We’ve had friends and family asking some different questions about our life here thus far so I am going to try to answer some of those.

Where do you shop?

We are only about 15-20 minutes from a city so we drive into town and go to some stores. You never know what is going to be available. They are quite small stores also (for American standards).

We also go to the market where we can buy lots of fruits and vegetables, sometimes I ask my friend to go and give her money because she gets better prices when the muzungu (white person) isn’t with her. The market is a huge area with wood shacks that vendors sit at and sell their products.

What do you eat/how do you cook?

This is the biggest learning curve to me, because what is readily available in the States is not here. The meat is different and we haven’t found a good place to buy from yet. The animals here are not fattened up like in America so the meat is usually tough because of the fat/muscle ratio. We don’t buy meat yet until we find a reliable source.

We eat rice, vegetables, fruit and ramen. Tonight I made spaghetti, last night was stir fry. It’s all vegetarian. We get ramen, Nutella and Pringles easily which are the only packaged things we get easily so far.

We also have a few restaurants we go to, but in Burundi you will be at a meal for at least an hour and a half (that’s pretty fast) so with driving it can easily be a 3 hour event. At the restaurants the meat dishes and pizza are our favorites.

How do you get around?

Thanks to our church we were able to purchase a nice SUV when we arrived. Within days Josh was bold enough to drive. I still haven’t driven, but know I should probably try, in case of an emergency. They drive on the right side of the road here, which we’re obviously used to, but our steering wheel is on the right too, which is a big adjustment.

There is a huge fuel shortage in the country and our SUV is actually diesel which is cheaper than gasoline here. When it’s time to get fuel you wait in line for hours and hope the station doesn’t run out before your turn.

What is your water situation like?

We are so grateful that we have clean water and water pressure. When we first arrived the water was brown and basically dripped out. They fixed it and about 3 days ago we all had really warm showers with lots of pressure! No one wanted to get out of their shower!!

We also use a sawyer water filter hooked up to a bucket and we use special filter water bottles too. To cook we use the filtered water or we buy bottled water to have on hand.

What is a house girl?

We have a very sweet teenage girl who is called our house girl. She comes 6 days a week and we pay her to do the laundry, dishes and clean. She’s been such a huge blessing to me taking burdens off my plate as we have been adjusting. Her only English words were thank you so communication is hard sometimes but she is so sweet. She has become one of my English students.

Why do you have guards?

We have 2 guards a day and night guard. It is normal in Burundi to have guards if you have enough money to pay them. Most businesses have guards. Our guards are great. They are protective and care for our family. They have helped us learn more Kirundi. We enjoy having them and appreciate their servant hearts to our family.

Hope this answers some questions and if you’re curious about anything feel free to ask us! We’ll do our best to answer. 😊

Ijoro ryisa! Good night!