BuRunDi

Upon from my return from Kenya, I woke up early the next morning for a 6 hour bus ride down to Bujumbora, Burundi where I would spend a week visiting and working down at the YFC office there. I also brought along my two friends Jenny and Liz to go down and help at the orphanage that we were going to be working at.
After getting stuck at the Burundi boarder for two hours because our bus broke down, we finally made it to be happily greeted by 3 yfc workers. Two were staff members names Esther and Eve and the third was an American volunteer names Jackie. They took us to the rainbow center where we would be sleeping for the week which was an orphanage and guest house all wrapped into one. We ate dinner and talked to with Jackie for awhile until the country director Freddy showed up to to say hello.
We had a wonderful week there working and seeing the sites of Burundi including a very short step into the DRC(that a separate story in itself). Burundi is a very small but wonderful country that was in the midst of a civil war just like Rwanda's.It is Rwanda's sister country and they were once the same before splitting in colonization. While Rwanda's story has become well know, Burundi's story of conflict has become some what forgotten and as a country it is far underdeveloped compared Rwanda. While Rwanda's war lasted a few months Burundi's war has gone on for over ten years and officially ended in 2005. Now they still to this day have not come to full peace as there is still an active rebel group but had not seen a major attack since 2005.
The second night we were There we were sitting having dinner at the rainbow center and talking with a YWAM group from Northern Ireland doing their ministry in Burundi when we heard what we thought was something like fireworks. We realized quickly that it was not so when shortly after the sounds of machine gun fire rang through our ears. One of the guards ran in to tell us to come look outside. We ran out to see the red light of missile grenades flying through the air in different directions along with the flash of white light as they landed in the hills. After spending some time in prayer for peoples safety and for the country we sat and listened to the sounds of gunfire and exploding bombs until we fell to sleep.
The fighting continued through the night and the next morning we came to find out that the rebel group had decided to make their biggest attack in 3 years. We were never really in to much danger where we were because their attack was for the most part a political statement as they spent most of their time trying to bomb the presidents compound in Bujumbora. After breakfast we packed up our things and our friends Basco and Eve (yfc staff) took us and Jackie two hours east through the mountains and the most dangerous road in the country (only really at night) to a town called Gitega where we would be doing our work at the orphanage. Kinda funny but on the way in we bought grilled corn on the cob from boys as they ran beside our bus winding through the hills so we decided to do it again as we headed across to Gitega. We enjoyed it so much that every time we took that road (which was 4 time in the week there) we would enjoy the snack of a little grilled corn on the cob to satisfy our appetite.
We spent some time working at this yfc orphanage in Gitega. We spent most of our time doing physical education activities with the kids since this was quite the need at the moment and tried to teach some of the staff at the school there so they could continue to do this activities with the kids. Their were 23 kids at the orphanage between the ages of like 5 and 12. It was a wonderful experience to spend some time just having fun and loving on some pretty spectacular children.
Once back in Bujumbora, we had one final big dinner put on by Freddy with the yfc staff my group and the YWAM team since they were going to be spending some of their time working with yfc. We had a wonderful dinner that began with a traditional Burundian drum concert and some traditional foods and ending in splendid fellowship.
The next morning we packed up our things...went to one of the local churches and headed home.

Its Been So Long (Uganda, Kenya, and back)

Hey everyone. I am sorry it has been so long since I have written a blog update. I have been a away from a computer for the last couple of weeks and have not had the chance to update you on life here in Africa for me. Well I guess it is almost over since I will leaving in a little over a week. I will try and keep this blog short even though there is so much to share with you. The last three weeks have taken me to many different places including Uganda, Kenya, and Burundi.
A group of friends and I took a trip that began by spending a couple days in Uganda where we were in the city of Kampala. While we were there we spent one day and white water rafted down the Nile river, which was amazing. It is supposed to be tied with the Zambieze river as the number one place in the world to go white water rafting. After uganda we took another long 6 hour bus ride into Kenya to a town on Lake Victoria. While we were in a market there we saw a rush of people leaving and did not think anything of it but when we went to head back to our car we saw like 5 guys standing around it and our driver argueing with them. He told us to rush into the car and said that new word had gotten out about the elections and people were started to riot and the guys around our car kept trying to steal our luggage. It was pretty crazy for a little as we were trying to get to our night train to Nairobi with people rushing out of buildings and leaving their cars to get back to there homes. We got to the train station with no real problem after that headed for nairobi.
We woke up the next morning to find out that we could not make it the whole way to the center of town because some people from Kibera slum (One of the worlds largest slums) had broken the track in protest. We had to stop at the Kibera station to meet our driver and head into town. We went into town and spent 3 days in Nairobi experiencing as much of the city as we could. after our 3 days there be got on another over night train to the coast and Mombasa Kenya.
We woke up the next morning to find our train sitting in the middle of no where and not moving. we had come to find that there was another problem with the tracks and that the train could not go any farther. They told us that we would have to wait 2 hours for busses to come and pick everyone up and take us the rest of the way to Mombasa. so we sat and waiting for what seemed like forever in the hot African heat and sun waiting for the buses to come. When they did we all loaded up on and made the 2 hour trek the rest of the way to mombasa. once we got to mombasa we made are way to the hotel that we were staying at spent the next couple of days relaxing on the beautiful white beaches of Kenya.
We spent a few days in Mombasa Kenya and then flew back home to Kigali Rwanda. We got in late at night went to bed and I woke up early the next morning to grab a bus to Busimbora Burundi to spend a week working with yfc down there. So that was my week and a half in Uganda and Kenya well at least that was a short summary with many other great stories in between. It was great to get a chance to do some traveling while I was over to experience some other parts of Africa. My time in Burundi was awesome but will wait to share about that story in another blog. Now that I am back in Rwanda it is unbelievable to think that I only have one more week here and then I fly home. I am definantly torn in my feelings about going home. A part of me wished my time here was longer but another part of me looks forward to life back in the states.