Changes

Today was Canadian Thanksgiving, a time when families normally get together to visit and share a turkey dinner. Back when our kids were younger, we either went to Kathy’s family’s place, or had our families over to our place. When we went to Burkina, we got together with fellow Canadians there to celebrate the day.

But this year was different. We’re back in Canada for a bit, but our kids are grown up and gone, and we don’t have a place of our own to invite people to come and share a meal with us. So what happened? Melissa’s parents, Tim & Pat, invited us to join in their family celebration along with their parents and their grown children (they also invited us to stay at their place for a couple of days before we head off to the States). Josh & Melissa were there too, having just returned from their honeymoon. It was a wonderful day for us. Thanks, Tim & Pat, for this blessing.

I used to take these family times for granted. I reckon that’s normal when you’re at that stage of life. But we’re at a different stage now, and what was once ordinary has now become something special. Like the old Joni Mitchell song says, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”. I guess that’s normal too :)

We’ve got another big change coming up. On Tuesday, we leave for Orlando, Florida, the first stop on a 5-city trip to the USA that makes up the orientation program for our new roles in Burkina starting next March. Josh is kindly driving us to the airport in Toronto, despite the fact that this means he’ll have to get up at the ungodly hour of 7 a.m. and fight rush hour traffic to get us there.

It’s great to have family and friends that we can count on to help us out like this when we need it. Josh has already deliverd and picked us up from the airport several times over the past couple of months. Our sincere thanks also go out to friends Len & Carla who generously lent us a car from the beginning of September up until the end of last week. How many people do you know that would do something like that for people they hardly know?

Anyway, my next posting will be from Florida. Someone wrote to say that it’s 92 degrees F. there and that we should bring our swimsuits! Wow! That’ll be a switch from here where summer is definitely over and fall is well on its way. We’ve actually been rather chilly here in Kitchener the past few days. But we’re not complaining. Last year at this time, we were sweating to death in Burkina. So we’re enjoying the cool temps here while we can :)

Well, it’s midnight and I’m getting chilled sitting here in our bedroom and writing this blog. Time to call it a day and crawl under the covers. Good night!

A Time To Remember

Well, it’s the morning after the morning after. Josh & Melissa are happily married and enjoying their honeymoon in Cuba. For Kathy & I, it’s back to reality. We spent this morning packing up our personal stuff and moving from our 17th floor furnished apartment with the magnificent view back to Josh’s place where we’ll stay until he and Melissa come back to reality. Besides, someone has to look after Butters!

It was a great wedding! Family and friends came from far and wide, the ceremony was beautiful, taking official photographs was a hoot, the reception dinner was delicious, and the dancing afterwards was lively. Unfortunately, we don’t have any photos from the actual ceremony yet. They didn’t want anyone taking pictures during that time except the official photographers. I tried to take a quick one with my camera but Kathy yelled at me and told me to be obedient for a change. Deciding that this was not the time to argue, I limited my complaints to some under-my-breath mutterings and did as I was told :) Hopefully we’ll get some pictures eventually, probably after Josh & Melissa get back and go through them. Sounds like there were over 1200 shots taken! Yeah, I think a judicious selection would be appropriate in this case!

Our good friend, Pastor Audley Goulbourne, performed the ceremony, and gave one of the best sermonettes I’ve ever heard at a wedding. He had lines like, “Love is blind, but marriage is a real eye-opener” and “Adam couldn’t say to Eve, ‘I wish you could cook like my mother!’” You know, I never thought about that before! It was good stuff.

The only hitch was right after the ceremony. It began pouring rain. Everyone waited until the heaviest of the downpour had passed, but eventually we had to get to our cars and organize where we were going. We obviously couldn’t take wedding pictures in the park as originally planned, so we ended up going to a family member’s house.

There were a few glitches before the wedding too. Josh, the best man, the groomsmen, the father of the bride, and I all got fitted for tuxedos some time back. When mine arrived a few days before the wedding and I tried it on, the jacket sleeves came halfway to my elbow, and the pants were short enough for me to wade through a small flood without getting them wet. They ended up having to call in a tailor to alter both items. I couldn’t help but wonder what the purpose of the original fitting was...

Then, on the morning of the wedding, one of the groomsmen went to put on his tuxedo, only to find that there was no jacket! The suit store had to do some quick scrambling to get him one on time!

Anyway, all in all, it was a time to remember. Just like it should be.

Just Three Days To Go!

It’s just after midnight and I’m looking northwards over the lights of Kitchener from the window of our 17th floor apartment, listening to the autumn wind howling around the corner of the building and wrapping up some work on the computer. Josh & Melissa’s wedding is just a few days away and coming up fast!

The past couple of days have been somewhat hectic. A number of things have kept me busy: correspondence with family, friends, people from the administrative team in Burkina, and the folks responsible for scheduling our upcoming new director orientation program in the States; an update for family, friends, and others who support us in our work; a PowerPoint of pictures of Josh & Melissa for the wedding and reception; other things here and there associated with wedding preparations. Kathy’s been working on seating arrangements for the reception with Melissa’s mom, and getting things prepared for the rehearsal dinner for about 30 people that will be hosted here in our apartment on Friday night.

Josh’s best man, David, arrived from Kansas this evening and is staying at his place. They’re old friends from Burkina. Josh is going to have a full house once three other friends, the Goulbourne boys, show up as groomsmen for the rehearsal on Friday and then stay overnight for the wedding the next day. Good thing Kathy & I are not staying there during this time. We old fogeys would just cramp their style. Besides, they’ll probably be up all night talking and Kathy & I need our beauty sleep. Don’t want to be ugly for the wedding!

Speaking of beauty, I’ve got to go and get a haircut later on today. Yeah, I know there’s only so much they can do, but I’ve got to at least make the effort to look good! Hopefully the tux will do the rest :) Kathy has a hair appointment on Saturday morning.

On Thursday, I’m going to see my Dad to help him celebrate a milestone birthday, his 75th. He won’t be able to come to the wedding because he’s still recovering from an injury and surgery. But I’ll bring my Mom back with me and drop her off at my brother’s place in Mississauga, where she’ll stay until Saturday when my brother will bring her to the wedding with him.

Most of Friday will be spent getting ready for the rehearsal dinner and the arrival of various guests. Our good friends, Pastor Audley & Yvonne Goulbourne, will be staying with us overnight. Pastor Audley is performing the wedding on Saturday.

Yes, it’s a busy time, but an exciting time too, and we’re going to enjoy it all we can. At our age, when you get a chance to party, you better take it! Those dance moves won’t be getting any easier as time goes on!

Moving Right Along

Can you tell that we’ve got our hands pretty full with wedding preparations and other stuff right now? :) With all that going on, I’ve had to let a few things (like regular blog postings) slide for a while.

Last weekend, we drove up to Gravenhurst to join in the 125th anniversary celebrations at Calvary Baptist Church. This was the church we left from to prepare for overseas work and they have supported us right from the beginning. We stayed with some wonderful friends there that we first got to know when they visited with us for a few days in Burkina. While in Gravenhurst, we were also able to spend some time visiting and talking with some other long-time friends, as well as with someone interested in going to serve in Burkina on a short-term basis doing construction work.

A special singing group was the highlight at Calvary’s anniversary service. At one point, they gave out CDs of their music to a few special people. The first was to someone who was celebrating a birthday that day. It turned out to be the pastor! The second was to someone celebrating a wedding anniversary. That CD went to a couple celebrating their 64th ! Wow! And the last CD went to the people who had travelled the farthest to attend the church’s anniversary celebration. Ha! That turned out to be Kathy & I.

Preparations for Josh & Melissa’s wedding are coming right along. Kathy & I finally have our outfits. Mine was simple: go into a suit store and get fitted for a tuxedo. Kathy’s was more complicated but after a couple of weeks of driving around searching and trying stuff on, she finally got all the necessary pieces :)

I’m also working on preparations for the orientation I’ll be doing in the States after the wedding. It’s turning out to be a lot more work than I’d anticipated! Had I known that, I’d have left a little more time after the wedding to get ready! As it is, I might just have to wing it now and then. But that’s half the fun, isn’t it?

Detours on the Highway of Life

Yesterday we had an appointment with friends and colleagues in Toronto, so off we went, winding our way through some back roads to avoid Highway 401, notorious for its traffic jams into the city on weekday mornings. It turned out to be a wise decision because when we passed over the highway later on, traffic was stacked and packed solid and unmoving for as far as the eye could see in both directions!

Part way to Toronto, we received a call on our cell phone. The appointment had to be changed to another day because something had come up for our friends. So now what? Well, we’d planned to go to do some shopping in Burlington later on in the day anyway. Got a wedding to get ready for, you know! So we just changed direction and headed there.

At the mall in Burlington, I noticed a cell phone sitting on the back of a toilet in the men’s washroom. I picked it up, wondering whose it was and how I was going to get it back to him (I assumed it’s a “him” because it was in the men’s washroom :) That’s one of the problems with cell phones. People don’t usually put their names on them or in them. I guess I could have taken it to mall security or the mall administration office, but what if the person who lost it couldn’t remember where he’d lost it and didn’t come back to the mall to ask for it?

I began flipping through the contact list in hopes of finding something I could use. At first, there was nothing. I had no idea who the people in the list were. But then I saw something, two entries together: First “Cathie” and then “Cathie’s parents”. Well that looked hopeful. Maybe Cathie was his wife or girlfriend...

I called “Cathie” and a woman answered the phone. I didn’t know quite how to begin the conversation! What do you say in such a situation? Finally I just said, “Hi. I found this phone in a washroom in a mall in Burlington. Do you know who this number belongs to?” The lady replied, “Yes! It’s my boyfriend’s phone! He’s on his way to Toronto today.” We went on to discuss how we could get him his phone back. She obviously couldn’t get hold of him because I had his phone. And she didn’t have a car to come to the mall to get it.

Finally I asked where she was. It turns out that she worked in an office building in downtown Hamilton, about a 20-minute drive away. So I said that after we finished our business in the mall, we’d come to her workplace and drop the phone off.

An hour or so later, we were coming up to the address, so I called Cathie again. “I’ll meet you downstairs,” she said. There was no parking allowed on the street at that point, so we pulled up behind a bus and waited. “Okay, I’m here,” said Cathie a few seconds later. “I have long blond hair and a black top. Where are you?” We told her that we were in a blue Toyota Matrix behind the bus. Soon, a young blond lady talking on a cell phone came into view. “I see you!” she said excitedly, and came running over. We handed her the cell phone. “Thanks a lot!” she replied. “You’ve restored my faith in human nature!”

Well, that was enough good deeds for one day. Don’t want to overdo it, right? Besides, it was lunchtime.

So Where Will We Stay?

Where to stay when we come back to Canada? Suitable and affordable accommodation back home is going to become a significant issue for us in the years ahead. By “suitable”, I mean a place with all the necessities where we can unpack our suitcases and feel at home for anywhere from 1-6 months. If it’s just a few weeks here or there, we can easily stay with family or friends, several of which have offered us a place to hang our hats. We thank God for them! But for longer periods of time, we really need our own space.

But it’s not easy to find such a place. Nearly all rental units require a minimum one-year lease to begin with. We need something significantly shorter, but with all the amenities and basic furnishings so that we don’t have to go and haul our household stuff out of the various places we’ve got it stored and unpack it, only to pack it up and haul it back again a relatively short time later. We’re getting too old for that! In fact, unless you really love moving all the time, I think moving all the time gets old real fast no matter what age you are!

This wasn’t an issue in earlier years of our overseas experience because family life with younger children was fairly stable, our parents were in relatively good health, and airfare for four people to travel back and forth across the ocean even once every couple of years was rather prohibitive. We just stayed in Africa for anywhere from 2-4 years at a time and then came home for at least a year before going back. For that length of time, it was no problem to find a suitable place to rent and to go to the trouble of moving our stuff in.

But now our situation has changed. Events and activities involving our grown-up children and elderly parents necessitate more frequent trips home. And flying back and forth has become more affordable, not just because of better prices for airfare, but also because we now only have to pay for two people to fly. However, we can’t stay for as long as we used to. And therein lies the problem.

An option we’ve considered and dismissed for the time being is home ownership. There are several reasons for this: 1) A house costs more money than we have, 2) it would tie us to one place every time we came home, and 3) the current rental climate is a landlord’s nightmare. In order to make mortgage payments, we’d have to rent the place out during our absences. Not only is it hard to find good tenants (and bad ones are nearly impossible to evict), but we’d have to engage someone to manage the place for us, at least in terms of maintenance and repairs. And if we’re only coming home for a month or two, it’s still not worth the effort of moving our stuff in and out again, never mind having to ask one tenant to leave, and then finding another one only a short time later.

So what’s the solution? Well, we’ve found a temporary one for now: corporate apartments. These are fully furnished apartments or condos that can be rented for as little as a week at a time. True, they’re not cheap, being more expensive than a regular apartment. But they’re cheaper and bigger than a hotel room, and include all the utilities and services, like electricity, water, telephone, cable, and Internet, that you’d normally have to go through the hassle of signing up for when you move in, and then terminating when you leave. You just bring your suitcases in when you’re ready, and leave when you’re done. And unlike most apartments, you just pay by credit card. Convenient or what!

But as I said, this is a temporary solution for this time at home. In the future, I’d like to see something similar, but for less money. At the moment, corporate apartments cater primarily to business clients, people who are moved around by a company or corporation for work-related reasons. But in our increasingly global village, there are going to be more and more people like Kathy and I, private individuals who need to spend a few months here and a few months there, but who don’t have the financial resources of a for-profit organization or business behind them. It’ll be interesting to see what possibilities develop in the next few years...

We're Back... And We Missed It

We’re back! It wasn’t easy to be a whole week without Internet access. Especially since I had 50 e-mail messages to work my way through when we returned! But after the rather rough and turbulent year we’ve been through, the down time did us good.

While we were away, it seems like we missed the event of the year in Ouagadougou! The city and its environs were on the receiving end of a freak torrential downpour that dumped 15 inches of rain on the city in a matter of hours. This never happens here! It’s the heaviest rainfall in 90 years! Saw some incredible photos that a colleague, Chris Ladish, posted of the event. Wow! More pictures by Chris below.

The downside is that tons of people lost their homes. What do you expect when most homes are made of mud bricks?! And why do people build their homes of mud bricks? Because that’s all they can afford. So the people that can least afford it are the ones who have to start over. Sounds like the government is working to help provide temporary shelter in public schools and other facilities.

I don’t have all the details yet, but it seems like our personal guards’ places are okay. One just lost the wall that runs around his courtyard. On the other hand, most of the employees that work on our Centre have lost their homes. Our organization in Burkina is apparently helping provide some emergency funding to help them out. What a disaster! Let’s hope there aren’t disease outbreaks now on top of everything else!