Mauritania

I bought some fabric from this women's association in Mauritania

Preparing the fabric before it gets dyed.

Meeting with some of the volunteers in a community in Mauritania

Saharan Adventures: Story time

I am spending my last night in Mauritania in much the same way as I spent the first; listening to the call to prayer over a loudspeaker. Tonight I am in Bogue, a small town right on the Senegal River instead of in the captial city of Nouakchott. Today was the first day of Ramadan. I am staying in a 'eco tourist auberge' which really just means there isn't any running water. Aside from that it is a nice enough place and I am sitting outside in the breeze looking at the stars. Tomorrow I leave Bogue very early and drive 4 hours to Nouakchott for a series of meetings before boarding the plane. I spent today in a whirlwind tour of two of our community programs meeting with a women's association, watching a skit and dance troup by a girl's association, and seeing various other projects like health centers, nutrition monitoring centers, gardens and schools buildings. It was a busy day made all the more tiring by the 45 degree heat and the sun beating down on our heads as we examined latrine buidings for schools and the different plants in the gardens. It was a really good day and I have the pictures to prove it, but sadly I have no idea where I packed my SD card reader so you don't get to see any of them.

Today for lunch there were only three of us eating. Since it is Ramadan most of the staff are fasting but one of the staff here is Rwandan (and also not muslim) and another of the staff is pregnant. So we three ate together around a common plate as we sat cross legged on the floor. I really like the way people eat together here. There is something really hospitable and special about the routine. It starts with washing hands. There is a plastic container with water, shaped like a mix between a watering can and a kettle, and a basin with a bar of soap. You use the soap and water to wash your hands but it is awkward to both pour the water and wash your hands so you need someone to help you. It is this really nice little ritual of helping each other wash your hands; it reminds me of Jesus washing his disciples feet. Once everyone has washed their hands you gather around the common plate. Often it is a plate of just meat but thankfully today's plate was different. There was corn mixed with tuna (surprisingly yummy) gratted carrots, olives, fries, tomatoes and chicken. You grab a piece of bread and use it to pick up the rest of the food with your hands. Someone who has a lot of trouble with germs would probably not enjoy this process but I managed to ignore this for the most part. I like the communal part of the meal and the sharing and conversation. After everyone is finished eating you go through the ritual of washing hands once again, helping each other and passing the watering-can-kettle around in a circle.

Since I can't share any of my pictures yet, I'll end with a story.

There once were two men who lived in the same small village. One day one of the men (I wasn't clear on the how or why...) turned into a goat. When the sun set he turned back into a man. The two friends decided that this was an opportunity. So the next day the goat-man turned into a goat and his friend took him to the nearby town to the market and sold him to a man from a neighbouring village . That night, as soon as the sun set the goat-man turned back into a man and escaped from the man who had bought him. The next day the goat-man turned back into a goat and his friend took him back to the market. The same man who had bought the goat-man the day before was back again, since the goat that he had bought had escaped. So he bought another goat. That night his goat turned back into a man and escaped. Day after day the man bought a goat at the market and night after night his goat escaped.  The goat-man and his friend thought this was a great game and they were getting rich without having to do anything.
One day, a short time later, the goat-man and his friend were back in the market and the man from the neighbouring village came by. He bought the goat-man (again) and once he had handed over the money he pulled out a knife.
"What are doing with that knife dear sir?" asked the goat-man's friend.
"My friend, every day I buy a goat, but every night it escapes. This time I will slaughter it now so that it does not have a chance to escape!" explained the man from the neighbouring village.
"But it is better to wait until tomorrow to kill it." said the goat-man's friend."Really I think you should wait until tomorrow."
"But if I wait until tomorrow, I will have no goat to kill since all of my goats have escaped!" said the man lifting up the knife.
And so the goat-man's friend had to decide whether to let his friend the goat-man be slaughtered and eaten, or to admit to the other man their schemes in order to save his friends life.

This story was told to me twice and one time he let his friend die, and the other he admited the truth.
The End.

Saharan Adventures: Nearing the end

I've spent the last couple of days visiting different projects and meeting community members and sponsored children. It has been a whirlwind trip with a lot of driving. There is a good road between Nouakchott and Kiffa, but once you get off that road to get to the communities where we work, the trips get interesting. All of a sudden the road just sort of stops and you find yourself following well worn tracks in the sand. In some places even those disappear and you're just driving through fields and sand dunes. In some places it is what I imagine the Paris-Dakar Rally to be like. I have spent a lot of the past couple of days being thrown around the back seat of a Land Cruiser and I have the bruises to prove it. Eventually we reach our destinations, small towns in the middle of nowhere built where there is water at least part of the year. These towns don't make any sense right now at the end of the dry season, but I am told that ones the rains come the landscape changes completely, from dry and dusty to lush green grasslands and rivers cutting off communities from each other. From the towns where we have our project offices we go out into the surrounding communities, tiny villages seperated by kilometers of sand and dried out river beds. I was priviledged to be able to meet some of the community members and to celebrate with them the completion of a water system that provides clean water to 5 villages and the school they share. A beautiful old woman, back bent and skin wrinkled grasped my hand with surprising strength as she told me about the difference these water taps made to the health of their children. I was humbled to be invited into the home of one of the families, served sweetened milk and tea and told that this was my home, that I should feel free to visit it anytime. I sat with a shy girl sponsored through our project and when I asked why she was so quiet, found out that I was the first white person that she, or even her mother, had ever seen in real life.

This country is at once beautiful, desperate, magnetic and repulsive. The landscape is varied, from rolling sand dunes dotted with Nime trees and thorny bushes, to flat expanses of rocky nothingness. There is a string of mountains that crosses Mauritania reminding me of pictures I've seen of the grand canyon. These mountains hide valleys full of date palms and sand dunes, an oasis pitcuresque and exotic. The towns are teaming with people, selling and buying, donkey carts loaded with people and products, the streets bustling and full of garbage. The outlying areas seem sparsely populated with tents and small houses in little clusters in the middle of nowhere, seemingly deserted. Small herds of cows, camels, sheep and goats dot the landscape, crossing the roads and causing some heart stopping moments in the Land Cruiser. There are empty burned out car frames along the side of the roads, stripped of anything that could possibly be of value and left to rot, looking every bit like a decaying carcass in the hot desert sun. When the wind picks up it carries sand through the air like a cloud, getting in your eyes and nose. When I get to wherever I am staying at the end of the day I am always surprised by the amount of sand in my ears.

I only have two more days here. Part of me is sad that this adventure is almost over. The heat doesn't seem quite so oppressive, and the people are warm and welcoming. I am learning a lot and the work is going well. I have spent the past week speaking only French and I am pleased with how effortless that has been most of the time. However, a bigger part of me is really looking forward to heading back to Canada and to being out of the sweltering sun, back in the more reasonable temperatures of a Canadian summer.

Saharan Adventures: In between spaces.

I have a love/hate relationship with airports. Over the past several years I've spent an awful lot of time in them. Long layovers, delays, dealing with airline staff and finding terminals and gates. When I am in an airport I feel like I am in a holding pattern, not here, not there in the inbetween spaces. Most of the time I find this frustrating as I would rather be here or there and the inbetween is an inconvenience, something to be endured but not enjoyed. Sometimes though, that holding pattern, the inbetween is exactly what I need.

After two weeks in the feild in Mali- two weeks of interesting people, of eating chicken everyday at least once a day, and working long days - I took the bumpy 6 hour drive from San back to Bamako on Wednesday. Bamako is a sprawling city on the banks of the Niger river with streets packed with motorcycles, land cruisers and taxis fighting for position with pedestrians darting in and out trying to get from one side of the busy streets to the other. The air in Bamako is heavier than in San, more humidity and it has been raining there more than in the Segou Region where I spent the last two weeks. I didn't get to spend much time in the capital but it was an intriguing city that both attracted and repelled. I spent some time in meetings and had dinner with a collegue from Switzerland on Wednesday before heading to the airport on Thursday morning.

After going through security I found myself back in the inbetween space of the departures terminal. The international airport in Bamako has only one gate with a duty free shop and a small cafe where you can buy french pasteries and coffee. I only had enough CFA left to buy a small bottle of water but since there is no AC in the terminal it was an important purchase. My flight was slightly delayed so I found myself sitting in the same plastic seats you find in airports all over the world staring out the window at the UN planes (the blue helments arrived in country on Sunday. We passed several UN transport vehicles on the road to Bamako heading north) and at the Sahel stretching out behind the runway. This time the holding pattern was a welcome moment to collect my thoughts and to think and to clear my mind. Maybe it seems weird, but as much as I am looking forward to what is coming over the next couple of days in Mauritania I needed that hour to adjust and to prepare and to relax. The inbetween space, not in Mali, not in Mauritania, neither here nor there.

Flying into Nouakchott was almost like landing on the moon. The landscape below, becoming clearer the closer the plane came to the tarmac, seemed alien and strange and like nothing I've ever seen before. The flowing white sand interspersed with rockier red soil, the Sahel giving way the to Sahara. The buildings rising up, the same colour as the ground, everything bleached white by the sun. The heat when you get off the plane hits you in the face, almost physically knocking you back but their is releif in the breeze that blows off the Atlantic Ocean only a few kilometers away. Nouakchott is a quieter city, smaller and more reserved than Bamako. Women walking in their colourful hijabs, men in their long white robes. Both Mali and Mauritania are Muslim Republics but Mali is more permissive, if that is the right word. Christians are not allowed to prostelatize in Mali but churches are plentiful and well attended. In Mauritania I am told there are only two churches in the capital but they are forbidden to mark themselves with signs and it is illegal for a Mauritanian citizen to frequent them. The city is dotted with the spires of Mosques and you can hear the call to prayer echoing in the streets at dawn.

I am in the hotel in Nouakchott having a rare day off since the office is closed here on Friday. Tomorrow morning I'll be leaving early for the 8 hour drive through the desert to Kiffa. Even now in the hotel with the AC running and a tv playing american movies with arabic subtitles I feel like I am in a continuation of that inbetween space of the airport. Tomorrow things pick up again and the adventures and work continue. For now I am taking the time to rest up and finish some reports and to prepare for the upcoming meetings. I'm not here, not there. A holding pattern in the inbetween space.

Sahelian Adventures: A few pictures

Here are a few pictures of my time so far in San, Mali. The connection is a little slow so you only get a small taste :)


The moon above my Hotel in San, Mali




The rain is coming!

Keeping me company while I work

Sahelian Adventures: the Scenic Route

We had a workshop in a community today, the last day of a two day participatory exercise with various project stakeholders. It is a bit of a drive from where we are staying in San, off the tar roads and out into the bush. The workshop went well and it was a really interesting experience although we had to end early because it was threatening to rain. So we all piled into the vehicles and left the project office to head back to San.

Our driver, Charles, likes to drive fast and is a little competitive, preferring to be the first to arrive places (in my head I hear Rowan Atkinson saying “Is a Race!”). So this afternoon on our way back to San he decided to take a short cut. Instead of following the other vehicles that had left before us he turned off the road onto a little track. It was not a main road, but it looked fairly well used and was clearly visible in the red soil. After a little while the track became a trail and at one point we lost it entirely. We were driving through the middle of open bush with no sense of where the road was. I had the sense that we were in a scene from a Discovery Channel documentary, on safari or maybe trying to find some mysterious and elusive creature in some unexplored territory. At one point we pulled up to a house in the middle of nowhere, much to the surprise of the family who lives there, and had to ask for directions. We found the track again and it meandered here and there past farmer’s fields and baobab trees, our Land Rover barreling along sending goats, piglets and chickens scrambling in all directions. At one point it took us right through the center of a little settlement and we had to drive around a well. Some women who were pounding millet into flour had to move their huge mortars to make way as we drove past. We kept following this track, but it soon narrowed back into a trail and then as it wound its way through thicker bushes and trees it became a bit of a river so that the Land Rover was fish tailing and hydroplaning through the bush, splashing water up over the hood. We were laughing and joking that we were taking the ‘scenic route,’ but all the while I was so sure that we were going to get stuck in the mud. The Land Rover had turned into a kind of boat and we had so much mud stuck to our tires that even when we were not driving through the water it felt like we were slipping and sliding in all directions. We did get a little stuck at one point but Charles was able to get us out without resorting to us pushing the vehicle with us up to our knees in red mud. Finally, just as it started raining we found our way back to the road and made our way back to San. Oddly enough, even after our off-roading scenic detour we were among the first vehicles back.

 I guess Charles won the race afterall.

Sahelian Adventures: A picture of San, Mali

Today I was driving in a Land Rover today over packed red roads through a rural area of Mali, West Africa. The sun streaming through the plumes of red dust being tossed up by the Helix truck in front of us gave the flat, dry landscape an almost dreamy quality as if I was looking at a sepia coloured photograph. The countryside is dotted by huge baobab trees, freshly plowed fields and scrawny bushes and donkeys, cows, horses, pigs, goats and sheep that give the impression that someone has randomly strewn about pieces from a child’s farm playset. The rainy season only has just started but there are already a few places where we had to drive through water and in a few weeks these places will be largely inaccessible.

Now I am sitting outside under a porch listening as the wind picks up and brushes through the leaves of the mango and moringa trees in the courtyard. You can tell the rain is coming because the wind picks up suddenly and there is a lot of dust in the air and the birds start to get very noisy right before the rain starts to fall. For now it is not raining very hard; for all the thunder and wind only a very few drops actually fall to the ground. It may be raining harder somewhere else, but for this area, so desperate for rain, the ground will have wait for a good drink for another few days. I have been told the rains are a bit late this year, and while no one expects another food crisis and most indications are that this year should be a good harvest, there is a still some anxiety in the voices of the people as they look at the mostly cloudless skies and then back at their still bare fields.

I wanted to have a few pictures to add to this post but the connection is not fast enough today. Hopefully sometime soon.

A la prochaine!

Saharan Adventures

I'm back! I have this horrible habit of just dropping my blog as soon as I set foot back on Canadian soil. I have this perception, true or not, that my life in Canada is not very interesting, especially compared to dinner with Hippos on Lake Tanganyika. Some interesting things have happened since my last post. I came home, got aclimatized to Canadian winter, watched lots of Hockey (the NHL lockout was just waiting for me to come home!), tried to work on my thesis (fail) and then got a new job. Now I am working for World Vision Canada as the Regional Program Officer for West Africa. It is a short term position while the real RPO is working for a different WV office for a year. But it is a job, and I really really like it, so I'll take it, even if it does mean more uncertainty and being unable to plan for more than a few months at a time. More on that another time maybe.

Which leads me to this post. As part of my job I help to support Canadian funded programs in Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Niger. Today I am leaving for a three week trip to Mali and then to Mauritania. I'm excited because this is an area of Africa I've never been. I have images of rolling sand dunes, nomads on camels and sweltering heat. We'll see how these images match up with the real thing.

These are very different contexts than those I've worked in before. Both countries are Muslim republics, both countries stradle the Sahel and the Sahara and struggle with producing enough food. the coup in Mali last year and the following conflict and security issues have added to challenges people face. I have always been facinated by Mali and Timbuktu has been on my list of places to see for a long time. Timbuktu was a center of trade and learning dating back to the 13th century. It holds a certain mystery and allure, with its secrets and insights into a different time and culture. Unfortunately I won't be able to see Timbuktu because of the precarious security situation in that area. It is sad because the rebels have destroyed large parts of the ancient city that has stood as an icon on the continent for hundreds of years. I will be staying in the South of Mali, well away from where the French army is working with Malian forces to weed out the islamist rebels who have been causing so much trouble. While there is always risk when you travel overseas I've been assured that the security situation in the areas where I'll be going is safe and calm. So those of you who tend to worry, I will be safe but maybe you shouldn't read the news about Mali for the next couple of weeks just for your own peace of mind!

After Mali I get to fly from Bamako to Nouakchott, Mauritania. I'm really looking forward to this as well. Mauritania is not exactly your typical beach destination, even if it is on the Atlantic Ocean. It does have plenty of sand though....

These are not pleasure trips or vacations. I'll be working a lot and it will be exhausting and probably uncomfortable. I know that I'm going to witness levels of poverty that I haven't seen before. I'm going to struggle with our work, the difficulties people face and trying to figure out how we can help. I'll also have to accept (again) that we can't do everything for everyone. Bathrooms and showers are going to be few and far between and I am leaving my ergonomic pillow behind.  Regardless, I'm looking forward to driving through the Sahara, sleeping under the stars in rural Mauritania, eating goat and couscous with my hands, seeing the laughing, smiling faces of the children World Vision works with and to meet the staff who work hard for the wellbeing of children, families and their communities where we work.
Allons-y!

A week in the field

I have been working for awhile now on putting together a proposal for a grant from the European Commission. We are working in a consortium with 4 other organizations and since my organization is the Lead, it means a lot of the responsibility and organization has fallen on me. I've been learning a lot and have really enjoyed working with the team we've put together. We just hired a consultant to help us put together the final product and after several months of work things are finally coming together. It is exciting and tiring and stressful but as we move forward I am pretty confident that the proposal we are putting together has a really good chance of winning. I think I have mentioned here before that the funding climate in Burundi is difficult and that there aren't many grant opportunities compared to other countries. There are several other consortium competing for this same grant so there is no guarantee we will win, but I am hopeful.

In order to make sure that our proposal reflects what is actually going on in the communities where we will be working we've had a lot of discussions with our partners and staff working on the ground, but it is important to see these things for ourselves so last week the consultant we hired and I spent four days in the field talking to community members and doing an informal assessment. This is something I have not gotten to do enough of in my position so far. So much of my job has been dealing with donors and emails and reports and I have not been able to get out of the office nearly enough, so I was thrilled to have this opportunity. The organization of our schedule was a little hectic and at the last minute we were given the crappy land cruiser with the back seats that face the side instead of the normal one with the seats that face forwards. This meant I spent 4 days being thrown around the back of a land cruiser and I have the bruises to show for it, but all in all it was a successful trip. We got the information we needed, confirmed some of our hypothesis and found some important things that we would have missed otherwise. I got to spend 4 days getting sunburned while standing in fields talking to farmers. I got to walk through fields of banana trees, I learned about the mozaique virus that has had a huge negative impact on the manioc (cassava) crops here, and I got to talk to moms about what they feed their kids and how they are trying to make sure their kids are getting enough nutritious food. I love to be able to look beyond the statistics and reports into the eyes of these mothers as they talk about their struggles and their dreams for their children.

Now I am back in Bujumbura, exhausted, slightly sunburned and bruised, but looking forward to the next two weeks as I finish up various projects and get ready to come home. Apparently it snowed this week at home so I'll be greeted by the white stuff when I land in Toronto. I'll spend as much time in the sun as work and the rain allow me to and take advantage of the rest of my time here.

For now, here are some pictures of my week in the field.

Fields of Banana trees

One of the 'improved species' of cows which give more milk than the local breed

Talking to a community about their food security and nutrition concerns and needs
(photo is the property of World Vision)

The view from my guest house in Rutana

New experiments with terracing to help stop erosion

Had dinner with the hippos again when I returned to Bujumbura. 

Rainy season in Bujumbura

As I have mentioned before, it is currently the rainy season here in Burundi. This usually means about an hour of rain most days, but not every day. It is the same as the rainy season in Rwanda so although this is my first time experiencing it in Burundi, it isn't really new to me. Even so, there are always differences. For one, it is amazing how clear the air is here after it rains. During the dry season it gets very dusty and hazy. I didn't really notice the impact of that until the other day after it rained I looked up at the horizon as I was driving to work and I noticed the mountains of the DRC in the distance. I have always known that the mountains were there - you can usually see their outline across the lake, but this was the first time that I could clearly see the ridges and valleys, even the trees and houses on the mountains. Things are more crisp and more green and everything seems more clean. Except for the mud of course.

This year it is raining a lot more than normal. Instead of an hour of rain 3 out of 4 days we have had several days in a row where it rained all day. And this isn't a nice spring shower, we're talking serious downpour complete with thunder and wind. Not very pleasant. There are more accidents when it rains, the traffic is worse and I am more dependent on taxis since I can't walk into town or from place to place within town. I wished I had my camera with me on my way to work this morning so I could have pictures with this post. It has rained quite a bit this week so the ground is already very wet and what little drainage systems there are in the city are pretty overwhelmed. On my way to work this morning the roads were literally flooded with a foot of swirling red water dyed by the dark red mud.  Vehicles inched along spraying up waves of muddy water. Most of the water was low enough that it did little more than slow everyone down, but in a few low lying areas the water was deep enough to go over the hoods of small cars and I saw one stall and get stuck because of the water. Soon after the rain stops most of the streets go back to normal with only a few maintaining large puddles. It is raining again now and I think the road to my apartment will be washed out by the time I get back there tonight. I live on a hill and the road is only paved part way. Where the pavement stops the rain water pools and washes away the road so there is now a large drop off from the pavement to the dirt road.

The rain is normally good for the people of Burundi - as much as it is inconvenient it is necessary for this country that depends heavily on subsistence agriculture. However, this much rain has the potential to cause problems. Burundi is a very hilly country with people cultivating steep inclines as well as low laying valleys. Too much rain is potentially a threat to both. The low laying marshes are especially at risk of flooding with the potential for whole crops to be destroyed. With families farming only an average of 0.3 hectares of land loosing that land to flood is devastating. Hopefully the rains calm down and we get some nice sunny weather to dry things out. Not only do the crops desperately need this, but so do I. I only have one month left here in Burundi before I head back to December in Canada - the land of ice and snow. I want to soak up as much of the African sun as I can while I have the chance!

About A Good Day

I had a really good day today, and since those have been rare lately I thought I should record it for posterity and to remind me that they do happen. Actually, that makes it sound like I've had nothing but horrible days and that isn't really true. Things have been better lately but it has been awhile since I've left the office thinking "that was a good day".

My day started with a meeting with the consortium I'm working with for a really big grant proposal. The meeting is not held at my office and I usually go straight there on the mornings of our meetings instead of going all the way to my office and then turning around an hour later and coming back. So I work from their meeting room or from a cafe near by until it is time for our meeting to start. We started almost an hour late this morning but somehow that didn't bother me as much as it normally does. Nothing I had planned on finishing got finished but we had a good discussion and made important progress on other things. I had lunch with someone from one of the other organizations and we talked about our logframe and objectives as well as our organogram over brown rice salad with raisins and cashews and a cafe mocha. Work is more enjoyable over a good lunch.

Then I went back to the office and spent the afternoon in skype conversations realizing that no one was sure about what progress we had actually made this morning on those important things, and that somehow no decisions had actually been made. Again, somehow this did not bother me as much as it normally would have and I spent a couple of hours figuring things out and I think I made some progress and things will be fine by Monday.

So reading this, it sounds like I should have had a frustrating day brightened only by a yummy lunch with a nice colleague. But it was actually a really good day and I enjoyed working with interesting and smart people and problem solving obstacles and just doing my job. It has been awhile since I found these things enjoyable in themselves and it is a nice way to end the week. It is Friday and I am looking forward to the weekend but I am not as desperate for it as I was at the end of last week. Hopefully the rest of the five weeks (!? when did that happen...) I have left in Burundi are as pleasant as this one, although maybe a little more productive!

To finish off this happy post, here are a couple happy pictures from my trip to the beach last weekend.

Tanganyika Blue Bay Resort in Rumonge

My view for most of the afternoon

Sunset over the beach

You can't really tell here, but it rained on Sunday. Hung out and read on the beach anyway.

Sunset over Bujumbura

This week has been much better than the last couple of weeks. I still get frustrated with work sometimes and I had to work this morning even though it was a holiday, but in general it is better. My meeting today was with people I enjoy working with and I leave tomorrow for two days on the beach south of Bujumbura. It will be nice to get away and just relax. I am hoping it doesn't rain, but since it is the rainy season I think it might be more realistic to hope it doesn't rain much. The nice thing about the rains here is that while it rains almost every day, it usually only rains for an hour or two. Today was an exception and it rained almost all day. I'm hoping that means it won't rain at all tomorrow!

Last weekend a friend and I spent the evening at Belvedere Restaurant up on the hill overlooking Bujumbura. Here are a couple pictures of the sunset over the city.

Those are the mountains of the DRC in the distance

The sun setting over Lake Tanganika

Not a bad way to spend a Sunday evening. Heading south to Ramonge tomorrow. More pictures to come.

Another Day

I started the last post admitting that I’ve been struggling with some things and that not all of it has been happy. I’ve been discouraged and disappointed a lot over the past couple of weeks, especially over the past couple of days. I am usually a positive enough person and am pretty intentional about finding the good side of things, people and situations. It isn’t usually something I have to try very hard at. So this negativity I’m feeling has been hard to deal with because I feel like it isn’t me.  

I have been working really hard on a project since right before I went home for the wedding. I worked on it while I was home even though it was supposed to be a bit of a vacation. I had skype conference calls at 6am because of the time difference and the weeks after I got back to Burundi I worked 15-20 hours a day and worked all through the weekends. I was working with a team or other people on this project and I enjoyed the opportunity to work with them and learn from them, but the process was stressful and at times it felt like we were going in circles. At the last minute it was decided that the proposal we had worked so hard on would not be submitted.To be told at the very last minute that all this work had been for nothing was incredibly discouraging. I have finished swearing at the wall now, but I am still feeling really disappointed and a little angry. It is not all on my shoulders, it is not my fault that this didn't work – I was part of a team and not really in charge, but I can’t help feeling like if I had done better, worked harder, managed time or people differently,, then it would have worked out differently. In the past I think I have taken experiences like this as motivation to do better, or to work harder. This time I am less motivated and it is making me feel like I am overwhelmed and under qualified. I have a lot of work left to do in the next two months so I know I need to be more positive. And I will be. Tomorrow. But for now I am exhausted, homesick and ready to be finished. I am trying to find my way back to being the positive person who is up for the challenge, but she might be a little lost right now. I know a lot of this is because of how tired I am. I am working to put some balance back in my daily life and am reminding myself that I’m not carrying this alone and that I need to cast all my cares on the One who is able to carry them all. This reminder along with good coffee, lunch today outside by the lake with a friend and cleansing thunderstorms are helping me to feel more like myself.

I know this post has been a bit negative. Sorry for that. I promise my next post will have pictures and will be more upbeat.

I am still here!

I am alive and well and not dead. Since I haven’t posted here in nearly two months I know some of you might have been wondering. I'm still here.

I have been meaning to post for some time but I have been struggling with a few things and anything I posted would mostly have been a discussion about how much I have been working and some of the things that are bringing me down. I didn't think that was particularly interesting. And a blog must be interesting. A blog could have an existential crisis if it weren't interesting as that is part of its core identity. And obviously I have still been working too hard and not sleeping enough since I am not sure if that made any sense.

So before I share about the crap and the discouraging and disheartening stuff that has been happening the past two weeks, lets start with something fun and really happy. I flew home at the beginning of September for two weeks so that I could be part of my best friend’s wedding. It was nothing like the movie. I had made this part of my contract negotiations when I took this position, that I would be able to take the two weeks to go home. Silly me said I would be available via skype and email if necessary, but honestly I assumed it would not be necessary. But that is another story. 

I took a direct flight from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Toronto – a 16 hour flight. I almost lost my sanity but I was really glad to get home in a total of 23 hours instead of the regular 32-36 hours that you get when you go through Europe and have an 8-12 hour layover. I arrived home at 8am and the Best Friend picked me up at the airport using her Ipad as a sign with my name on it. I don't think anyone has ever met me at the airport with a sign with my name on it before. It was pouring rain and early on a Saturday morning and she was still there and then bought me a coffee. This is the second time that the Best Friend has met me at the airport, the first being when I came home from my exchange trip to France in grade 10.  See why she is the Best Friend?

While I was home I spent time with my family and my friends, although busy schedules made it so I only saw my sister for a total of about 6 hours the entire time I was home. We’ll have to work on that!  I caught up with old friends and cousins I haven’t spent enough time with over the years. I ate salads almost every day and walked around without being pointed at, stared at or asked for money. I also helped plan the ‘wedding shower/bachelorette/fun day spent with the Bride” which was the weekend before the wedding.  This turned out to be a pretty low key day with none of the craziness or shenanigans one might expect, but was a good time just to spend time together and relax. The next weekend was the rehearsal and of course, the Main Event.

The Best Friend and I have been friends almost as long as I can remember, and I know The Groom pretty well too. So I was thrilled that I was able to make it home to be a part of their day. It was beautiful, laid back and fun. It was a good reflection of the two of them and of their relationship. Surprisingly I didn't cry at all during the ceremony, but I suspect this is only because the bride kept it together. If she had started to cry, even a little bit I would have lost it.  The Best Friend’s sister was the MoH and asked me to help her with her speech. It didn’t say everything we wanted it to since we finished it last minute despite all kinds of good intentions. I wanted it to say how much I love her, how much her friendship all these years has meant to me, how much of who I am was shaped by my friendship with her, how proud I am of who she is and how she lives her life, and how incredibly happy I am for her and The Groom. So if our speech didn’t say all that, now I have. That is what a blog is for.

It was really great to be home, even for only a couple of weeks. It was not the most relaxing of ‘vacations’ since I worked almost every day I was home, but it was what I needed to get through the next couple of weeks. I arrived back here in Burundi with some of the worst jetlag in history but mostly refreshed and ready to work. Now I’m back in the land of sun, beaches and a stupid crazy work schedule. I’m sharing my apartment with two new geckos and a millipede that lives on my ceiling (most of the time. I don't like to think about where it is the rest of the time....) and I finally got a lightbulb in my kitchen. It is amazing the difference that makes – it made me temporarily turn into my mom and clean the room from top to bottom! So focusing on the positives, life is pretty good. And since this post is long enough and too happy to be brought down by the Other Stuff, I will leave that for another day.

Extraordinary in the Ordinary.

In most ways my life here in Bujumbura is not that completely different than my life in Canada. I get up in the morning, go to the office for 7:30 until 5pm (long day!!) then go home. Some evenings I go out for dinner with friends, or I stop at a store for groceries on my way home. I might even stop for a cup of coffee somewhere. Sure, my breakfast is more likely to feature passion fruit and mangoes here than in Canada, and my commute to work has some more interesting sights such as goats playing on top of parked cars or people carrying huge loads of produce to the market on their heads, but for the most part my life here has largely become routine. Even ordinary. The exception is the weekends. I have the privilege of exploring a beautiful country and a new culture on my weekends. These opportunities and experiences are extraordinary. Here are some pictures from my fun Sunday afternoon hanging out with friends on a boat ride down the Ruzizi River, just a 15 minute drive from downtown Bujumbura.

Ready to spend the afternoon on the water.

Safety First! Rockin' the lovely orange life vests.

We saw three different families of hippos for a total of almost 30 different individual hippos!

It was a 'cooler' cloudy day so many of the hippos were out of the water.

Just a lazy Sunday afternoon!

We got really close to this family so they slipped under the water as we went by.

We ended the afternoon with drinks and some snacks at Bora Bora on Lake Tanganyika. A great end to a great day!

And now tomorrow it is back to the ordinary, day to day routine of work and everyday life. I'm enjoying the rhythms of life here, the pace and the flow of my days. Sometimes time seems to be getting away from me and I have a lot to do in the next couple of weeks with work, but then I get to pause over a coffee with a friend or at the beach in the sun and I remember to absorb these experiences and to live in this day, not worrying about what is coming next. I remember that I get to live the extraordinary, even in the ordinary things.
 

Weekend in Rutana

I spent the weekend exploring more of this beautiful country. Here are some of the pictures from our adventures.

A beautiful day at the Feilles D'Allemand. That is Tanzania in the distance

A beautiful sunny day, no wonder I got a sunburn!

A rainbow in the water fall

Les Chutes de la Kagera in Rutana 

Well worth the hike to see the four difference water falls .