Moving on..

So, three weeks down, seven to go! Tomorrow sees us packing up our bags, saying our farewells and hoping our taxi driver arrives at 5:40am to take us to the bus station.. if all of the above go as planned (mostly the taxi driver...) we will be leaving Kigali, Rwanda and moving on to Bujumbura, Burundi.

It's been a fantastic time here in Kigali, the team has been great, and we've met some incredible people and worked with some great ministries, but it does feel like time to move on to Burundi. I'm excited to see the people we worked with last year again, as well as work with a few new people, and to work with Alison and Meg again (two of the students from last years team who are working in Bujumbura now).

I'm trying to think of something in the last week that I should talk about here... We've been up to a lot, but probably the biggest thing was our adventure in Bukora last week. Certainly it was remote, and when the crooked taxi driver wouldn't come and get us when it was time to leave because he claimed we weren't giving him enough money (which we were... we were offering double what we should have paid in fact!) we had to walk for two hours through farmland (bags and all!) to get to the main road to catch a bus back to Kigali (this was also the start of one of the craziest journeys of my life.... but that's a story for another day... and now can you see why I'm worried about the taxi tomorrow morning?!)

While in Bukora we went to a health clinic, talked, prayed and spent time with some of the patients, and also went to a refugee camp. This was a difficult experience, to see the way these people are being forced to live. As we were meeting the people, seeing their homes and playing with the kids, I was so struck by the injustice of it all. The fact that these people's live are being forced on hold while they wait for the government to someday get around to building a house (the houses cost less than $1000 to buy land and build a house on) and while these people wait, they are forced to live in these “houses” which are literally nothing more than some sticks, a tarpaulin and some walls they've made out of cow dung. The injustice of the whole situation struck me hard, and I realised that this is not the kingdom of God at work. Not at all. This was my prayer as we walked around and spent time there, to realise that these are people with real lives that are just waiting for these lives to start again.

One thing I also learnt this week is that whenever I talked about Bukora to people, I said I was going to the “middle of nowhere”. After we got back, I was reading a book (Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell... not so great, but a fantastic last page!) and there was a line that struck me that said “Every nowhere is a somewhere for someone”. I realised the truth of this and was challenged by it. Bukora is a place where people live out their lives, where they are born, grow up, plant crops, marry, raise a family and die... What right do I have to call this place where these people “do life” NOWHERE? Would I like it for people to say that about where I live? I'm not so sure...

So, in conclusion, our time in Bukora was great. It was a challenge indeed... Especially our night time visitors the rats on the second evening... But we survived and live to meet another day!

Roll on Burundi...


A few short highlights from the last week:

-Kigali reunions... 5 out of the 8 members of last years team were reunited in Kigali! Along with this years team, we went to see a world cup qualifying match between Rwanda and Algeria...not the greatest football, but good atmosphere and craic made for a great afternoon!

-We were so close to the Tanzanian border in Bukora that we talked the guards into letting us run across the bridge and into Tanzania... there was a pretty incredible waterfall on the bridge too! Good pictures to follow...

-Last night we spent dinner at a restaurant to celebrate the first three weeks of outreach, and also to say farewell to Amalia who's heading back to Canada for her sister's wedding!

-Yesterday it was hatching day for the ants...the flying ants.... THOUSANDS upon thousands of flying ants were emerging from hills all over the base... the birds were having a field day!

-Lowlight: The final death of my mp3 player... Now I no longer even have “Oh Holy Night” to lull me to sleep at night...