Picture Post

Pictures from the last month in Burundi:

 Kids very happy to see me and perform a drumming song on a weekend hike

 End of dry season just before the first rains began

 Hosting a pizza party to welcome new and returning teammates - we've grown from a team of 11 (over the summer) to a team of 25! So fun! 

 Sad farewell to Burundian colleagues. Thankful they have the opportunity to pursue residency training elsewhere in East Africa but we miss them here! Encouraged by the sweet affirming speeches at the goodbye party, though. 

 Beginning the first phototherapy ever at Kibuye Hope Hospital thanks to the donation of a Boston company called Little Sparrows. Saving lives by treating neonatal jaundice! 

 Workers painting the cross on the new church. Please don't fall! 

 One of five waterfalls at Karera Falls just 45 minutes away

 Lovely Saturday outing enjoying beautiful Burundi

 and sweet friends! 

 Natural waterslide

 Rainbow

 New wall under construction at the hospital

 I've loved leading a tween Bible study for the three older girls in this picture - such sweet kids! 

 King(Queen) of the Hill

 How Burundians hike - baby on the back, lunch on the head

 Two waterfalls

Happy to call this place home! 

Kumbya, Lake Kivu, Rwanda 2015

After three and a half months of hunkering down at Kibuye due to the political instability in Bujumbura, I was really looking forward to the annual missions conference at Lake Kivu in Rwanda  at the end of July. And it did not disappoint! I thoroughly enjoyed the break from hospital work, the opportunity to swim and enjoy beautiful creation, the chance to worship in English, and the deepening friendships with other missionaries from this region. It really is amazing how much encouraging connection and unity is possible with 160 folks who come from so many different backgrounds - Brits, Aussies, Canadians, Americans; Mennonites, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans, Quakers, Pentecostals, Church of Christ; doctors, teachers, pastors, even a plumber; serving in Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Congo. Wow! Anyways, I loved getting to know new friends and hearing people’s stories from their years of living cross culturally. I look forward to connecting with these fellow expats more in the future in Burundi or elsewhere. 

Pictures from the Kumbya conference 2015:

 3 kilometer swim (1.5 miles) to Three Hump Island bright and early one morning - I'm one of the heads on the left! 

 Deanna and I thoroughly enjoying our coffee and pancakes after completed the swim to the speck of the island seen the the right of us

 Beautiful sunrise viewed while swimming - picture taken just after I got to the island 

My favorite spot of the week :) 

 Always love a mesmerizing campfire! 

 Typical afternoon outside the cabin

Monkeys!

 Worship in English

 Most of the Burundi missionaries

 Sunset with traditional dugout canoe

 Scenery on the drive back to Burundi

 Tea fields

Back in Bujumbura - dry season! 

But, despite a fabulous time in Rwanda, after a week of essentially camping with no running water, electricity, or internet, I was also thankful to get back to civilization and my own bed. Adjusting back to busy hospital work with 40 new inexperienced med students is a little more challenging! For some reason that children’s song (from Psalty, I think) “Have patience...don’t be in such hurry...” keeps running through my head during re-entry! :)

Surreal Reality

Today I rounded on 38 patients on the pediatric service at Kibuye Hope Hospital. Most have malaria or respiratory infections. A few have meningitis or sickle cell disease. Six patients are premature infants in the NICU and four patients have complications related to severe acute malnutrition.  Two kids have HIV and one of those also has tuberculosis. As I evaluated these patients I also taught and answered questions from the 7 medical students and 6 nursing students assigned to the pediatric service. After rounds I consulted on a patient on the surgery service and evaluated a rash with a Burundian doctor in outpatient. Then I discussed the med student curriculum plan with the hospital medical director. This afternoon I’ll follow up on patients (especially the 6 month old with severe respiratory distress from bronchiolitis), evaluate new admissions in the emergency room, and study Kirundi. I also plan to review a chapter on pediatric tuberculosis so as to more effectively teach the students.

So all that’s a pretty normal workday – much the same as most other days I’ve worked at Kibuye since January 2014. But… I also checked the news and Twitter three times already today getting updates about the current crisis in the country. I reviewed emails from the US embassy and from the Serge Security team. There is a suitcase packed in the corner of my room just in case we need to evacuate in a hurry. I hosted our weekly team prayer time last night as we met once again to pray for Burundi and also to discuss again the security situation and how we’re all doing with the current uncertainty. I noticed a med student was distracted and not as on top of things as usual and I wondered if that was because of fear or anxiety about the political situation. I remember students’ stories from their childhood as they grew up in a time of civil war and genocide. Some were orphaned; others fled as refugees; all were significantly affected in one way or another. These harsh realities and memories fuel the current pervasive fear in the country.

But it’s still all so hard to believe. I haven’t been to Bujumbura since the protests began. I wasn’t there during the failed coup. I haven’t heard the gunshots, grenades, teargas, or riots. I have helped host missionary refugees who were in Bujumbura and came to stay with us for a time before leaving the country. I’ve listened as they shared their stories of holing up in their houses for days and weeks waiting for news as to whether school would be open again for their kids or whether they could safely return to work. And then I’ve waved goodbye to those missionary refugees as well as to teammates who were planning to head to North America this summer anyways. I’ve adapted to having a smaller team here at Kibuye (currently 6 adults and 6 kids), though we certainly miss our friends. But it’s still quiet and peaceful and “normal” here in rural Burundi. The construction work continues on the Burundian physician housing and the hospital canteen. Heather and I still go running and the countryside is still beautiful at the end of rainy season with the usual sounds of birds chirping and kids playing. I still love living in my home and welcoming friends for meals and social activities. And, as I said, hospital work and medical student education still keep us all busy.

No one has any idea what’s next. I guess we never do, but that seems more obvious these days. We are certainly not in control. We seek to make wise decisions with limited information. And we hope to continue in our work and lives here. But we hope for so much more for this country. We hope for redemption and reconciliation. We hope Burundi will no longer be the hungriest nation in the world or the second poorest. We hope there will be more than 3 doctors per 100,000 people. We hope that facing the risk of cholera in a refugee camp won’t be a better option for Burundians than staying in their homeland. We hope for justice instead of corruption and peace instead of fear. We hope that God’s grace will transform this nation with us for His glory. Thanks for daring to hope with us and to believe in God’s Sovereignty, goodness, and love even (especially?) in hard times.

Four Months of Development

I've written a post on our team blog highlighting the changes at Kibuye in my 4 month absence. Check out the link below to see lots of pictures of growth here in rural Burundi!

http://www.mccropders.blogspot.fr/2015/04/in-only-four-months.html

And I forgot to mention in the other blog that we also have new NICU protocols at Kibuye Hope Hospital! That was one thing I worked on while in the US - reviewing neonatology service protocols from other African hospitals, the World Health Organization, and the Burundi Ministry of Health and then writing protocols for Kibuye (with the help of a US neonatologist and with my colleague Eric McLaughlin). I'm very happy that they are approved by the medical director and that they were received positively by the hospital staff on Wednesday. Hopefully this standardized approach will lead to improved care for our smallest patients.

We still utilize kangaroo care for our patients. 

But we have four homemade incubators for the smallest babies. 

Back to presenting in French. Loved the break of presentations in English while in the US! 

But I'm happy to be back at work teaching and caring for patients. I really do love my job most days! 

Back to Burundi

And I’m back! Three weeks ago I said goodbye to my family at the Nashville airport and then Flat Stanley and I boarded the first of 7 planes culminating in our final arrival in Bujumbura last Tuesday. No, it doesn’t usually take 2 weeks (or 7 planes) to get to Burundi, but I made a few stops along the way. :) 

I’m realizing five years into this global nomad life that transitions always take longer and are more chaotic than I expect. Not that I wasn’t warned about that through missions training. Just like I was warned that HMA (Home Ministry Assignment) would be quite busy. But some things I just have to learn for myself. It may be stubbornness, independence, or denial, but regardless, now I understand more about myself and how I process these changes. And I’m learning to extend grace and patience to myself in the chaos. 

So now I understand the importance of the boat. Travel used to take a lot longer which gave people more transition time to process the goodbyes and anticipate the hellos. Now I have no desire to cross the Atlantic on a ship (though I wonder if the ship authorities are as strict about baggage allowance!), but I’ve discovered that it is helpful to build some extra time into the voyage to help with the adjustment between two very different worlds. So I stopped in Switzerland to visit friends on the way to the US in November. And coming back to Burundi it worked out perfectly to time my arrival with the Serge East Africa retreat in Kenya. 

The McLaughlin family and I attended the last Serge (World Harvest) East Africa retreat in August 2011 just before being officially appointed as Serge missionaries. We loved getting to know new friends with similar vision, passion, theology, and ministries serving in neighboring countries. And I was just as encouraged this time to reconnect with special friends and have time to rest and be renewed and pray for one another and have fun together as an East Africa field. This time our whole team was there which was a special time though too short as McLaughlins and Carlan left for the US from there. We miss them now back in Burundi! 

So Kenya was a good place to begin my transition back to Africa. The culture is familiar but not quite the same as Burundi and the setting of the retreat was such that I could engage with hotel staff and speak Swahili, etc., or withdraw to my American personal space without ramifications. And with 100+ friends and colleagues around, there were lots of opportunities for either deep conversation and processing or simply swimming and hanging out together. The sessions on surrender, suffering, loss, resurrection, and journey were encouraging, inspiring, and relevant to us all. And celebrating Easter week as a community was very meaningful. 

 Passover Seder above and below

Just before sunrise on Easter morning 

Now I’m settled back into my home in Burundi and I began hospital work again yesterday. My brain is spinning with French and Kirundi and medicine and teaching and new names and figuring out the appropriate return greetings, etc. But I’m happy to be here. And life is feeling familiar again. 

Nothing like a rainbow to inspire hope and peace in returning to Burundi!