The Gifts We Bring

I did laundry, recently, in the bathtub.  In my temporary house in Bujumbura, there was no working washing machine.  As the uncertainties of my still-newly-Burundian life were piling up, along with the laundry, I had to do something decisive and practical: so I washed clothes.

I had never done laundry in a bathtub before.  But it wasn't too bad.  It's just like using an automatic washer back in the States, really.  Only, you have to turn the faucet off and on to control the water inflow.  Well, you also have to agitate the clothes yourself.  And, actually, you have to wring them out with your hands, too, since there's no spin cycle.

Ok, so it's nothing like an automatic washer.

I daydream about the US sometimes, the things I'm missing: shopping malls, movie houses, grocery shelves that aren't half-empty, an over-abundance of modern appliances, crowds that speak my language.

But it's not so bad here, really.  There's a lake and a beach.  There's good restaurants to go to for a night out.  My house has a high wall, a big yard, flowering frangipani trees, and a guard to open the gate for me.  The water and the electricity supply have been pretty good.

And, now that I have a permanent house, I could easily hire someone to do my laundry for me.  No more bathtub washing.

After the hand-wringing, I hung the clothes out on a line strung between a lime tree and a window's security bars.  The next day, taking the dry clothes back inside, I glanced briefly at one of my wife's socks.  To my surprise, I saw two dry, dart-like seed pods embedded in the weave.  Obviously, my hand-agitating of the laundry hadn't been vigorous enough.

Absent-mindedly pulling them out, I recognized the pods as some that we had picked up during a long hike in California's Santa Barbara mountains eight weeks earlier.  Idly throwing the seeds on the leaf-strewn ground, I pondered the journey they had made, traveling thousands of miles with us from the California mountains to Burundi's lake-side hills.

I wondered if they would do what they were made to do and grow a California plant on Burundian soil.

I thought, too, about how, in the Santa Barbara mountains, we had been camping with only, what is for us in the US, the basics - no electricity, no running water, without comfortable beds - essentially depriving ourselves for fun.  And we took that long walk for fun, too.  Here in Burundi, many live the camping lifestyle, but all the time and not by choice.  They don't take long walks for fun, but because they have to get somewhere.

After years of war, Burundi needs help from outside to right itself.  But does it always need the gifts we bring?

Some things, like those seeds, sneak in with us unintended.  I'm waiting to see whether they produce a wildflower or a thorn.