I am here!!

Just a quick note to let you know that I made it safely to Bujumbura, Burundi!  It was definitely a long couple of days of flying, and I am happy to be here.  It is 10 hours ahead here, so I arrived on Sunday evening around 7pm local time here.  (as I am sending this now it is Monday afternoon here).  I was met at the airport by LaCharite and her husband.  LaCharite is the campus hostess.  They were a little bit late, so I did have a few minutes of anxiety, wondering if anyone was going to pick me up.  I did have a cab driver who spoke English, offer to give me a ride J

It definitely is warm here, and very humid, kind of felt like a sauna when I stepped off the airplane.

So far I have been impressed with the people I have met, and their ability to speak English, although I think the ones I have met so far are in administrative and more developed roles, so I am not sure that will be the same for my students.

My VISA that I was worried about, where I had to change the 7 to an 8 because the woman at the embassy had made a mistake, they didn’t notice anything about that…however, the date that the VISA started on was for today and not for yesterday…another mistake!  But, they let me in anyway, phew!!

There is another missionary family here, and they are currently living in a house on campus. They are planning to move into the home in the city soon so they can be closer to where their children will be going to school, they are long term missionaries here, and I believe will be here for a few years.  They have been in Africa for 6 months, and in Bujumbura for about a month, so it is great to have them here as a resource.  They are busy taking French classes, as they expected to be teaching and working at the clinic by now, but it is not open yet, so they are using this time to improve their French.  Today their children were going to watch some French cartoons, I think I might need to participate in that, so I can learn some French as well. It seems that the hold up with the clinic has something to do with needing to get permission to close off the road leading to the clinic for a day, so they can tear up the road to give either some water or electrical access, Joel was not sure which one.  He was thinking it could be another month before it opens.  I really am hoping and praying that it will open soon, as I would really like to have some kind of exposure to the clinic while I am here.

I will start teaching my first class on Wednesday afternoon.  I am kind of nervous about that, as I thought I would have a week or so to get prepared before I would start teaching.  It seems that the school does not so much operate on the schedule I was given (Summer session starting June 25^th), and more operates on when they have faculty available, or something else, I am not sure.  So I am not really clear on the exact plan, but will need to figure that out soon, so I can provide my students with some sort of schedule on Wednesday.

Eric, the director of the nursing program took me on a tour of the library and the nursing lab today.  The library actually has quite a few resources, most of them are old, but they are available.  I noticed several of the nursing textbooks were the same textbooks and editions that I used in nursing school.  The nursing lab has a nice big screen TV hooked up to a computer so I am hoping that I will be able to use that room to do most of my teaching.  It is funny that they have this big screen TV, and then other things are so obviously underdeveloped.  

The nursing lab has one bed with a manikin in it.  It is a manikin like what we use in the states to teach CPR.   Eric kind of laughed when he pulled the sheet back to show me the manikin.  I am not sure why, maybe he thinks it is funny, or he realizes it is different from what we use in the states.  I am impressed that they even have a manikin, and I think it will work just fine for what I need to do.

Prayer requests: 

Pray for the clinic to be able to open soon.  That I will be able to have the knowledge and ability to teach these students on Wednesday in an effective way.  Also pray that my computer continues to work…it was acting a little funny before I left on Friday night, and now every time I turn it on, it runs some kind of disk scan that I have never seen before, I hope and pray it is nothing serious!