Advocacy and Persecution

 A turtle who like following David around at Ubuntu restaurant this past Saturday.

This is one of those weeks when Monday seems so vague because of all the activity between Wednesday and Saturday.  I do know I was home this week and pretty much followed our regular routine of morning swims followed by work.  I continue to teach ballet on Tuesday afternoons and that is going well enough.  I have two groups, girls between 5 and 8 and the second between 9 and 14.  The latter is better this year because they are a smaller group.   One of the improvements I have made this year in the multipurpose room is to buy some mirrors and have them installed as well as some portable barres.  It looks like a proper ballet studio (concrete floor notwithstanding.)  --I will put a picture in next week if I remember to bring the camera to class.

The week began to change Wednesday.  The first thing was David showing signs of getting sick.  We were not really aware of this until we got a call from his school to come and pick him up early because he started getting a fever.  This is not too uncommon here so we were not terribly worried but disappointed that we would need to plan to have one of us be home during the work day which makes working together very difficult.

We were also bracing for a group of visitors on Thursday which would entail me driving up to Bukavu, in Congo to pick them up and bring them back to Bujumbura.  That would mean I would be gone with the car for most of the day on Thursday.

As we suspected, David's fever climbed in the night and in the morning when I left (with Felix) to head to the Rwanda-Congo border he was quite sick.  We prayed he would not need any urgent care before I got home in the afternoon.  I dropped Oren off at school and headed up North along the Ruzizi river to the border.

Our visitors were actually some VIPS (in our opinion) from MCC.  They were three young women from our advocacy offices in Canada (Ottawa), New York (at the UN), and Washington D.C. (US Congress).  MCC has as part of its global mission, a comittment to advocate for issues around peace, reconcilliation, and justice, globally.  Much of the information that the advocacy offices use comes from on-the-ground information provided by MCC program representatives.  From time to time the advocacy office sends service workers to do field visits of certain areas for the purpose of gathering information.

The three women, Jen, Kayon, and Patricia, were doing a tour of Zimbabwe and Congo, with a brief stop in Burundi.  The interest was primarily in issues around conflict metals and the role they play in the instability of these countries and the Great Lakes region of Central Africa.

We were happy to host them as we have not had an advocacy visit before.  We had only two days with them so we did our best to connect them with people who could give them a perspective on the country and its role in various security, and conflict issues.

We set up a series of interviews including a meeting with our pastor Emmanuel Ndikumana who is a fairly influential political activist in Burundi and gave an excellent history of conflict in the region by way of background for the other interviews.

We also met someone with the International Conference on the Great Lakes who is an expert in conflict metals and the role they play in conflict in the region.  (I was surprised to learn that coltan, which is used for many of our electronics, cell phones, computers, etc, actually plays a very small role as far as illegal exports and only accounts for about 15% of all exports.  The real problem is gold which accounts for 85% of all exports and is far harder to control as it requires no processing and can find buyers just about anywhere in the world.)  Sadly most of the rebel activity that has destabilized much of this region in the past several decades is still primarily financed by gold which, as I said, is nearly impossible to control as far as illegal trafficking.

On Friday night we had a gathering with our team in Bujumbura who were able to share some of their own opinions about advocacy issues for this region based on their work and experience.

By the time Jen, Kayon, and Patricia left on Saturday I think they were worn out.  Granted, the time in Congo and Zimbabwe were far more grueling as they did some extensive field visits to very remote places on bad roads.  But listening can be exhausting as well.

(They did appreciate the stay at our house which they said felt like a hotel.)-- We try to be very hospitable to our guests.

We went with Jen and Kayon to the beach as a family on Saturday.  David's virus seemed to come and go, but the kids wanted to go to the beach.  After lunch there we dropped our guests at the airport and headed home.  Having guests can be tiring and we were glad to be back to relax.

Sunday after church, Rebecca and I got very ambitious to rearrange the back play room of our house and make it more of a play room where things were accessible.  We worked most of the afternoon moving furniture and made a great improvement.

We finished just on time for small group at 4pm where we continued to read about King Saul in I Samuel.  Although our discussion was interesting there was a pall over our time together because we had recently received news that one of our members' husband was inexplicably thrown into prison in what appears to be a shake down by a corrupt official to extort money.  I am speaking about this in very general terms because it is a politically sensitive matter, but please, please pray that a good resolution will come.

Pray as well that we would have wisdom about how we might be involved in advocating for his release, and for courage to support him during his incarceration.