Leaving Burundi

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  Kigali, Rwanda
Thursday, May 1, 2008

This morning my visitors arrived about 9:00. I had been trying to reach Rwandair since the day I arrived, without success. Just after Nathan, Moïse, Dieudonné et Etienne arrived, I tried one more time and reached the Rwandair office. When I told them I was calling to confirm the 8:45 pm flight to Kigali, they replied, "didn't anyone reach you about that?" When I responded negatively, I was told that the flight had been cancelled. The agent on the phone suggested that I try taking the Ethiopian Airways flight at 3:45 pm. I could make that work though it would cut short our meeting time, but better a flight in the hand rather than two in the future, to deform an old proverb.
 
Moïse and I left the others in my hotel room and he and I walked several block to the Rwandair Express office. My ticket was stamped and signed over to Ethiopian and I was advised to be at the airport no later than 1:00 pm. That seemed quite early to me for a small airport with very few flights coming and going. But the agent told me I would be taking risk not to be there at 1:00 since, the paperwork for the flight was done by hand, and they had to have the passenger manifest and other papers ready and complete when the flight landed. That could take several hours, thus the need to arrive very early.  I reluctantly agreed.
 
From about 9:30 to 12:00 we continued our discussions: we discussed the use of wine for the Passover, which is a common issue in Africa. There are few visible examples in most of Africa of using alcohol in moderation. It tends to be either none at all, or drinking one's self under the table. So most Christian groups have a pretty strong rule about not drinking alcohol ever. I went through several scriptures with them to show that the Bible condemns the abuse of alcohol, but not its use in moderation. I showed how Jesus stated that he sometimes drank wine (Luke 7:33-34) and that the Bible allowed for moderate drinking during the annual Feast days and so on. But I also explained that we're not commanded to drink, and we can choose not to, except for the tiny bit we drink during the Passover ceremony. They were surprised by some of the verses, but indicated they would study further.
 
We talked about the needs of their group, and their desire to be registered with the state so that they could have a legal existence, meet in peace with the agreement of local authorities and also have legal dispensation for the monthly community work obligation which occurs on a Saturday.  We also discussed when I might be able to come back and visit again, and I answered various questions they had about the book of Revelation: our understanding about "the mark of the beast", and calculating his number: 666, among other things.
 
I invited them to lunch in the bar/café of the hotel. They all ordered beef brochettes. Three of them are farmers and they have the chance to eat meat perhaps once every three months if that. Etienne said he liked meat very much, but that he was very old (I asked - he's 56). I didn't see the connection right away, so they explained that in Burundi, the older people get the more they like meat. In any event they all savored their brochettes. We continued talking through lunch, and then it was time for me to leave.
 
Three men would accompany to the airport, so as we negotiated a taxi the driver hopefully tried to charge by the person. He told me seriously with gleaming eyes: "four people going the airport, three coming back that makes seven." I could see where that was going, so I cut him off with a smile: "No" I said "one car, making one round trip." He gave up on his new math, but still tried for an extra five dollars. We gently brought him back to reality and drove off for the 20 minutes ride.
 
We arrived right at 1:00; there was already a line of baggage in front of the still-close check-in area. People dropped their luggage in line then went and found a place to sit rather than remain standing. An announcement came over the intercom in French then English asking passengers heading to Addis-Ababa via Kigali to please go to the check-in area, which was still closed. I asked a uniformed fellow if we were to go in. "Wait until the office comes to check your papers" he replied.  Several minutes later two gendarme types sauntered up slowly and because checking our passports, visas, entry stamps and plane tickets. Slowly we entered and went to check-in counters. It took quite a while to check in because both boarding passes and luggage tags were being done by hand one at a time. Our tickets and passports were checked again. As we left the check-in area we reached the official station where our passports and visas were checked and stamped. Then we reached the departure lounge where we were supposed to wait about; two hours before boarding.
 
I listened to part of a sermon on my ipod, and also continued reading Lucius Annaeus Seneca's Letters from a Stoic. Somehow reading stoics seems very fitting when sitting in sub-Saharan departure lounges, places where one never knows how long one may be there....  He was quite an interesting fellow, born in Cordoba (in what is now Spain), he became a lawyer, then an important and respected speaker in the Roman Senate. He was twice sentenced to death (by Caligula and Claudius) and barely escaped both times.
 
After Claudius's death he was appointed the tutor of Nero who was 17 when he became Emperor. He de-facto held the reins of the Roman Empire (with another great and ethical man named Burrus) while Nero was diverting himself with various pleasures. Their co-rule under Nero during the first five years of his reign was among the best to be found in the history of Rome.
 
One of Seneca's brothers, Gallio is mentioned in Acts 18:11-17 where he declined to judge Paul who was dragged before his judgment seat in Corinth by an enraged crowd. The stone platform where that judgment (or refusal to judge) was pronounced still exists in Corinth today, my wife and I saw it some years ago when we visited Greece.
 
As Nero was becoming the deranged monster of his later years, Burrus was murdered in 62 AD, and Seneca seeing the signs of the times, asked Nero for permission to retire form public life, which was granted. A few years later, in 65, Seneca was implicated in plot (whether rightly or wrongly is not known) to assassinate Nero. Seneca was widely respected and a strong faction wanted him to take the Imperial throne.  To remove this threat, Nero simply sent him a message requiring his suicide. Seneca obeyed, as did his brothers shortly thereafter. It was certainly less painful to choose the means of one's own death rather than to have the Emperors' agents handle the deed.
 
Spending time with such interesting and admirable men, through their writings, makes the time pass, not neccessarily quickly, but at least in a useful way.
 
3:45 came and went. I managed my stoicism as best I could. Finally about 5:00 we were able to depart on a mostly empty 676, for the 25 minute hop to Kigali. Clearing immigration and customs by 6:00 I took a taxi the Chez Lando not too far from the airport and dropped my bag just in time to have dinner with Dr. Greg Swartz, a Church elder and a dentist by trade who just arrived today for the forth time in Rwanda and for the third time on a Good Works project to provide dental care to Church members, handle some especially tough cases for the local dentists and to update the skills of local practitioners by giving demonstrations of the latest techniques. Mrs. Flavia Everman from Missouri and Rahab Muthuri from Nairobi have also come to assist Dr. Swartz. Over dinner we caught up on all the news of common friends and acquaintances, and we planned our activities for the coming days. We three Americans were pretty tired either due to jetlag or to accumulated travel fatigue, so we all decided to make an early night of it.

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