Holy Week and Transitional Justice

Oren shows David how to use his new toy.



I am actually very happy to report that this has been a relatively uneventful week! We even got through a Tuesday without a major crisis, AND we have no visits to the doctor for antibiotics or any emergency for at least 10 days!

So what is there to write about? We have been fairly busy at work this week, signing MOUs (memorandums of understanding) with all of our partners. Our fiscal year began in March and with our newly approved budget we have been making final agreements with our partners on their grant proposals for the year. Because of the economic downturn we have had to cut back on some of their proposals, but by and large we have been able to maintain the essential programming we have supported in past years.

Oren has been off school since Monday for a two week spring break. This has made going to the office a bit complicated since we have typically been using the hours of 8am to noon on weekdays to go to the office together while Oren is at school. We did get someone to come in (Charlie—she is a new arrival on mission here for 6 months) and babysit for two mornings of the week.

We were also due for a visit to our partners upcountry in Gitega and also Burasira (where Jodi lives). We have not checked in on Jodi for at least a month and she was beginning to run short on some supplies (like spaghetti and toilet paper). We drove as a family up to Gitega on Wednesday, met with partners on Wednesday afternoon, then headed on down the two hour dirt road to Burasira. Jodi welcomed us warmly, despite being involved in a very busy week of teacher capacity-building and curricular development. (They were running a week of workshops at the school.) We stayed at the seminary next to her house. We have been staying at her house but this week, Zachee, Bridget and Timmy came up as well because Zachee was going to be giving a lecture to the teachers about water management. They arrived later on Wednesday evening and Oren was thrilled to see Timmy. They ran around Jodi’s house all evening before we retired to the seminary. The next day we left Oren with Timmy and Bridget and went up to visit the school and meet with the directors: Innocent and Beatrice. We also had a chance to see Zachee in action doing some of his water lecture. He is a very good teacher, a gift I had not had a chance to see him use in his capacity as our program officer. Here are some pictures of him lecturing and the teachers listening. (You can see Jodi in the back corner.)

Jodi always has interesting cultural stories from her experience of working at the school. She has been courageous in advocating for the Batwa children, trying to keep girls in school, trying to identify the causes of absenteeism and provide a way for kids to get healthcare when they need it, and even intervening in some community conflicts involving students or their parents.

When we had to leave Thursday morning, Oren was very resistant to going as he was having such a good time with Tim. He insisted that he wanted ‘to live at Miss Jodi’s house.’

On the way back we stopped and visited one more partner in Gitega, Levy Ndikumana at MiPAREC before heading home. He is always very gracious and offered to send a couple live chickens home with us in the car that we could slaughter and eat. We opted instead for a few dozen eggs, which we thought Oren would probably enjoy boiling and coloring for Easter.

Egg coloring happened on Friday and here is Rebecca’s report:

“Last weekend we were thrilled to get a letter from Gramma Jean, with coloring pages for Easter. Oren has meticulously been coloring in all the pictures of Easter eggs in a variety of colors of his choosing (pink hay, fluffy black bow on the basket). He was adamant that he wanted to color real eggs together, but this has been difficult to pull off. Over the past week, I have scoured every well-stocked “alimentation” (small grocery store) for food coloring with no success. Finally I decided to use the water colors sent by our small group friends for Oren’s Sunday school materials. But we almost had another mishap: I asked our cook Marcelline to make 6 hard cooked eggs for me yesterday. I came back into the kitchen a minute later and she had the frying pan out! Coloring boiled eggs is distinctly not a Burundian tradition. Today, Daddy hid the eggs around our living room for Oren to find. The best hiding place turned out to be under David’s t-shirt – Oren burst into hysterical laughter when he finally found it.”

Holy week here has definitely felt different to us than what we are accustomed to. This is probably most significantly due to the fact that in the past, Rebecca was a youth pastor and I sung in a choir of a very liturgical church. We are used to attending at least 5 church services between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, and being integrally involved in the worship. That is not the case here. Oren was sick on Palm Sunday morning so I went to church without Rebecca and the kids. (When Oren woke up and felt better, he and Rebecca practiced marching around the house, waving palm branches cut from our garden, shouting “Hosanna!”). We did go to a Good Friday service last night, and will be in church tomorrow for Easter of course. Still, our church here does not practice the traditions we are used to; celebrating communion on Easter Sunday is not part of the tradition at our church here, for instance.

We are fortunate to be living directly behind a large Catholic church from which beautiful Kirundi hymns have been emanating almost constantly the entire week. (I have been feeling a bit jealous of all the ceremony around Lent and Holy week the Catholics enjoy here.) Fasting, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, is a particularly important spiritual discipline in this season.

Speaking of where we are living, we can now officially announce that we will be moving in the near future. Not far, a few blocks from where we are now, but to a very nice house, which does not have a septic tank that overflows regularly into the driveway. It is also surrounded by many productive fruit trees (mango, orange, lemon, avocado, papaya, and guava) which will be nice to have access to. The house is currently occupied by our friends the Carrs, who are sadly leaving Burundi in mid-May. We are delighted to be able to take over their lease, however, as the house is really great. We are hoping we might inspire some of the readers of this blog to come out and visit us sometime in the next 4 years.

We continually feel very blessed in our work here, and have been working to build a community here. We are challenged by the non-permanence of the expatriate community and are still working to make closer connections to our Burundian friends. One thing we are thinking of trying to do in our new house is host a contradance evening once a month. (The living room is big enough!) We will see how that comes together.

Next week we will go back to Rwanda for two days of meetings and three days of vacation, and hopefully visit a national forest as part of that.

I will close by sharing with you a discussion that came up in a meeting last Friday. I was invited to represent MCC at a meeting of Peace Church organizations working in Burundi. Representatives from The American Friends Service Committee, Quaker Peace Network, as well as others were in attendance. When asked what the AFSC saw as ‘flashpoints’ of conflict—anticipating and trying to prevent potential conflict flashpoints is an important part of peace work— they identified several problems. First, there is the continued problem of repatriated refugees coming back to land they had abandoned that is now occupied. There have been many ongoing land disputes that have often turned violent and even murderous. Secondly, there are the upcoming 2010 elections. There will be many political parties, including some fairly radical ones formed by recently demobilized rebel groups. Peaceful transfer of power is historically almost non-existent in sub-Saharan African nations and there is considerable anxiety about what will happen in the next 12 months. However, the biggest concern identified by AFSC was ‘transitional justice’. This is really a serious problem here and speaks to the greater problem of trying to bring to ‘justice’ those who have been guilty of past war crimes.

Here’s the problem: how do you persuade a government to pursue justice for those who are guilty of committing crimes in the past 14 years of civil war, when many perpetrators are now occupying seats of power in the government itself? Also, there is the ongoing undercurrent of ethnic conflict. Any attempt by one ethnic group to pursue ‘justice’ against another looks like retribution and not impartial arbitration. Add the complication of a highly politicized election, and this becomes a real conflict tinderbox. Doing nothing (letting sleeping dogs lie), however, is not an option as it fuels growing resentment in the population, as they see many known war criminals ‘getting away with murder.’

At the local level, MCC partners—particularly MiPAREC—have set up ‘peace committees’ in communities all over the country to try to introduce concepts of ‘restorative justice’ to resolve conflicts. This involves providing a forum for grievances to be aired, victims’ stories to be heard, and an opportunity for perpetrators to ask for forgiveness and make amends. They have had a great deal of success at the local level, but whether this type of reconciliation can be accomplished at the national level is an open question.

As I said, the problem is that there is no impartial arbitrator. Everyone is on some side, and many who would need to implement justice have blood on their own hands.

I am learning that justice is not a simple matter of getting the facts and making a ruling. Those in power can decide which facts are relevant and can largely determine who is tried and the outcome of any legal process.

What human beings are capable of—even at their best—is only a shadow of what I believe divine justice will look like. I am considering in a new way that passage in 2 Corinthians (5:17-21) that says we have been given “the ministry of reconciliation.” – which is the gospel! We may never be divine judges, but we have, in Jesus, the capacity for divine forgiveness. I pray this capacity will be shared in Burundi by those who follow him.