Category Archives: Africa

A Burundi Wedding: Africa Day 4

Africa, Blog, Burundi, International Travel, Uncategorized, , ,

What would you do if you were asked to play a role in the wedding of a stranger? In another country? Where you don’t speak the local language?

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I recently wrote about attending a dowry ceremony in Burundi. My whole family was invited to attend the wedding the next day, even though we did not know the couple and were visiting from the U.S.

Yes, we did color coordinate our clothes. Photo credit: Danny J.

The wedding took place in a the couple’s church, a beautiful brick building shaped like a heart. It included performances by the choir and speeches with advice to the bride and groom. My family doesn’t speak Kirundi, but my sister-in-law whispered an English translation to us. The service also had a sign language interpreter for Deaf guests, and I could understand most of that.

Kirundi word of the day: Kaze (Welcome)

The couple prepares to be presented as man and wife.

According to the local tradition, asking someone to act as best man and matron of honor is also a request for lifelong mentorship and marriage counseling. The older friends who stood in this role for the newlyweds have a reputation for a stable, loving marriage despite challenging life circumstances.

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Jambo! Jambo bwana! Habari gani? Mzuri sana! Wageni wakaribishwa, Burundi yetu hakuna matata.

Hospitality is a strong value in Burundi, and we were offered seats of honor with the groom’s family during the reception. This accomplished the need to have someone stand in for the groom’s extended family members who couldn’t make it as well as the need to express a welcome to out-of-town guests.

I had another role, too. My sister-in-law made the wedding cake, and I had the job of walking up the aisle to deliver it to the couple!

A toast with Fanta Orange

It was quite an experience to see how Burundian weddings are done and to be able to appreciate the meaningful customs they observe. Getting invited to anyone’s wedding is an honor, and I always love having the chance to witness one of the most important moments of a couple’s life.

To read more about this wedding, visit World Footprints.

Africa Day 1: 30 Hours in Transit

Africa Day 2: Crossing Burundi

Africa Day 3: A Dowry Ceremony

Africa Day 5: Gisuru School for the Deaf

A Burundian Dowry Ceremony: Africa Day 3

Africa, Burundi, International Travel, Uncategorized, ,

If you want to experience a traditional East African lifestyle, rural Burundi is a good place to go. You won’t have pavement or electricity or running water, but you will have the chance to discover local agriculture and artistry. Welcome to Gisuru, a small farming town deep in the hills.

While we were in Africa, my sister-in-law Annie, who lives in Gisuru, invited me to come with her to a Burundian dowry ceremony. This event happens shortly before a wedding, and it entails a dinner and a reception with the exchanging of gifts/bride, speeches, and a lot of soda.

More Africa Stories!
The happy couple. Photo credit: Abel N.

I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying, but I did enjoy the soda. Soda in Africa tastes better than American soda.

I might end up with a cavity by the end of this trip.

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Annie lent me a traditional dress. Photo credit: Danny J.

It’s Africa, so we expected the event to start late. We arrived two hours late and then waited an extra hour. I was in the car with Annie and four Burundians, and they taught me some Kirundi words in the meantime.

Carrying – you guessed it! – cases of soda. Photo credit: Abel N.

Kirundi word of the day: Fanta/soda. (Soda of any brand. Also a euphemism for “bribe,” so if someone asks for a “soda” they probably want money in exchange for a favor.)

Dinner was delicious—chicken, beef, rice, cabbage, and fried potatoes. We sat with the groom’s family, as we’d been asked to stand in for extended family members who couldn’t make it.

Carrying gifts to the dowry ceremony. Photo credit: Abel N.

Some of the events:

  • Dinner
  • Sodas
  • Traditional speeches: representative of the bride’s family takes turns with the groom’s representatives to publicly discuss the culmination of their bride price arrangements.
  • The family reiterates their acceptance of the terms and gifts arrive (more sodas, in this case).
  • The bride arrives with an entourage and the women vocalize their joy.
  • The brothers of the bride block the groom’s path to her until he gives them a gift.
  • Together, the two families sip a banana drink from a big bowl with straws.
  • The bride gives the groom a gift—new shoes.
  • The bride gives gifts to the parents.
  • More speeches.
  • More sodas.
  • More speeches.
  • More sodas.
The bride gave her groom new shoes.
Annie and I sitting with the groom’s family. Photo credit: Abel N.

It was a big day for the bride and groom. And the next day would be even bigger: their wedding day!

Africa Day 1: 30 Hours in Transit

Africa Day 2: Crossing Burundi

Africa Day 4: Burundian Wedding

Africa Day 5: Gisuru School for the Deaf

Crossing Burundi: Africa Day 2

Africa, Blog, Burundi, International Travel, Uncategorized, ,

If you look at a map of Africa, you might be surprised that it takes five hours to drive across the small country of Burundi. But Burundi is all hills and valleys, dirt roads and steep escarpments.

Kirundi word of the day: Murakozi (thank you)

This snapshot of rural Burundi does not do it justice

The rural town of Gisuru is across Burundi from Bujumbura, the big city with the country’s international airport. Ben’s brother Danny and his family made the drive to Bujumbura to pick us up and then brought us to Gisuru the next day. They did ten hours of driving between the two days!

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A passion flower

For me, the five-hour trip was easy—everything I could see was interesting and new to me, so there was a lot to take in.

We stopped for lunch at a place the president frequents during his travels and even saw his motorcade.

Then we bumped along winding dirt roads for a couple of hours, the appearance of a rare car causing people to pause mid-hoe in the middle of their fields to watch us rumble by in a cloud of dust.

Sunset over Gisuru School for the Deaf

Finally, we arrived at Danny’s home, where my nieces and nephew gave us a tour of their various pets: guinea pigs, a rabbit, some lovebirds, a talking African grey parrot, and a pair of monkeys.

I couldn’t stop staring at the view. So much green! So much land! The house where we stayed overlooked not only the valley but also Gisuru School for the Deaf, which Danny established so the large population of Deaf kids in the area can learn sign language and have an education.

Read my post about Gisuru School for the Deaf on World Footprints.

Africa Day 1: 30 Hours in Transit

Africa Day 3: A Dowry Ceremony

Africa Day 4: A Burundian Wedding

Africa Day 5: Gisuru School for the Deaf

30 Hours in Transit: Africa Day 1

Africa, Blog, Burundi, Expats, Expats and TCKs, International Travel, Third Culture Kids, Uncategorized, , , , ,

We’re in Africa! We’ve been looking forward to this trip for nine years, and we’re finally here.

Kirundi word of the day: Amahoro (hello)

Fun fact: It takes 30 hours to get from Glendale, Arizona to Bujumbura, Burundi.

Actually, it should take longer than that if you schedule long enough layovers– I don’t recommend sprinting across Chicago O’Hare Airport toting six carryon bags and an angry preschooler to catch a connecting flight.

Little Man was happy for most of the trip 🙂

If you’ve been following for a while, you might remember a previous post announcing that we’d be in Kenya for six weeks last spring. Well, that didn’t work out. But the Africa vacation to Burundi and Tanzania that we’re taking now is turning out to be much better than trip to work in the hospital would have been!

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Helping with the luggage

Ben was born in Burundi and lived here until he was four, when his family was displaced to Tanzania during the war. In fact, he lived in the house where I’m writing this– his father built it on the family’s mission station 30 years ago and now his oldest brother lives here. But being born in Burundi gives Ben more than just a passport that makes border agents do a double-take. It’s also given him a lifelong connection to a place that will always feel like home.

It took three hours to get through the Bujumbura airport

After our long trip to Bujumbura, Burundi, we finally managed to extricate ourselves from the airport to find the people who would pick us up. To my joy, I saw eight family members waiting for us in the parking lot, where they had spent hours so they could be sure to greet us! We haven’t seen some of the nephews in six years, so our drive to their home a few miles away was a happy reunion.

Bujumbura, Burundi

Keep following to hear about the rest of our Africa adventures! We’ll be here for a whole month traveling between several locations.

You can also sign up for my newsletter in the sidebar to get new posts sent monthly to your inbox.

Africa Day 1: 30 Hours in Transit

Africa Day 2: Crossing Burundi

Africa Day 3: A Dowry Ceremony

Africa Day 4: A Burundian Wedding

Africa Day 5: Gisuru School for the Deaf

Coming Full Circle in Africa

Africa, Blog, Expats, Expats and TCKs, International Travel, Third Culture Kids,

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about Africa. For one thing, I’m writing a novel about an American kid in a Kenyan boarding school. For another, we’re planning on taking a trip to East Africa in the spring. Ben is allowed a residency rotation overseas, and obviously, he picked going home!

Ben near Lake Tanganyika in his hometown

It’s hard to believe we haven’t been to Africa since 2013! For someone like Ben, who grew up there, eight years is a long, long time to stay away. We were the only ones to miss the last family reunion, thanks to Ben’s med school schedule. And when you have 35 people in your immediate family (hope I added that right), living in six countries across three continents, it’s quite a bummer to mess up an opportunity to get a family photo where nobody’s photoshopped in.

Visiting a Burundian national park. Ben’s grandfather helped to start it after WWII.

Fortunately for Ben, even though it’s been a long time since he’s used Swahili on the daily, he does have frequent opportunities to use it at work. There are many people from Congo in our city, and whenever someone shows up to the hospital, Ben is able to conduct exams in a language they are more comfortable using. I, on the other hand, am getting pretty rusty. You know, rusty on the hundred or so words I actually know in Swahili. Looks like I have some work to do if I want to be able to practice any conversational skills at all while we’re there!

Swinging on vines – not just in movies!

We’re excited to go to Africa, introduce our son to the continent, and revisit the places Ben grew up. But one of the coolest things about this trip is that Ben will get to work at the very hospital where his life was saved, where he realized his calling into medicine. Over a decade ago, he was laying in one of the beds with a IV in his arm, recovering from spinal meningitis and watching the staff go about their daily tasks. He knew he wanted to use the second chance at life to pour into patients, just like those doctors and nurses. And now he gets to go back to the same hospital and do just that.

Lake Nakuru National Park in Kenya

Isn’t it amazing how God redeems our circumstances? Sometimes we never see how he does it, but other times life comes back full-circle and we can see how to worst days of our lives change us into the people we are supposed to be.

Just for fun, here are some of my favorite photos from our 2013 visit to Burundi, Kenya, and Tanzania.

  • Sailing Lake Tanganyika
  • Baboons (Ben calls them BADboons)
  • Overlooking the Rift Valley
  • Subbing at a Deaf school
  • Friends who helped with navigating the language barrier
  • Burundi
  • The ferry across Lake Victoria
  • Road trip- the real meaning of “Safari!”
  • The tourist version of “Safari”
  • Starbucks for zebras
  • Learning to sail

African Beef Sauce

Africa, Cooking, Expats and TCKs, International Travel, Third Culture Kids, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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I need a little Africa in my life!

Last week, my friends Taylor and Bethany came to visit. While they were here, they treated Ben and I to a special dinner. Since food is expensive here, and we don’t often buy meat or certain fruits and veggies, they gave us the gift of yummy by taking me shopping and buying me groceries for an awesome meal.

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We decided to make one of Ben’s favorites: meat sauce on rice, Africa style. Well, sort of. We didn’t have any curry powder. But I improvised, and it turned out great!

You need:

  • A couple pounds of beef
  • Rice
  • Oil for frying
  • An onion
  • 4 oz of tomato sauce
  • 2 T pilau masala
  • 1 T of garlic
  • 1 t of ground ginger
  • 1/4 cup corn starch
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 2 cups Chicken broth (or bouillon cube and water)

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Prepare rice.

Cut the meat into one-inch cubes. Slice onions.

Heat oil in a frying pan. Fry onions until translucent. Remove from pan.

Fry meat until thoroughly cooked.

Add spices to meat and stir.

Add tomato sauce, water/broth, and onions. Allow to simmer.

Slowly whisk in corn starch until sauce is thick.

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Serve sauce over rice. Pair with tropical fruit and salad. Enjoy!

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