Teza Trails

The day before the kids flew back to RVA we had the chance as a family to do a great run/walk/hike up in the tea fields of Burundi.

It’s a beautiful area, with incredibly lush green rolling hills at high elevation. Similar to an image you’d think of when you think of tea fields in a place like India or Kenya, where altitude brings down temperature, and everything is often enveloped in a misty, cloud cover flowing over the hills like a slow-motion river.

We had a pretty good showing for our Kibuye community, with 10 of us present.

Susan and I ran the 15km course (along with Silas…who just decided at the end of the 8km….” mmmm, why not?”) and everyone else ran or hiked the 8km. (then, at the end of the 15km he realized “oh….that’s why.”)

Susan has been running a lot lately and is in great shape. She had a brilliant run for what was actually her first-ever race. As it was supposed to be a ‘fun run’ there was no timing, but she probably came in a solid 15mniutes before I did. The 15km took us over 450m of elevation gain, at altitudes ~2150m on trails that sometimes were wet and muddy, sometimes dry and rocky, sometimes covered in wet rubbery leaves, and sometimes shared with herds of goats.

Once again Jonah’s footage is probably the best way to get a sense of what it looked and felt like…so here you go:

Matea, Micah, and Silas blitzed the 8km loop, and Jonah walked with Erica & Jenny (our teachers), Alyssa, and Alma on her bike.

Alma was the fastest girl bike rider on the entire course. Actually, she was also the fastest child overall. Actually she was the fastest biker overall. Also the slowest biker.

This is again one of those things that acts like the pinch in the arm that we occasionally get here. Life here can start to seem just a little bit normal, and then something gives you that feeling that you are experiencing something really rare, and privileged.
The beauty of the Burundian hills is really something that needs to be experienced to appreciate and running up, and over them is about the best way to do it.