He’s on the road and he’s driving this. Watch out world.
This is what a vehicle looks like when you’ve packed it with everything you possibly can from your house. The last two days have been a whirlwind of packing and decision making… and it’s not over yet. Ben’s on the road, but he has to cover over 3,000 miles before he reaches Bujumbura, Burundi.
We’ll try and keep you posted!
sometimes I miss things
moments from the other place
they slip through my mind
leave an ache as they pass
details from another land
leaves, sunshine, berries
wide open spaces
no looming walls
snow, lefsa, winter coats
Christmas with family
zipping to Target
frozen toes…
this makes me wonder…
I already love two places
one filled with mangoes
one filled with my beginnings
can I learn to love a third?
My brother came by for a visit a few weeks ago (he just hopped on a quick 30 hr flight to get here) and on his last day with us he had one request: monkeys. He wanted to see MONKEYS! To us, monkeys are a little like the neighborhood skunk that everybody hates. Annoying, a little bit dangerous, totally unpredictable and really hard to find if you are looking for them. Looking for them is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s like that Forrest Gump line, “You never know what you’re gonna get.”
We packed up and went-a-huntin’ and as usual, I was totally the sceptical one. Whining on about how we might never find them, until we practically ran over them in the road five minutes after the hunt began. Sometimes, things seem a lot harder in the beginning than they actually are. I keep telling myself that in these last days before the big move. I’m especially hoping it’s true re learning French!
Here’s what’s goin’ on:
Do you follow us on Twitter and are you a fan on Facebook? If not, we would love it if you would! With all this activity and so little time to type, right now it’s the best way to find out what’s up with us.
It’s the final days and our heads are swollen with details and our hearts are bogged down with the strain of goodbyes. Despite the stress, we are finding time to laugh with good friends and wrestle with the boys. Breathing deeply these last moments in South Africa, our favorite adopted land.
Luv,
Kristy
photos all scott e. knutson
“For I am the LORD, your God,
who takes hold of your right hand and says to you,
Do not fear; I will help you.” Isaiah 41:13
Today I need to be reminded that I have nothing to fear. Moving my family into central Africa is peanuts for God. He’s got this one. And the next one. And the next one. That’s good to know because I’ve just recently realized that I need to label this time in my life as “really stressful.” Organizing a move anywhere would be difficult, but into central Africa is harder. I promise you, it is. We have to pack a mobile pharmacy in case the kids get sick, taking the Great Dane with is proving almost impossible because they don’t fly a plane with a big enough cargo hold for her to fit in into Bujumbura… we get a million phone calls a day and make a million phone calls a day while trying to sort out some of the bah-zillion logistics that have landed at our door. On top of the logistics, I am trying to guide a confused four year old and a precocious one year old through this move. I am tired and overwhelmed and yes, just a little bit cranky.
You know what’s great though? Once we made this decision to go, to move, to leave, to follow our dreams…. nothing but goodness has come. I am not saying it has always been easy, but I am saying we know our path and it feels good. Am I weighed down by all the sadness of goodbyes and am I grieving the thought of leaving? Most definitely. Tonight I could barely see through my sweating eyeballs to pack, but it doesn’t change how good it feels to be on the right path as a family. Yes, it’s hard, and yes, it’s good.
Luv,
me
Image by Scott E. Knutson. Taken while visiting me, his sis, last week. Kirstenbosch Gardens, Cape Town.
For the last two weeks we have had the hardest workers you can imagine living in our house and pushing us to get ready for this move! Grandpa came all the way from the US of A to South Africa to help us MOVE IT! My baby brother, who is now known around this house as Uncle Scott, came along for the ride and the two of them transformed our house! They emptied every cupboard, looked us in the eyes and said, “Do you really need this?” They played with the kids, packed boxes, sorted through ten years of our life with us, and went home very tired.
They have left for the States and there is a big hole in my heart. It seems very lonely here. It is hard and sad to live so far from my family, but the joys of it are this: when we are together, we appreciate it to the nth degree.
With Ben about to leave to make the drive from South Africa to Burundi in just a few days, I am trying hard to cling to our last moments as a family in this home. This is it folks, just two weeks until we are going to be living in a new land. Today it scares me. There are so many unknowns…. and so many great people we are leaving behind.
Love,
Kristy
Those of you who know me know that I love anything that has to do with cooking. I am so excited today to introduce you to new friends of mine (hi, guys!) who are taking the world by storm with their cooler-than-ever-company, Yuppiechef. They have just published my photos and writing on their lovely blog (get ready for all things cooking, baking, and kitchen… just try not to drool over their beautiful kitchen tools, they don’t want to wipe up after you!). Yuppiechef is the best way for those of us here in South Africa to get our hands on fancy pants kitchen tools… in the color (or should I say colour) we want.
Myles and I made Graham Crackers from scratch and oh boy, what an adventure…
I don’t know what it’s like to cook with your kids, but cooking with my two boys is like directing a herd of elephants across a highway in busy traffic. It’s impossible to control, someone’s bound to get hurt, and something will break. Because cooking with them is like a full contact sport, and often involves a kitchen that looks like it was struck by a hurricane afterwords, there are certain rules of the kitchen that we must be abide by.
Rule number one: Quit taking yourself so darn seriously.
Rule number two: There are no other rules.
Read the full article in Spatula, Yuppiechef’s online magazine.
Luv,
Kristy
The road to Burundi is probably not paved with cheese, just like it wasn’t in an American Tail. All the mice sang about it, about a place where the streets were paved with cheese, where there were no cats. A threat-less path made of food sounds pretty good to me right now too!
I can’t sleep. I really want too, but I can’t. There are so many details flying around in my head… so many things stressing me out. The truth is, I don’t think we are great with big huge detail oriented things… like moves. Yesterday Ben told me that he thinks he should leave for Burundi with the vehicle on Monday. It’s Wednesday. Do we have a vehicle? No. Can we afford to buy one? No. Does he have visas to get through the borders he’s going to cross? No. Have I packed what will go in the vehicle? I’ve started, but really… No.
Then, if I turn my head two inches in the other direction I start to think about how today I signed my house away. I signed it away, just like that. The place I brought my babies home to. Our first home. A home in a city that I love… a city that loves me. When we bought this house we wanted it to be a home that was always welcoming. A place people could journey to and feel safe, as if they had arrived at their home away from home and were immediately a part of the family. It has been that for so many, including ourselves.
On Saturday we sold off most of our household belongings. It was like our house had vomited on the lawn. Ten years of life in a place laid out bare, for everybody to pick through. Watching people look at my things and decide if they wanted it and then haggle on the price was a bit too much for me. So, I hung out away from the sale and had good talks with great friends and pretended none of it was happening. Friends volunteered to take money and run the whole thing, and even make everybody coffee. My dad is here all the way from America, along with my little brother Scott, and he watched the kids all day while we sold. And sold. And sold. I feel such gratitude for people like these, it was a labor of love.
I will say that it is kind of freeing to be sort of possession-less. It feels good to know that our things will be of good use to others and we can move on with just the essentials. The essentials, at this point, include a whole lot of dark chocolate.
Luv,
me
Getting ready to sell off most of our things tomorrow.
It’s kind of sad and a little scary, but mostly just draining.
No time to write, gotta get back to organizing.
But I wanted to say “hi”.
Hi.
Until a calmer day…
I just wrote a seven page report on the intricacies of this season’s Burundi coffee harvest. I’m not going to let you get it! If you love coffee, it’s like a good novel that you won’t be able to put down and it might just destroy any hope of productivity you have until you can lay your hands on a freshly brewed mug of this citrus sweet coffee. That, or you’d be bored out of your mind. Or, you might read two lines and wonder how, despite the continuing social turmoil and simmering political unrest, I can coax tired old Burundi coffee trees and their skittish fearful farmers into producing the worlds best coffee.
I knew if I was going to pull off finding 48 containers of the champagne of Arabica coffees I couldn’t do it standing still. So, I was back in the hills of Burundi last week to survey the start of the harvest season and check on my chances for success. I was struck with the raw enthusiasm of the farmers as they poured their baskets of coffee cherries into the large fermentation tanks. Blood red cherries sinking into tanks of mountain water, drowning, and then resurrected to face the pulping discs and fermentation tanks. The raw enthusiasm for the start of the harvest was palpable. I was taking part in the start of of something great. The love affair of following coffee from these old trees to your cup.
It was another week in the heart of Central Africa. I got another taste of what I’m diving into. I wonder, will these old trees be able to do it? They are generations too old and the soil is way too thin after one war too many. Burundi needs new trees… or my dream of a better life for these farmers will not happen.
Coffee Guy