Tag: driving to Burundi

  • How not to Loose One’s Mind Crossing African Borders, and Other Useful Things to Know Before Driving to the Center of Africa

     

    I tried to come up with a nice succinct title for my thoughts about the journey from Durban, South Africa to Bujumbura, Burundi. But like the roads I took, it may look like an inch on the map before you but the reality is it’s going to be long, hard and nearly inaccessible by the average driver (reader). Both previous thoughts frustrate Kristy to no end. The drive to Burundi with little to no clue of where I was to stay along the way (or direction I was heading, in all reality) and the writing style that meanders between sentences as long as a Tanzanian highway and ever changing tenses.

    My journey of 5700 km (3,541 miles for you Americans) started as a fun tandem with friend and fellow Hope Church-ite, and French speaking Burundian, Alain.  The journey ended in a sort of race against darkness and a battle of nerves with drunk soldiers at the edge of Bujumbura.

    The start was 2 weeks late.  The reason being that newly purchased used vehicles need their log-book to get through borders.  My log book was doing African time wadding through the red tape of South African banks and Currier services.  The “I’ll make a plan” attitude of the shoot from the hip good-ol’ boy I bought my 2000 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado from didn’t exactly speed the process.  By the time it arrived my heart was already in the hills of Burundi, my mind on coffee, and my wife about ready to have an anxiety attack with the  sure mountain of details my optimistic and adventure ready self failed to attend to.  She mentioned food would be good thing to bring. Yes, and that I should actually should buy a map.  She also suggested plates and silverware/cutlery might be useful.  I could continue, but for my sake lets just say I’m thankful that my wife made me bring along a roll of toilet paper just in case.

    Morning 1. Tuesday.

    4:30 am start.  Shelly the creative director/videographer is at the gate to video me pulling off into the pre-dawn to fetch Alain.  The night before we were meant to leave but a very unpleasant phone-call about the sure death of Ella if we fly her to Burundi made it less then ideal to hit the road.  I made  a great call, a morning start was much better.  My good friend Cyril and I had spent the better part of Saturday loading the 4X4 with more house hold and coffee lab supplies then you can imagine.  No really.  Imagine….. your wrong, it’s more.  A couple more hours rest, family time and what I didn’t realize was to be my last good meal in a week took place.

    Alain loaded.  One small bag, still too big for the 10 inch of luxury (read luggage) space I allocated each of us.  Oh, and the nearly 150 lbs welding machine we squeezed on top of the already loaded roof rack.  Open road.  Full Land Cruiser.  No coffee.  Yet.

    West coast to northern South African border never was reached so quickly.  We two men… no, road warriors. A dynamic partnership meant to be.  What could stop us?  Botswana by dusk was our war cry.  We might make Burundi in 5-6 days!  This sunset banter was tossed around as we dodged flipped burning petrol trucks, police wielding speed cameras and finding the black elixir (coffee) half way in the coldest place in South Africa, Harrismith, Free State.

    Then the border. 7pm.  Dark.  Ominous in the glow of  flickering florescent bulbs.

    The first border.

    The easy border.

    The border that beat us and nearly sent me home.

    Alain was denied entry to Botswana.

     

    Coffee Guy

     

  • COFFEE GUY IS ON THE ROAD

    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!

     

  • Huntin’ Monkeys

    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:

    • Our beloved Jeep finally sold, to friends who are more like family.
    • Last Friday Ben brought home a ’99 Land Cruiser (pics coming soon). This will be our vehicle in Burundi, and Ben leaves to drive it from here (Durban, South Africa) to there (Bujumbura, Burundi) in just a few days. The drive itself will take about a week.
    • Yesterday Ben was in Cape Town, just for the day, to meet with some lovely people from Starbucks (Hi, guys!) about our project in Burundi.
    • We just found out, as we are about to move, that we have been granted permanent residency in South Africa. This is a big deal for us as a family. We feel so connected to South Africa that it just feels right to be permanent residents.
    • We set a for-sure-no-going-back moving date. The 23rd of June. It’s on people, it’s on.
    • My bedroom is covered with packed plastic bins that I am convinced will fit in the back of the Land Cruiser.
    • We found someone, after loooots of searching, who is willing to fly our Great Dane from Durban to Bujumbura.

    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

     

     

     

  • Our little elves

    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

     

  • the road to burundi

    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

  • Home is…

    At the risk of sounding vain, I am going to share with you that one of my highest values is aesthetics. Just staring at beautiful things… man made or made by God fills my soul. The mountains, the lakes, the palm trees, the veins of a leaf, the sun light through the trees… and the cute dress, the lovingly hand knit blanket, the beautifully bound book, the amazing DIY project. It’s what makes me… me.

    Having an appreciation for these “things” makes me a better wife, a better mom, a better photographer… and it grows my love for God. That might sound funny, but it’s true. When I look at something beautiful He’s made “WOW” my heart goes pitter pat. And when I watch someone at work, doing what they do best, creating something beautiful, I am in awe of how God places visions and gifts inside people that just, when nurtured… grow. The truth is… I am inspired by beautiful things, the bought and the not.

    Soon I will be placing everything pretty I own, just about, into a vehicle headed for Burundi. That vehicle needs to travel 4,052 Kilometers through 3 or 4 border patrols over dirt, mud, tar and rock before it reaches Bujumbura. Once it’s there, if things don’t work out in our new home country… we have no clue how we would get our things out again. The same goes for the dog. Once we bring her in, I have no clue if we can get her out. The only thing I know we can get out is us. The thing that matters most… us.

    It is a fragmented feeling to put everything that makes a house a “home” to you inside a vehicle traveling an insane distance through dangerous territory with no back up. By everything, I especially mean the driver. Ben is the heartbeat of this family and the love of my life. Sending him on such a volatile journey just so that we can have a few our “things” in Burundi could be something I deeply regret if it doesn’t go as planned. Scratch that, of course it won’t go as planned, it never does in Africa. What I meant is… if something happened to him how in the world would I cope?

    So what if the curtains and towels and pots and pans and baking utensils and cookbooks and pillows and bedding and blankets and kids toys and kids books and even the medical supplies don’t make it? So nothin’. We would be fine, but having those things that remind us all that we are “home now” would bring us a whole lot of ease and comfort.

    My nervousness about this trip is not being helped by my  hubby who tonight said, “Oh… FOOD! We should probably pack some of that to eat on the way.” Yeah… let’s just say Coffee Guy is not into details, unless that detail involves coffee. Luckily for us, Ben had to delay his vehicle trip for a few weeks while we pray, on our knees, for all the vehicle funding to come though. In the meantime, he will have to fly up next week to house hunt and visit all the coffee farms he can. Oh, that reminds me… what should go up in that fist suitcase with Ben? Gotta think about that.

    Luv,

    Kristy

    image via Pintrest


  • Expanding.

    Last night we signed papers to sell the house. It is a solid offer, and we”ll know within a few days if the whole thing is going through. I know it will, I can feel it. This is it. In eight weeks we will have the family packed and we will be leaving the place that I have called home for nearly a decade. The home I brought my children home from the hospital to. The home where we’ve had countless parties and numerous family style suppers, to the sound of the African night birds and the sight of twinkling fairy lights. We’ve hosted countless guests from all over the world here. Grandparents. Friends from college. Friends of friends. They have all had a space here. This is our home. Here we have journeyed into the people we have become. We’ve… Become parents here. Laughed here. Cried here. Lost things. Gained things. Failed. Succeeded. Pursued a big dream. Seen it come to life, seen it flourish, seen it move us.

    As I was photographing the most beautiful pregnant woman in the world yesterday, I could not help but think… as this baby comes, we will leave. Two births at one time. I feel tied to this baby I have not met, but already love. We are linked, because this baby is our starting marker. We will look back on life with these friends and say, “Don’t you remember, we left for Burundi when she was born.” As that baby grows multitudes every day inside her adoring mom, I am aware that this is urgent. Time is overpoweringly short, and this little baby girl has become my inspiration. She reminds me every day that I have to grow too. If I can not expand my comfort zone every day and embrace this journey every day I know I will fail to meet this amazing year head-on.

    Despite the sadness at leaving this house and this life, I am awe struck at the perfect timing of it all. Had we sold the house at any other time, we would have had to rent somewhere else before we left and it would have put our family in an uncomfortable limbo. For this perfect timing, I credit God in all his amazing-timing-ness. I am very grateful, and very sad. Now I have to decide what parts of my life will fit into 6 suitcases and one vehicle that will journey with Ben on an 11 day drive from Durban, up through the heart of Africa, hopefully arriving in one piece in Burundi. He will drive a vehicle that we have not bought yet, and that we have no idea how we will afford, on roads that I am trying desperately not to worry about, through countries that make my totally nervous. Here. We. Go. It’s time to trust.

    Luv,

    Kristy

     

     

     

scroll to top
error: