Patrick in Burundi

I've been trying to post this for two days but sometimes the internet here isn't very cooperative... (hence no photo attachments either...)

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I’ve lived in Burundi for nearly two years and I finally feel like I am beginning to understand the situation in the interior of the country.  Spending a significant chunk of time with one family, hearing how they do things, why it’s easier to wash their clothes in the stream than to carry that much water to the house, for example, is not at all like reading that only X % of rural Burundians have water at home.  Not at all.  Now it’s personal.  

But I’m not going to go into the details of Patrick’s life right now.  His story for One Globe Kids is far from ready, mostly because I don’t yet know enough to write it.  I haven’t photographed his bedtime routine or seen him gather firewood or sweet potatoes.  I haven’t seen his soccer skills or watched how fast he can pick tea for the factory from his father’s fields.   I don’t know his favorite subject at school or what he wants to be when he’s older. 

I do know he’s soft-spoken and quick to help and that his mother is strong and patient and loving.  She makes all their meals over a small fire, often with a baby strapped to her back.  And she makes sure that Patrick and his siblings brush their teeth. 

Before we even discussed the story or photos or anything else, we both sat down to nurse our babies.  I can now say with certainty that in Africa, breastfeeding in public is a good thing.  Good for the baby but also good for new relationships!  About five minutes after we’d met, Patrick’s mom told me that she expected to be afraid of me (being foreign and white and all) but that she now knows that it wasn’t necessary at all.  (All the kudos go to my little suction cup, Jos, who was just a bundle of sweetness the whole time…)

Everyone liked seeing photos of Valdo, Gabou, Luna, Lucian, Floor, Lars, Aji, Larasati, Maya, Asher, Laith, Bara’a and Jenissa, the other kids in the One Globe Kids series (thus far).  I’m pretty sure this was the first iPad Patrick’s ever seen, but he picked up the finger scroll in no time! 

I had planned to visit on Saturday and come back next weekend to actually take photos, but as often happens, things didn’t work out as planned.  Patrick’s family is Catholic and they told me they’d be attending a special “Fete du Saint Sacrement” (Feast of Corpus Christi) celebration on Sunday.  Thousands attending, children dancing and throwing flowers, a parade to the church.  How could I miss that?!

I couldn’t.  So, Jos and I (and Francoise, Tresor and Roger) ended up spending the weekend in the Burundian hills while Jan stayed in Bujumbura with the boys and got ready for the movers. (Who came on Monday and left this afternoon, but that’s a whole different story…)

It was awesome and exhausting.  And I only seriously embarrassed myself once - hurrah!  I purposefully wore a skirt made of African cloth that I had made in Kinshasa pre-kids....so, yeah, it was a little tight.  And well, yes, the Kinshasa (city of 9 million) styles are not the same as in rural Burundi...  In fact, the skirt was so long and tight that I had to take little baby steps to keep up with everyone else on our 45-minute walk to church.   (Seriously, though, it did look good in my bedroom mirror - just wasn't ideal for field work...ahem...)  And all that's not even the embarrassing part.  

I used a big safety pin to help close the back slit to a respectable height...  but, of course, when you're running  Geisha-style in a hot pink, orange and green patterned skirt, in front of a crowd of African's, including your 8-year old subject, so you can turn around and get the money action shot...well, of course, your safety pin doesn't see the fun in holding everything together.  Would you?   

"Umm, madame, votre jupe..."

Yes, I swore out loud on my way to church.  But thankfully, I found the pin, Mama Patrick fastened it again and my prayers worked.  I may have looked beet-red and sweaty, toddling along in my trying-to-fit-in-but-out-of-style outfit in front of 2500 Burundian church-goers, but the pin stayed closed and no one got a money shot on me.  (At least I don't think so - there were some people taking shots with their phones but that was of my front.)

Jos and I are headed back this Friday for two more days.

Hostess Gift

I’m going to visit a Burundian boy and his family in the hills of Burundi this weekend.  Patrick is 8 years old and will be the second Burundian child featured in the One Globe Kids series – hurrah! 

For this initial visit, I wanted to take some hostess-type gifts for his family and asked Roger, Francoise and Trésor for advice.  What did they suggest?  Not the chocolates or cakes or small trinkets that may first come to mind as appropriate for the first time you visit someone at home. 

I’m taking what I was told they will really appreciate and use:

•          2 kilos of local sugar
•          1 kilo of local salt
•          24 small bars of locally-made detergent for hand washing clothes
•          2 loaves of plain sliced bread (I asked, “With butter?  Jelly?”  Nope. Apparently bread is such a big treat that the kids will want to eat it plain – or maybe they don’t realize there are things to put on top of bread?)

For One Globe Kids I have photographed children in Haiti, Indonesia, The Netherlands, Israel, Palestine, New York City, and in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi.  Every place is unique, and each child’s story is special.  But Patrick’s story may be in a class of it’s own.  I’ve been told that he’s responsible for lighting the cooking fire in the middle of their mud, stick and grass hut.  Hats off to any 8-year old able to do that without lighting the home on fire!

Since I’m still nursing Jos, he’ll be accompanying me on this trip, along with Francoise who will help with translation (from Kirundi into French). Trésor will provide the introductions since he knows Patrick’s family – they come from the same “colline natale,” which literally means that they were born on the same hill.  

Patrick has 4 siblings, including a 5-month old sister, roughly the same age as our baby, Jos.  I just love working on the One Globe Kids series - not only because sharing real kids’ stories and lives with children around the world is a passion of mine, but because it’s infinitely fascinating and there’s always so much to learn. 

Spending several days with a family raising a baby the same age as mine but in the hills of Burundi?  What an opportunity!  Maybe Mama Patrick will have some good tips on potty-training and sleeping through the night....  And who knows what else I'll learn?  I'm pretty sure Patrick knows how to do a billion of things I never even knew existed to be done... 

And Then There Were FIVE!

Ta-da!  Baby Jos is now 6 months old!  The months since my last post have flown by in almost a blur – a busy, fun, stressful, joyful, painful, contented blur. 

Jos (full name: Josef) was born in Wisconsin on December 1, 2011.  The little sweetheart/stinker surprised us by being 3 weeks early (note to What to Expect: one’s water CAN break in the middle of the night while in bed) and by turning breech, which meant he was born via an unscheduled c-section without his father, who was stuck in Burundi with his brothers.  The biggest surprise, though, was that Jos was born with Down syndrome.  I wasn’t sure I was even going to share that in this blog since it feels at once so immensely personal and so superfluous.  It’s an important adjustment for our family, but not yet so important for him.  We love him just the same, and he coos and rolls and loves us back.

It’s hard to describe how heavy the shock of that news was so I’m not going to really try.  Not now, maybe in a different post.  We’re all immensely grateful that so far he doesn’t have any of the health issues that often accompany Down Syndrome, which is probably one reason it wasn’t noticed in any of my ultrasounds.  (They were done in Europe and the US, in case you’re wondering.)  He’s flourishing in Burundi, where he gets gobs of attention from his brothers, parents, friends, and our staff, who were over the moon with happiness when he came “home.”  Jan and I were especially touched that Roger, Francoise, Ignace, Christian and Adelin got together and surprised us with a bouquet of flowers and welcome banner for Jos.  Considering how hard it can sometimes be for them to pay school fees for all the kids they support, this went way beyond thoughtful.

"A new birth is a miracle.  It is a source of joy for his friends. - Ignace, Roger, Christian, Adelin, Francoise"

Welcome Home, Jos!  Sign made by our good friend Marieke.  

What's life like for Jos in Burundi?  

Well, for one, he loves the weather in Bujumbura – but who wouldn’t?  I get emails from home – “it’s so cold, we’re shoveling another foot of snow tonight” or “it’s so hot, they’re predicting over 100 degrees for three days this week” and meanwhile it stays a lovely 75 – 85 degrees here with very little humidity.  This must be the best climate ever - he never needs anything warmer than one layer and gets to nurse outside with the Congo mountains in the distance!  (Ok, he doesn't do that everyday - this was at an Easter Egg Hunt party...)

He has his own mosquito net, with his crib and nursing station under it.  It feels like our own private island and I love our conversations and cuddling under it.  (I also love all the reading I’ve managed to do during my hours in this tent – from The Hunger Games to the Economist.  I’m not going to say which I enjoyed more because that would be embarrassing.  Oh, wait.  I guess I just did…)

Brother Wim visiting Jos in his crib

Turns out that caring for a baby in Africa isn’t that different from caring for a baby elsewhere, except when it comes to really specific things like hiccups...

Burundian cure for the hiccups: lick a small piece of paper and put it on baby's forehead.  Yeah, it worked.

I think it's just adorable how Francoise carried him one day, but babies with Down Syndrome have very sensitive hips so she can't do this anymore and we're not using the Ergo for now (except for this one really fun walk with Papa, Bas and Wim in our neighborhood).

He likes hanging out with Bas and Wim and me on weekend mornings while we play games, like my new addiction: Blokus!

Reading with Wim is AWESOME.  

Especially on THE Wisconsin Blanket.

 All my boys love to hang on the couch.  It's fun until the big ones turn into cheetahs and start leaping around...

Being a FAMILY OF FIVE is great.  Yeah, it’s a bit hectic at times (imagine: one boy who desperately needs help folding a paper airplane, the other who needs to be wiped, and the third who urgently wants to nurse), but it’s mostly just sweeter than sweet.  Their little faces light up when the other ones smile, they genuinely like being together, and they don’t stop making us laugh (or roll our eyes, which usually also leads to laughing once everyone’s in bed). 

  

It’s all good.  Thank goodness.

Just in case you forgot you live in Burundi...

Here are a few things that wouldn’t happen in too many other countries:      

• It takes 4 weeks longer than expected to get your car back from the garage because the only reputable garage in town has no electricity and doesn’t want to waste diesel to turn on generator for your piddlely, dinged-up door that doesn’t close.
• There’s an attack on a bar 5 kms outside the capital (yep, that would be Bujumbura) that is known to have many patrons from the ruling political party, and 36 persons are killed by unidentified assailants (Google: Gatumba Massacre).   However, because the ruling party doesn’t want to admit that there is an armed rebel movement developing in the countryside, the President makes it illegal to discuss the attack in any type of public forum for one month.  No radio coverage, no TV coverage, no news at all until the official report of the massacre comes out.  It made international press at the end of September 2011, and we don’t hear a peep about it anymore.
• The best place to buy strawberries in the capital is from a barefooted fruit vendor who walks between the cars coming to pick up children at the Belgian school.  Put in an order the day before to be guaranteed good Goma cheese (cheesemakers in the city of Goma in Eastern Congo are known as the best – it’s similar to Gouda, sorta) and fresh, large-ish sized strawberries.
• When you go for a pregnancy appointment with a “Belgian-trained” gynecologist (the term all expats yearn to hear around here) at the “best” hospital in town (supposedly Hopital Bumeric), you have to ask to if he would please check your blood pressure.  Not once has he measured my belly, asked me to step on a scale, told me what blood work I need to be done, na-da.  Every time, though, he does look for my “file” (i.e. a pink piece of paper in a binder with handwritten notes on it), and I explain that they never made one for me.  Every time he can’t find it.
• By mid-September every year, you’ve met more new people than you met in six months living in a non-expat environment.  Most people working as expats move during the summer, which means lots of goodbyes each June (yuck) and many hellos each August (fun).  This round has been especially fruitful for us as several English-speaking and Dutch-speaking families arrived with kids the same age as ours – hurrah!
•  It’s OK to do your 28-week glucose screening test with 2 Fantas and a pain au chocolat rather than the standard, doctor-issued glucose solution, which isn’t available.  Of course, don’t expect any accurate interpretation of results…

31 weeks pregnant in Burundi

Jan took this picture today and clearly we're well on our way!  The boys understand what's going on (there's a baby in Mommy's tummy), they know I'll leave for the USA first and that they'll come a few weeks later with Papa and that we'll all have Christmas together in WI.  Hurrah - great timing, don't you think?! (Although, landing in WI nine months pregnant with my favorite Indian buffet, Papa Johns and Prego spaghetti sauce available anytime, not to mention Thanksgiving AND Christmas, does sound a bit dangerous...)

Most Burundians who see me, those I know as well as strangers, are seriously impressed with my stomach, and often comment on it to Roger, our driver.  Or ask me when I'm due and then act shocked that I still have 2 months to go.  (Half the baby's genes are Dutch and they're the tallest people in the world - what's a mom to do?)

My theory is that all the attention is largely fashion-related.  Burundian pregnancy clothes tend to be similar to a large colorful sheet that just makes you look fat (I'm sure there are way more pregnant women than I actually notice), whereas ours are specifically designed to make you look pregnant and not fat.  Or at least that's the hope...  In Western pregnancy clothes, I look visibly (sometimes shockingly) pregnant and apparently that's hard not to notice!

Let's Talk About Food: Israel!

Ok, so maybe not everyone knows it yet, but I LOVE TO EAT.  I’m not a foodie – I don’t believe in all that super-fancy, shooshy food and expensive ingredients because it feels exclusive and I don’t like that.  I do like eating foods that are in season and haven’t traveled a million miles to reach me.  But that doesn’t mean that I won’t buy Vietnamese fish sauce in NYC’s Chinatown and carry it in a suitcase to Burundi.  

I like to cook, and I read cookbooks to relax.  Although, as my husband recently pointed out after going through the margin notes in most of our cookbooks, I seem to be allergic to following a recipe exactly.  I mean, they’re really just recommendations, right? 

In brief my brain is very tuned into food pretty much all the time and especially whenever I travel.  I’ll try my best to limit my food ramblings to 1 – 2 entries per country.  For now.

So…let’s talk about food in Israel!

I thought Americans pretty much had the corner market on breakfast in a restaurant.  Uh, NO.  We have the Hungry Man Breakfast (basically 2 of everything on the menu), eggs about 1,700 different ways, and no qualms about eating potatoes under or next to everything, but you sure can’t get feta cheese marinated in pesto with fresh rolls before noon in America. 

Besides the fact that I was eating by myself and literally chugging my breakfast because a cab was coming to take me to Ramallah, here’s a photo of what may be my favorite restaurant breakfast every, eaten at the London restaurant, 111 Herbert Samuel Avenue, Tel Aviv (it barely all fits on the table - yeah, baby!):

• Yogurt with maple syrup, toasted oatmeal, grapes, apple, pear and some other exotic fruit I didn’t recognize;
•  4 warm, sesame seed-covered rolls;
•  A selection of spreads and finger foods: tuna salad, olives, feta marinated in pesto, fromage blanc mixed with olives, and roasted red pepper;
• Balkan Eggs Benedict: 3 slices of toast covered with roasted eggplant, 2 poached eggs, and shredded feta cheese with a side of fried potatoes;
•  A generous bowl of chopped cucumber, tomato and red onion in a lemon and olive oil dressing (known as “Israeli salad” in Israel);
•  Lemonade
•  Cappuccino

A little advice for anyone traveling with a friend – split the darn breakfast and then order an ice cream sundae at 10 am, like the smarties at the table next to me! 

Food shopping in Israel must be a learned art because I would have bought everything I came across, except that I was carrying a large camera bag and about 20 lbs of baby weight, which meant I wasn’t about to buy anything.  But had I wanted to, here’s a small selection of things on my shortlist from the Mehane Yehuda market in Jerusalem:

Gobs of dried fruits 

Hummus - as far as the eye can see

Baklava & cookies

Spices - can you smell them?

Halva

Chips - in Hebrew!

Big Belly, Will Travel - to Israel and Palestine!

Live from Ramallah:  So I've actually left my two darling boys and their father in Burundi for 2.5 weeks so I can travel to Israel and Palestine to collect more stories for One Globe Kids.  I knew it would be tough being gone for so long, but it really wasn't until now that I understand how hard it is for my sister and parents to Skype with the boys and not be able to actually kiss them through the computer screen.  Plus, I'm around all these darling children and their siblings for work, making it that much harder!  

I arrived in Tel Aviv after an overnight trip from Bujumbura with stops in Nairobi and Addis and am very pleased to report that it IS possible to eat Ethiopian tibs and injera at the airport in Addis Abbebe.  (My baby needs meat, don't you know?)  I picked up a free Time Out Israel at the airport, bringing back memories of my own Time Out New York subscription of a year ago, and rolled my bags through customs without stopping, looking like the tired, pregnant lady that I am. 

A mere 5 hours after laying down, I reluctantly pulled myself out of bed the first morning to go out in search of a SIM card so I can make local calls using my own cellphone.  (Gotta love that SIM system – my phone can call Zambia, Rwanda, the Netherlands and now Israel depending on what card I put in.  Only bummer?  It won’t work in Wisconsin.  Sheesh.)

And wow, Tel Aviv is great!  The weather feels truly Mediterranean, sunny and dry, the streets busy, filled with bikers, buses, cars, walkers, and tons of people pushing strollers and playing with kids.  It feels remarkably like lower Manhattan but with less humidity, shorter buildings and fewer people in suits.  Oh, and a lot more hummus, believe it or not!  I found the card, called my friend Kari in Ramallah to tell her I’d arrived, and reconfirmed my appointment with the first family and child that I’m photographing – a funny, sweet 5-year old boy named Asher.

Here I am, heading out to meet Asher:

Traveling and working internationally while pregnant is actually way better than you’d expect – that big ball is the biggest door opener ever.  It seems that besides the 15 – 22 year-old age group, everyone wants to talk about kids.  Little girls on the street point, smile and giggle, old women and men tell you about their grandchildren, and parents are more than happy to talk about their own munchkins.  Last night, Munir, the 33-yr old Palestinian taxi driver who brought me from Jerusalem to Ramallah (via the famed Qalandia checkpoint) told me all about how long he and his wife waited before having kids, what he hopes they’ll study, how their behavior changes over time.  A potentially, slightly intimidating car ride from Israel into the West Bank was made quite entertaining and insightful due to my growing belly - it may be one of the greatest travel assets I’ve ever had.