Living in Darkness and a Trip Down South

David representing MCC on our visit to Nyanza Lac.


I am glad to say that living here is starting to change my sense of entitlement somewhat. I realize, for instance, how much I have taken electricity for granted my whole life. Well, no more. I have noted the in the last few blogs the time of the power outage, and I am noticing now that I probably have less than a half hour before we lose it. We had been on a fairly regular regimen of 18 hours on and six hours off, (at night) but that has been slowly changing, with the electricity being off earlier and earlier each night.

I do know that all of Bujumbura’s power is hydroelectric, which may explain this shortage in the dry season, but I don’t know if it will be better in the rainy season or not. What I do know, is that I am getting used to it, and it does not bother me so much anymore. True, we do have candles and flashlights, and I can still get two hours of battery power out of my computer. (Oh my, the lights just poetically went off to make my point right here, so the rest of this entry will be written in a race against battery-life time.)

This last week was the beginning of school again for Oren, and not a moment too soon for us. We really value the four hours of work time in the morning while he is there. But also, he is really much less wild in the evenings when he has had a day at school. He was definitely nervous about going. He knew he would be in a new class, and expressed some anxiety about having a new teacher. When we took him on Tuesday we met Christophe, his new teacher. He seemed like a very nice man and Oren went in on day one without any complaints. On day 2 (Wednesday) he cried hysterically when we dropped him off, but he was fine when we picked him up. Thursday he was quite content to go, and when I told him we would be going out of town Friday, he said he was very sad that he would have to miss school.

As Rebecca noted last week, it seems that being in Burundi poses the biggest challenge for Oren. I am still amazed that a 3 year old could have had such a strong attachment to place. He has had some behavior problems with us, that I know are related to his sense of loss of his past life and friends in the US. He pines for New York and Baltimore often and asks when Grandparents are going to come and visit. He does do much better when he has friends and he is fortunately making quite a few good ones now. It is nice to see this. It is also nice to see that there are about as many Francophones as Anglophones and he enjoys playing with all of them, and does try to say a few words in French to those who do not speak English. I would still say that language is not coming quickly though.

I mentioned not being in town Friday, and that is probably going to be the climax of this week’s entry. Rebecca and I decided that it was time we did a visite sur terraine to the project of one of our partner’s doing income generating work with vulnerable individuals in Nyanza Lac. Nyanza Lac is at the bottom Southern tip of Burundi, right at the Tanzanian border. It is next to the Lake and in fact, the entire drive is along the shore of Lake Tanganyika.

It is a picturesque drive, if you don’t mind the frequent bone jarring potholes. It is a lot of fertile land once cultivated extensively with cotton and oil palms. I was told that Burundi had, at one time an enormous cotton industry and export business. The war, and inundation of dumping of good-will clothes wiped out the entire industry, sadly.

Our guide was a man named Jean Bosco, who coordinates the work of our partner association called FEHV (Famille Espoir pour l’humanite Vulnerable.) They are helping repatriated refugees from Tanzania make some money through a cooperative farming project and brick making. This is a very desperate and vulnerable group, people who are returning after fleeing their homes during the war, some as early as 1972. Coming back has been complex and conflict ridden as many have found that their land was sold off, by the government, to other families. Our contribution is small, but it does support some income generating projects and encourages cooperation in that the farming is done cooperatively. We visited a tomato growing project and a brick making project.

The trip from Bujumbura takes about three hours and it gave us a chance to talk to Jean Bosco a bit more about his own life. He is originally from the Nyanza Lac region, and like most everyone we know, has a tragic and story to tell about his youth.

He is currently finishing his PhD in anthropology, though, and he loves to talk about politics, current events, history and other topics. He gave us a good summary of some of Burundi’s history, especially the more prosperous periods when the country was doing fairly well (before the 1993 crisis). The most telling conversation came when we began talking about ‘transitional justice’ the troubling topic about how or if, one goes back to try those guilty of past war crimes. I have written in earlier blogs that the current government policy is to pursue Amnesty. This is basically an acceptance of the fact that the attacks and counter-attacks between the ethnic groups is so tangled and complex, that the best course is to leave the past behind and move on.

I asked him if this was something he felt was the best course, and whether it would succeed. He answered an emphatic NO, and when I asked why, he told me that his father, his brother, grandfather, and several uncles were all murdered in the 1972 massacre of Hutu intellectuals. All of their family’s property was also confiscated by the perpetrators.

(The 1972 massacre was a particularly horrible event in which the tutsi army murdered every educated hutu in the entire country, (right down to children in primary school). The only survivors were the ones who fled.)

Jean Bosco told me that no one has ever had to answer for these crimes against his family, and everyone in the area even knows who did it, as the perpetrators had all of his family's cows and household items. He is still waiting for justice and said that nothing short of a trial and confession, with full details would satisfy him. He certainly does not see amnesty or even a group pardon as an acceptable solution to this injustice.

I asked him if he thought this would ever be possible given the fact that one of those in government now are implicated in these crimes or others against the other ethnic group, the tutsi. He did not think it is really easy or possible at this time. This did make me think of Moses and the 40 years in the wilderness with the Israelites. A time God set to allow for a generation to die off, before a new one would enter the promised land. I am not advocating this, but I am beginning to understand more the extent to which hope may not lie in the current generation, but the next. What I am finding is a deep respect for someone like Moses who had the patience to care for the ‘lost generation’ and await the maturation of the next.

The visit itself was not terribly long and probably far more interesting for the people there than for us. It is not everyday that a family of mzungus shows up to look around. They especially enjoyed seeing Rebecca carrying David around on her back. Oren was actually on pretty good behavior, despite the trial of being followed by many many children, everywhere he went.

We visited the tomato field first, then the brick making area. These bricks are made of mud, and it was interesting seeing the workers filling wooden molds by the river bank and putting them out on a flat area to dry. They are stacked into a sort of furnace shape and fired for several hours as a final step. They still look like hard mud though.

I did the expected official address, then listened to their thanks and long list of requests for many things they need. It is always a bit disheartening to realize what a small drop our efforts are in the ocean of needs.

We left after spending about an hour and a half there and did some exploration of local hotels as places for future team retreats. We did not find any that really fit the bill, but the whole trip was pleasant in general.

Saturday we did have a chance to go swimming and then went to a potluck in the evening with some other missionaries with kids. It was a very nice evening and Oren really enjoyed playing with some of his friends from school. We are slowly but surely finding a community of long-term folks who we are hoping can be a support community for us. I will try to say a bit more about them in a future email.

I would end by saying that while we have been adjusting well this last year although I am finding the constant requests for money to be a struggle. It is something that has been building up over time, and is probably because we do try to be generous, but we are developing a cadre of people who regularly come to us for handouts. I am aware of the need, but also of the culture of dependency that is so evident here. There are many people I want to help, both personally and as an organization, but it is hard to know how with integrity.

As an example, I was recently talking to an agronomist friend here about giving seeds to help peasant farmers grow food. He told me that the problem with giving out seeds is that if you do that, they won’t save any for the next year. They will sell all of their crop expecting to be able to get more from you. In other words, it seems that every thing one does to ‘help’ has the risk of becoming a source of dependency in the future.

I feel that is often the case with our income generating projects which do not really seem to be promoting entrepreneurship. That is, there is a tendency to have our beneficiaries expect to receive raw materials from us, but not reinvesting in their own production in the next cycle. How to get them to take ownership is a real challenge.

I think I should stop here, but I want to give a shout out to the faculty and students in the Dance Department at Vassar who just did the VRDT audition. I miss you all!

And also a little tribute to Isaac Barnes, a World Relief volunteer (and my roommate last Oct. while Rebecca was in the US). He has finished his year and is headed back to the states on Wednesday. When he moved into my house he bought a motorcycle for transportation. I asked if he had ever driven one and he said no. I am thankful God protected him in Buj. the past year. This is not a place I would come to learn to ride one!