On Spiritual Retreats and Emergency Medical Evacuations

It is strange how a single unexpected event can so suddenly and radically change one’ s plans.  Carroming is the word I would use to describe it (from the game).  Like a cue ball miss-shot that bounces off an unintended target and sets others in motion, perhaps landing the 8 ball in a pocket.  Or a better image still, the frenetic motion of a ball in play in a pinball machine.

It has happened to all of us, it is not unique to our work here.  For me it happened on Wednesday morning about 9:45 am.  It was a normal morning, I had swum, prayed and was just sitting down to work on one of two talks I would be giving at the partner’s retreat that weekend.  We had a very tightly scheduled last 2 weeks of activities, the partner’s retreat being first on the list.  We were going as a family with childcare so Rebecca and I could share the many responsibilities of running this event.

The following week was to be dedicated to helping a service worker family end their term as well as find housing for incoming volunteers in the fall, with a slew of other last minute details to sew up before our departure.

That was until 9:45 am on Wednesday morning.  My mobile phone rang and the husband of one of our service worker families (I am keeping this anonymous intentionally) called to say his wife was having a medical emergency and asked me to meet him at the emergency room of a local hospital. 

I called Rebecca, who was on the way to a Bible study, to alert her.  When I arrived at the ER I could see that the person was in serious distress and would almost certainly need to be taken to another country to get sufficient care.

I should back up to say that when I use the word ‘emergency’ room, I am referring to a ward with curtains around each cot.  There is no cardiac equipment, ekg, oxygen, not even an IV stand or syringe--just a bed and a small table. 

A doctor did make rounds but did not seem to have much by way of explanation of what was happening and had virtually nothing with which to work. And this was in one of the better hospitals in Burundi.

That is a pretty good description of Burundi urgent care.  On the one hand, serious illnesses like malaria and typhoid are easily recognized and treated. But serious trauma beyond setting a bone or suturing is pretty much in God’s hands.  So a complicated problem must be dealt with elsewhere.

MCC has provided those of us working in remote places like Burundi, with a protocol for just these emergencies.  There are several air ambulance services that offer trips in a small ambulance leer jet to another country.  (It runs between $15,000-30,000 depending on where you need to go.  Nairobi is closest and cheapest for us.)   Calling in an air ambulance is serious business and something we have not had to do before.  But this was just such a case. 

For Rebecca and I the question was, would this work?  We knew the procedure, but would the phone #s called be in service? Answered?  While I stayed with the patient and worked on trying to get a good doctor in Burundi, Rebecca started to go through the process of getting the plane here.  It turned out that none of the MCC staff involved in the chain in East Africa had ever actually done this. 

God was with us though and Rebecca was able to get clearance for the jet to come.  We were told it would arrive by 4pm.  As we waited, the next question was, who would go with the patient.  The obvious answer was her husband, but the next question became, what would happen with their two young children?  (About the ages of Oren and David.) 

The very difficult answer to that question was that Rebecca and I were really the one family they could stay with in their parents’ absence.  In the hours before the arrival of the plane Rebecca and I started to strategize around this upending set of events.  The only way we figured we could survive this was to divide and conquer once again (this is our least favorite but often necessary approach to problems these days). One of us would have to stay with all the children while the other went away for 4 days to lead the partner’s retreat alone.  It was a toss-up which one of us would have the most challenging job—4 children, 2 potentially traumatized, or leading 18 adults in a 4 day retreat, including worship, discussions, presentations, and many other activities. 

You might be surprised to hear that I elected to be the one to stay home, and that was primarily because Rebecca plays the guitar and had done all the preparation of worship time for the retreat.  (I think either one of us could have handled the facilitating.)

I will let Rebecca fill you in on the retreat, but I will say in brief that I did survive the 4 days with the 4 kids.  Regrettably Oren and the older child of this couple are not great friends and they did tend to push each other’s buttons.  David and the little girl did fine. 

There were further complicating factors for me in that this was also the last opportunity the children would have to say goodbye to friends as they would be leaving Burundi shortly.  So during our time together, there were many other children that came by to play and bid them goodbye.  There were times I was caring for 8 children at a time. 

Through all this, I did manage to keep our kids going to school and even getting everyone a good breakfast in the morning.  Marcelline our cook and the regular nanny of the family also helped me during the day.

At night I felt lucky that the children all did sleep relatively well and that the children of our volunteers did not seem overly upset about having to stay at our house.

One difficulty was imagining how this would all resolve.  Would the parents be back soon? Would Rebecca or I have to accompany the children to Kenya the following week?  There were many unknowns about this and the answer came as a welcome but unexpected blessing.  The mother of the patient came to Burundi from Europe where she was teaching and took the kids to Nairobi.  She arrived Friday evening and left Sunday morning.  Although it did mean one more house guest, it made life easier here to have two adults to handle the children. 

I admit that I was looking forward to Sunday morning when I would have the house again to myself and my 2 children.  I was worn out from both the children and also trying to do some packing on behalf of the couple so they and the children would have clothes to wear.  They left at about 8am on Sunday.

I took my kids to church with a feeling of relief.  We came home and played on the trampoline.  When Rebecca arrived in the afternoon we went to the beach and swam in the surf for several hours and ate dinner at Club du Lac.  It is the end of one exhausting week, but hardly the end of a very hard week ahead to finish off here before our home leave.

Here is Rebecca’s side of the story: 

Each year, our MCC program hosts a retreat for our partners, that is, each partner sends one representative. We gather people for professional development, spiritual reflection, and mutual encouragement, since working in peace and development can be a lonely, frustrating and discouraging calling at times. We feel that these gatherings are a real gift to our program, to us personally and to our partners, but so far, they have also been an incredible time of testing. For our first retreat, Oren was quite sick as we had to leave to go up-country (along with other practical hassles). Last year, I was just barely able to travel to the retreat because of malaria, and could only participate minimally. This year, I was praying hard that God would protect our family – and he did! – but we were not spared trying circumstances.

It was incredibly unnerving to leave Paul with four children and head up-country for four days. But packing was much simpler than for any retreat I’ve gone on before in this job. No snacks, no games, no 5 extra outfits for muddy boys… A group of 6 partners and I headed up-country in our jeep right after lunch, with our program assistant Felix behind the wheel – I was feeling a little too mentally overwhelmed to face the drive up-country. In just two hours, we arrived at our retreat venue, a small Catholic Institute for training Catechists (lay people who offer Christian education). Their guesthouse is nestled in amongst picturesque hills near the town of Kayanza, an easy trip from both Kigali and Bujumbura. In fact, the Rwandan group was already there to meet us when we arrived.

After sharing tea together, I decided to start with personal introductions before dinner. I had a simple, interesting question for our retreat participants to answer. “Tell us a story about what motivated you to become involved in peace and development work.” I started and told a simple, short story about experiencing poverty in Bangladesh as a teenager and wanting to do something to reverse that vicious cycle. The next participant started speaking, but he found that he had to start with his birth, his family background, all the unjust circumstances in his life. He spoke eloquently for at least 15 minutes, and came to this essential point: as a young man, he had to choose whether he was going to be a Hutu or a Christian. This was a choice with real physical ramifications. Would he join a rebel group and take vengeance on the tribe which had killed his father? Or would he decide to believe in the God who told him to love his enemies, in spite of the injustice he’d suffered at their hands? He chose to be a Christian and is now directing a major peace NGO in Burundi, but it was a hard-won choice.

The next participant also took 15 minutes, sharing about his experience in northern Rwanda during and after the genocide. He was almost killed numerous times, once by fellow Hutus who thought he looked Tutsi, other times by Tutsi soldiers who thought he might be aiding Hutu rebels. At the end of this story, our MCC counselor observed: “this sharing is very good. This is the reasons I came to this retreat. But we will not possibly hear from all 17 people before dinner.” We ended up giving ample time for each participant to share during our worship services throughout the weekend, and it truly became a focus and a gift of the retreat to hear personal stories from each partner.

I also found myself wondering how I could have been so naïve after three years as to not expect this kind of response. We from the West come to work in peace and development because of some theological or philosophical conviction: For example: “Our God hears the cries of the poor.” or “We are part of a system of structural injustice, in which we have received all the privileges, so it’s our responsibility to try and dismantle that unjust, violent system.” In contrast, some of the partners we work with have been stripped, thrown on the ground, and felt the muzzle of a gun against their backs. They have survived these things, wounded and battered, with a conviction that revenge is a dead end. Many of them still struggle with feelings of hate, with fears and distrust. But they have worked hard to be reconciled with their enemies, and they continue to lead others towards confession and forgiveness, towards conflict transformation. During the retreat, two partners came to me and observed, “There is a real difference between your stories as mzungus, and our stories. We are working to heal people, but we are doctors who are sick ourselves. How can we help other people when we continue to live with such deep wounds?”

I found myself returning to Psalm 126:5-6

Those who sow with tears

Will reap with songs of joy

Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow,

Will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.

I have a deep conviction that the wounds themselves are the seeds. The tears are the seeds. There would be no planting, but for the tears. I cannot explain or justify why my friends and colleagues have had to suffer the things they have suffered. But they are faithfully sowing what they have learned from being wounded themselves. 

I was grateful on this retreat that many of the presentations were done by other people on our MCC team or by partners. I had to lead the retreat, but I certainly did not feel that I was alone. I was also grateful that finally, after 3 years, I could share brief meditations in French on a series of psalms. I hope I made sense! I kept it simpler than I might have in English, but it was good to be able to share directly in a language that all of us could use. 

There were two moments of levity I want to note as well: On the second night, I had just gotten off the phone with Paul and went to get something from my open suitcase when a rat leaped out! It was a bit of a process to chase it out of the door, and I can’t say I’m proud of my language throughout that process. After that, the scurrying noises in the ceiling alarmed me just a little more. Also, during one free time, I asked the Sister if we could borrow a basketball for some participants to shoot baskets on their court (it’s a rarity to find a basketball court in Burundi). Long story short, I unexpectedly found myself playing a game of 2 on 2, MCC (me and Felix) against her partners (2 other middle-aged guys). MCC won the first round, entirely due to the skill of Felix, and the partners congratulated themselves on not alienating their donor! Then they challenged us to a re-match. About halfway through that, two of us had to stop. We’re both pushing 40 and haven’t played basketball for at least 25 years – all my swimming has definitely not prepared me for that cardiovascular workout. But it was good to have some moments of fun with partners, along with the moments of seriousness. 

Paul again:

That is all at 11:00pm on Sunday night.  It is hard to believe we will be back in the US for homeleave in just 7 days.  Don't expect another posting before next Monday night US time or Tuesday at the latest.  Pray we will not have any other unexpected deviations from the routine this week.  

The Last Christmas Gift

Some weeks there are just enough small surprises to outweigh the larger disappointments.  After complaining for several weeks now about major frustrations, it is good to be able to mention at least 2 events that made this week seem a bit lighter.

The first occurred on Friday mid-morning when Rebecca went to the post office.  To her surprise there was a parcel sent by Grandma Jean.  Upon closer inspection Rebecca realized it was a Christmas parcel that had arrived a mere 5 months late.  It contained a small wooden steam engine (without a face) which was Oren's sole request as far as Christmas gifts.  I ordered it about 3 weeks before Christmas which I knew was pushing it to have something mailed.  Grandma Jean actually sent us about 5 parcels in the month of December and 4 arrived in less than 2 weeks.  It was a real disappointment that this one did not.  It did not, in fact, arrive at all, and we even left the tree up until Feb 1 to have it under the tree when it arrived.

We gave up hope in mid Feb.  But here at the end of May, the parcel has finally arrived.  We picked up Oren from school at lunch and quickly set up the top of the Christmas tree and put the parcel under it.  When Oren happened upon it in the living room he asked what it was and we told him to open it.  He and David were very excited that Santa's parcel had arrived in May and they opened it together and played with trains most of that afternoon.

The other pleasant surprise occurred this evening (Sunday).  As part of a novel birthday gift given by the women of our 'missionary social group'--includes the Spanners from Denmark, the Hoffmans from Germany, Zachee and Bridget from Burund/Canada, the Van Eerdes from South Africa, and the Johnsons from US-- the women gathered to receive an Indian food cooking lesson from a woman whose kids are at the Ecole Belge.

The husbands agreed to watch the kids while the women cooked.  The women met at Tanya Hoffman's house at 3 and had lessons until 6.  During that time the men were not nearly as coordinated so we went to several different beaches with kids.  I took Oren and David to Club du Lac Tanganyika where they enjoyed an intense afternoon of body surfing and getting pummeled by waves.  It was quite windy and a bit overcast which made for some big waves.  I took some excellent video footage of some kite-boarders doing monster jumps and flips off of the breakers.  The water was quite warm despite the lack of sun and the kids had a great time.

We got back a bit after 6pm, exhausted and hungry.  Tanya's house smelled great when we all arrived back.  There were about 9 adults and 9 children.  We feasted on excellent food from paneer tikka masala and nan, to gujarati potato pakoras, and many different chutneys, vegetables, and dal as well.  Everything had that really pucca Indian taste that you just can't get unless you go to a restaurant.

Those were two of the highlights and I am happy to report that there were not too many disappointments either.   In a meeting I had with Cassien last week, he did tell me that the head of the revenue authority (who had apparently been kept in the dark by his underlings about the spoiled corn disaster they created) was appalled and apologetic for the mess and promised that any future shipment to Help Channel would be expedited by he himself.  This is good news for us as we now have the container of school books to clear.  Cassien has expressed confidence that it should be out of port this week.

Distribution of the books will be the next problem in the weeks ahead, a task which will fall to some extent on our program assistant Felix as he will be here while we are gone on homeleave in 2 weeks.


We did have a full house again this week with our short-term volunteer Josh Miller here for his last week.  He continued to go to work with Moisson pour Christ during the week, but was home for dinner most nights.  Yolanda popped in as well toward the end of the week.

We also had a visitor from Tanzania, a former World Vision Africa program manager named Wilfred Mlay.  He was here to do some preplanning for an annual cross regional conference called the Great Lakes Initiative, run out of the Duke University Center for Reconcilliation.  He had the challenge of trying to get stakeholders who have been participating by virtue of a grant from MCC and Duke to 'buy in' for the next year, as most everyone has been coming for free up until now.  This does not play very well in this part of the world.

It is interesting, in the US a conference is rarely seen as income generating activity by participants and usually one pays to go, or is sponsored.  Here, a conference is seen as an opportunity to learn something, make connections, but also, importantly, pick up a bit of spending money in the form of perdiem, transportation, communication fees etc.  (It always amuses me that people come up to conference hosts and ask for these 'perks' even when transportation, room and board, etc. is already pre-paid.)  It is a precedent set up in the past 15 years or so of development work that people are paid to learn, (it was seen as a way to compensate the very marginalized for time spent away from farming, work, etc.)  But what has happened is that since it is now understood as an opportunity to make some money, participants are no longer those very marginalized people, but rather a class of individuals who basically are professional conference participants.  So to begin to ask these individuals and local organizations to start to pay a fee to participate is a hard sell to say the least.

Nonetheless we had a nice time with Wilfred staying with us and did a lot of 'comparing notes' on working with MCC vs. World Vision.  (Conclusion:  The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.)  He was easy to host and brought a lot of wisdom from his many years of work in this context from the perspective of an East African.


I am happy to say that I suffered only one deeply embarrassing International incident this week.  That was when I blew off a meeting with the Tanzanian Ambassador to Burundi.  Let me back up...

I will say that I am not in the habit of missing a meeting with anyone, and particularly someone at the rank of Ambassador.  But the circumstances were a bit extraordinary.  To begin with, the Tanzanian Ambassador, His Excellency, Dr. James Nzagi is a Mennonite, possibly one of the only true African Mennonites in Burundi.  We have a 'Mennonite' church in Burundi which I have written about in the past.  It is a church that was founded by a pastor who filed papers to have his church recognized as the legal Mennonite Church of Burundi, followed shortly by another who made his church the legal Mennonite Bretheren Church of Burundi.

The Ambassdor happened upon one of these pastors while 'church shopping' and has since gone semi-regularly to the church.   This has been a great boon for the pastor who comes by regularly to visit us at MCC to let us know that this man is now in his congregation in hopes that it will add some legitimacy to the church vis a vis the Mennonite World Connference.  The pastor has been trying to seek MWC recognition for the church here and has a bit of a mistaken impression about MCC's role in that.  (We are not a church nor do we act on behalf of the MWC.)  I, on the other hand, have been encouraging him to make a connection in this context, that is the long-established Tanzanian Mennonite church rather than look to mzungus for legitimacy.

Anyway, two weeks ago, at the urging of someone in the Mennonite World Conference to whom I explained the situation, I did express interest to the pastor in question in meeting the Ambassador as he is a Tanzanian Mennonite.  Apparently the pastor took this as carte-blanche for him to act as my personal secretary and schedule a meeting for me at the Ambassadors convenience.  The pastor did not communicate this to me and on the day I was scheduled to meet, I was in Rwanda.

When I did get back this past week and called the Ambassador on my own initiative to greet him and make an appointment, I was appalled as the he immediately laced into me for scheduling and missing an appointment for which he had prepared to meet me the week before.  I was flummoxed as I did not even know what he was talking about and stammered a profuse apology as I tried to understand what had transpired.  I finally figured out the the pastor had done this for me and had not communicated clearly to me his actions (at least in a language I understood.)

That is not a good foot to get started on, but I did manage to be composed enough to set up another meeting (for which I was available.)  We met on Friday morning in his office and actually had a very cordial and interesting conversation.  I left feeling the meeting was worthwhile and he gave me some insight into his involvement in the church in Burundi.  We also did agree on several points involving connecting the church better with the Tanzanian Mennonite church as a step toward bringing it into full recognition by the Mennonite World Conference.  Although this is not MCC's first mandate, we are encouraged to accompany the local Anabaptist church in our country.  I felt I did my part but remain cautious about being too involved in this particular church's journey.

The last item worth mentioning is something I have chosen not to mention the past several weeks, although I have known about it:  Our service worker family the Horsts will be leaving us at the end of May.  Although it is not the end of their term, they were offered a job with UNICEF in monitoring and evaluation of child rights in Kathmandu, NEPAL.  They did not feel it was an opportunity to pass up and we respectfully accepted their decision to pursue this.

We will miss them here, especially Nathan's particular expertise in planning, monitoring and evaluation which was very helpful to Help Channel.  Some of the past week, thus, has been absorbed by helping them with logistics of closing a house and ending a service worker term.  We certainly wish them the best in their new assignment in Nepal.


Next week we will be upcountry for several days as we are holding our Annual Partner's Retreat.  Pray that we will be able to keep it all together for the 2 weeks remaining until homeleave.  They are packed full!

Bonus Photo:

Lousy focus, but a photo of Josh Miller, Yolanda, and Jean Claude who hung out a bit to talk about life and peace work before Josh headed back to the US today.

Stranger Than Fiction

David with the coconut he carried around with him all last week.



I was a great fan of a certain kind of paradoxical dystopian literature of the ilk of Kafka or Joseph Heller.  I have even written an earlier blog entry (Nov 29, 2009) comparing a particular experience at the phone company with Kafka's The Trial.  Now we are once again confronted with a problem which would make for mirthfully ironic wit in a Heller's Catch 22, but is a sad sick trap when it concerns real people struggling against hunger and the grip of poverty.

To be precise:  I had mentioned in my blog 2 weeks ago that because of delays caused by the port authority in Bujumbura, 25 metric tons of corn destined for a food for work program we run, sat for 3 months in customs and rotted to the point where it was unfit for human consumption.  This was a grave disappointment for Help Channel our implementing partner who had been trying hard to release it.  The delay was caused by a new level of scrutiny of non-profit imports.  There is great concern about people representing items as not for profit that will later be sold on the market.  Despite Help Channel's long and respectable history of importing food aid, the bureau of revenue did an exhaustive investigation of them.  They did apologize for the slowness which resulted in the spoilage and did finally issue the tax-exemption for the spoiled grain so it could be released.

They asked what Help Channel would do with the grain since it was now inedible by humans and Cassien explained that they would try to find a chicken or other animal farm who might buy the grain so Help Channel can recoop some of the loss and replace some of the inedible grain with edible grain to continue the food-for-work project.

WAIT FOR IT....  We thought we were good to move forward, but the next morning, when Help Channel went to take the grain away, the revenue authority said:  "Since you now intend to sell this grain, it is no longer a charitable donation, so we are revoking your exemption and in order to release it, you must pay full duty if you want to take it."

So now we are stuck again, still waiting for the release of grain, the clock is ticking on the number of days that this grain is even consumable by animals.  If it cannot be released on time, it will have to be burned at the port in the presence of the police, revenue authority, and the supplier.  The final clencher is the fact that we will get a bill for the time this grain has been in storage at the port, delayed because of their inefficiency.

I don't even want to try to draw out a moral here.  Suffice it to say, truth is stranger, and more frustrating, than fiction.

Inspecting an MCC supported bathroom at a school
run by one of our partners.

By comparison, the rest of the week seemed pretty easy.  We had several meetings scheduled including one with Cassien of Help Channel, to talk about this matter.  We frontloaded our week with business in Bujumbura because on Wednseday afternoon we had plans to head up to Rwanda for a last round of meetings with partners before our homeleave begins in June.   There was a considerable amount of preparation for this since we had a very ambitious schedule for the 3 days we were there--field visits, advisory board meeting, shopping, worker care for our volunteers, etc.  With Oren and David in tow it also means that one of us must always remain on parent duty.  We left at noon with our family as well as our program officer Felix, and Joshua Miller our short-term volunteer here.

We stayed at a guesthouse near the Friends Church (Amani Guesthouse) which is nice for the kids.  There are lots of levels of gardens and covered verandahs and walkways where Oren can ride his scooter. The kids' favorite activity though, by far, is catching animals--frogs, millipedes, geckos and in this case, grasshoppers which were plentiful at the Guesthouse.

We got to Kigali late on Wednesday.  We were delayed by a spectacular wreck in Kayanza, Burundi.  A tanker truck had lost control and turned sideways and completely wedged itself between the 2 embankments of the 2 lane highway.  The route was impassable and we had to take the much longer way to Kigali.  We got in about 8pm.

Thursday Rebecca did meetings with the legal rep at the church, and among the topics of conversation was finding housing for 2 new SALT volunteers who will be working in Kigali beginning in September.  Ruth and Krystan were part of the conversation and will help identify housing this summer while we are on homeleave.

Friday was very full, so full in fact that Rebecca and I found the need to 'divide and conquer'.  I went with Felix to a meeting with Friends Peace House to discuss their programs, while Rebecca took Josh and the kids on a field visit with another partner.  She went and visited a self-help peacemaking group who had, on their own initiative, created a preschool!  It was small and crowded, but Rebecca was very impressed by the capacity of the group to take this initiative with no outside funding.

Oren and David liked the rabbits they raised best of all and found the rest of the trip quite uninteresting.  (In all fairness, when they go they often endure the brunt of the gawking and teasing from those who are not accustomed to seeing mzungus.

Rebecca and I had an advisory board meeting at the guesthouse in the afternoon and did our best to keep both boys entertained with a movie while we talked.  (Their current favorite movie is Wallace and Grommet, Curse of the Were-Rabbit--don't ask me why).

We had a great Indian meal together with Ruth and Krystan on Friday night and planned to head out Saturday morning.  Rwanda definitely seems more modern and Western than Burundi now.  The internet speeds seem staggering, and even the availability of goods like mozzarella cheese, bagels, hummus, etc, make it quite a contrast to Bujumbura.

We got back Saturday afternoon without incident.  But on Sunday Oren threw-up right before church so I stayed home Sunday morning with the boys while Rebecca taught Sunday school.  Oren felt better in the afternoon and we did take a refreshing swim which seems like such a necessity after a long car ride.



UPDATES:

Two updates worth noting are
1) We got a call while we were in Kigali that the book container has arrived in Burundi!! These are the books I have talked about in other blogs that have been sent by MCC to help the Hope School and other MCC Burundi/Rwanda education programs.  We will begin Monday the process of getting them out of port.  We are off to a bit of a bad start as the original documentation was sent separately to Help Channel and was apparently jammed-up by DHL in Europe.  It should get here Monday though.  I am not sure when we will get all the books distributed in the next 3 weeks before vacation, but we will do our best.

2) The other update is my friend who is prison.  I have been reticent to write details, but I will say a bit more now.  He has been charged with marketing expired drugs (in his pharmacy.)  The problem is that there has been no evidence to support this and he says the allegation is patently false.  They have been before every court up to the Burundi supreme court and all the courts, after hearing the case have declared themselves 'incompetent' to render judgment.  So that means that he remains in prison without any trial or conviction.  It seems clear that there is someone high up in government who wants to keep this person in prison for some reason and 'lower' civil servants, do not want to contradict this.  I don't know who would be behind this, but it is very hard to see my friends victimized by this 'big man' system of injustice.

Beads were a gift to Rebecca during her field visit.

I would say tha in the above cases of frustration, I have found what I think is the basis of bureaucratic 'Catch 22' behavior.  I call it Authority without Responsibility.  This is often the manifestation of power and influence of mid-level civil servants in a 3rd world bureaucracy.  To wit:  Many people have authority at different levels, especially to halt a process.  They may do so for personal gain, or confusion, or orders from a superior.  But they would never consider themselves  'responsible' in any way for bad consequences of their actions (someone above is always to blame, except the 'chief' who is never wrong).  It is really quite an ideal way to wield power.  Have authority to do what you want, but experience no consequences for negative outcomes as a direct result of your actions.  (I think that might be a bit like what happened to bank owners in our last financial crisis.--taken right out of the playbook of Franco-African bureaucracies.)

Backstage at the Ballet and Parables of the Kingdom

Oren and his class waiting for their turn to perform backstage at La Fete de L'ecole.

I realize I forgot to mention at least one interesting event from last week that is worth chronicling.  I was asked by Jean Baptiste, my former Kirundi teacher to do a talk to a group of high school students on the subject of ‘the importance of peace for success in education.’  Although the topic seemed self-evident, I did understand his interest in the subject.  

Jean Baptiste teaches secondary school in an area of the city called Kanyosha close to Ruziba.  This is a section of town, primarily hutu, where there is a significant number of supporters of the now exiled political party FNL.  Sadly, there have been spates of violence and random killings between partisans of the FNL and the ruling party CNDD-FDD.  Jean Baptiste describes nights in Kanyosha as often terrifying with partisan bandits attacking houses and spreading terror in the neighborhoods.  

Jean Baptiste’s objective has been to provide forums for conflict reconciliation in high schools and among students as some of them are demobilized child soldiers, whom he fears may be encouraged to become involved in the fighting rather than staying in school.

I was one of about 4 speakers over as many days.  I was, in fact, the last speaker.  I do confess that my first reaction was not particularly enthusiastic to being invited.  Jean Baptiste had actually talked to Rebecca and she ‘volunteered’ me.  But as I prepared I became more interested.  I have done some study in conflict transformation, and as an educator (albeit dance) for many years I felt I could speak to the importance of education in general.  My thesis was less that one needs peace to get an education so much as the idea that both peace and education require an optimistic vision of the future.

I did much of the talk as a dialogue and I asked them who among them was being forced to go to school (no one raised a hand.)  I went on to ask, then, what they saw as the benefits and we made a long list.  It was easy to observe that pretty much everything on the list was a long, not short term benefit.  I talked about the necessity of having a vision of the future that one might attain to.  

I had an interesting testimony from my experience in prison ministry.  An inmate once told me that he had received a football scholarship to the University of Michigan after high school.  Two nights before heading to college from New York, some friends convinced him to rob a store with them, for some spending money. Things went down badly, someone was shot, everyone fled and the police came to his door the next night.  The man who told me this story was serving at least his 10^th year in prison and had about a decade left.  I used this testimony as an example of choosing short-term over long-term goals.  The story seem to have a sobering affect on the students; many as I said, were excombatants weighing their choices in the present.  

I went on to talk about basic principles of conflict mediation and transformation, but that story, I think, was the clincher.

This week began on Tuesday, as I mentioned last week, that Monday was a holiday.  It was good to get both kids back in school again and go swimming!  Rebecca and I had a lot of work to catch up on and we had a fairly constant stream of visitors (welcome and unwelcome) to our office.  In the afternoon I taught ballet: it was a bit of a drama because of the school spring festival that was happening Saturday where the girls were going to present some dances.  I choreographed two small selections from the Nutcracker (Russian and Sugarplum fairy variations) for each of the groups to do.  The ‘dress rehearsal’ did not go so well and I found myself yelling at them several times during the practice.

Wednesday was a continuation of the routine, I have a men’s prayer meeting early, and Rebecca has a women’s Bible study mid-morning.  It has been the first time back to these things since we were back from Kenya.  It was good to start these routines again.  We had lunch at Zachee’s house then stopped in to see how Lara Horst (our service worker) was doing in the afternoon as Nathan is out of town at the moment.

Thursday and Friday were more of the same although Rebecca’s workload was definitely greater than mine as she had to prepare a sermon that she was asked to preach on Sunday.  She decided to talk about the Kingdom of God as described in the parables of Matthew13, the sower, the woman making bread, and the wheat and weeds.  I will ask her to write a brief synopsis below.

Saturday was busy.  We had 10 people at our morning exercise class, so the living room was full!  Rebecca had a Sunday school training she was hosting for PTI teachers right afterwards, while I watched the kids.

At about 3 in the afternoon we headed over to Oren’s school for the spring festival.  Oren’s class had prepared a song in which Oren played the crash cymbals.  I had my ballet classes presenting.  When I arrived at the outdoor stage I found it to be in predicatable chaos.  No one had a program order so I could not even tell the kids whether to be in ballet clothes or their other costumes.  Somehow, though, at about 1 minute to the start of our piece, all the girls showed up in costume and they did fine.  Oren’s class was very cute as well, and I was happy to see Oren participating and smiling even though I am sorry that he still has little comprehension of what he was singing.  

David liked the festival as well.  I was surprised to see that there were some people dressed as Elmo, Oscar the Grouch, Grover, and Big Bird.  I did not know that there were Sesame street costumes in Burundi, but there they were.

Saturday evening we ate out at Ubuntu because we had virtually nothing left in our fridge. (Marcelline had been out all week due to illness and then flooding at her house.)—so nothing was prepared for the weekend.  It is a favorite place to go, more for the atmosphere than the food.  The highlight for the kids was that we found out that if you ask, the gardener will cut down a coconut from the trees for you.  We went home with Oren and David each carrying one.  David could barely lift his but guarded it so jealously that he even wanted to take it to bed at night.  

Sunday morning before church they begged me to open one.  I hacked off the husk for about 10 minutes with a machete before getting to the center, for which I used a hammer.  All said it took about 20 minutes to get to an edible portion.  Predictably neither of the boys liked the coconut at all as far as food, but I enjoyed it.

We went to church and I took care of David while Rebecca preached.  Fortunately he slept during the sermon so I could listen.  It was good and well received.  Here is her synopsis of the message:

PTI Fellowship has been following a series of sermons on Christian leadership, exploring the characteristics that make for good leaders – things like competence, compassion and contrition. But we keep bumping into tough questions: what do you do when leaders fail, when they are wicked or misled? I was asked to preach this week, and I decided to explore this question indirectly, by thinking about power in the Kingdom of God. What does it really look like, and in light of that, what should our leadership look like?

I have greatly benefited from a book called Kingdom, Grace, Judgment by a sterling theologian and writer named Robert Farrar Capon. His exposition on Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom has been challenging and enlightening for me, and so I wanted to share some of those thoughts. Both here and in North America, many Christians assume that the Kingdom of God looks just like an earthly kingdom (King, subjects, territory, enemies, battles) – except really moral. We fight for our King and win territory for him, etc, etc. But Jesus never describes the Kingdom in terms of warriors and battles and strength. Rather he compares it to farming or fishing or baking.

Throughout these parables, we see the ways that the Kingdom is already present in the world around us, just as the sower (God the Father) sows his seed (the Word of God – Jesus) in every kind of soil (not just the fertile, well-tilled soil). We do not do the sowing – God does it, and does it well! No matter where the Word is sown, even in the midst of hostility, it sprouts up, and does its work. The Kingdom works in mysterious weakness – small and tiny, seeds have to die to do their work. (Consider how the Word was born a tiny baby and died to complete his mission). But when seeds die, they are able to bring forth a huge harvest – the best kind of response.  Both of these points are so important for us as Christians. Often we assume that the success of the Kingdom depends on us doing our work well. We think that we have to fight for the kingdom with power that the world understands. But in fact, God’s Kingdom is in very good hands – God’s. And the Kingdom grows best when we do things God’s way.

What is God’s way? I find the parable of the Weeds in Matthew 13 fascinating and challenging. It’s another parable about a man sowing good seed throughout his field (there’s no place where good seed is not sown!). But while he’s getting a well earned, good night’s sleep, his enemy comes and sows tares among the wheat. Please note that tares are a type of grass, which looks basically identical to wheat until harvest time. The workers are troubled by the weeds (and the amount of work it will take to clean up the field) and they ask the Sower if they should pull up the weeds. “No,” he replies, “for you will uproot the wheat along with the weeds. Let (suffer, permit, forgive – are also meanings of this word) both to grow together until the harvest.” Jesus gives this astonishing teaching that in the Kingdom, we bear with evil and forgive it, just as he did ultimately on the cross. This is hard and frustrating for so many of us, who just want to clean house and get the troublemakers out and keep the “real Christians” in. But we forget how the weeds are always and ever mixed with the wheat in our own hearts. We forget Jesus’ patient forgiveness for us. As an example, I spoke about the difficulty of separating the wheat from the weeds in my work as a youth pastor at PUMC; yet God had interesting plans to turn some apparent weeds into fruitful wheat.

This separating of the good from the bad, the “us” from the “them,” the “in” from the “out” is as big a problem in Burundi as it is everywhere. For example, the Pentecostal church here is famous for excommunicating people for simple things like attending a church of another denomination. Protestants and Catholics here generally do not really regard the others as being Christian. It becomes ever more tempting for Christians to try to root out "bad leaders" by any means available. But the end never justifies the means. As we confront leaders, as we speak prophetically, we need to make sure that all our words and actions along the way will give honor to Jesus. Lying, twisting the truth or using violence should never be in our playbook. The Kingdom can take care of itself – what matters is the state of each of our souls when the harvest is brought in. Will our lives be marked by the cross?

Spoiled Maize and a Long Weekend

Leftover photo from last week in Kenya.  Oren feeding a giraffe.  Will post some photos of this week as soon as I can get them off the camera.

One of the reasons for the long delay in posting this week was the long weekend.  Burundi takes International Workers Day as a holiday and so Monday was a day off.  Rebecca and I considered going to work but decided against it.  This meant that we really had 3 days off!  That is to say, we really did nothing but things with the family on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Actually that is not entirely true, Rebecca did help facilitate a training for Sunday school teachers at our church on Friday evening and Saturday morning.  And of course she did teach Sunday school on Sunday, but for the most part we enjoyed time together playing.

Saturday while Rebecca went to the training I took the kids to Entente Sportif, our swimming club.  We actually go there rarely with the kids anymore as they seem to enjoy swimming in the Lake more these days.  But it was a great change of pace and they played in the water for about 3 straight hours.  Oren even got up the nerve to go off the 3 meter platform (with me) 4 times.  

After that we went to dinner at Ubuntu and enjoyed the sunset.  I should probably add here that Yolanda's father Clarence has been in town the last couple weeks and he joined us, as well as our volunteer Josh at dinner.  We ate pizzas and had good conversation.  The kids could barely stay awake through the meal from the exhausting day at the pool.

The weather has been just about perfect.  A bit warm, but the air at the end of the rainy season is so clear and the views of the mountains in this season are spectacular.  It is a nice time to have special guests share the beauty of this country with us.

Sunday was no less beautiful.  Marcelline, our cook, had invited Josh to go to her church.  He agreed and we dropped him off on the way to our own.  It is an interesting church with no less than 9 choirs who all sing in the service every week.  (Which makes the worship service go quite long.)  He did enjoy it, and met our missionary friends Joy and Jesse Johnson's who serve this church as well.

After our own service our family went home for midday, but went out in the late afternoon again to drop off Yolanda's dad at the airport, and then proceeded to dinner with our Danish missionary friends, Naja and Thomas.  (Incidentally, Thomas is now director of World Relief here in Burundi.)  We had a great time as our German friends as well as Zachee and Tim were there.  The adults talked and the kids enjoyed playing together.  (It is interesting to listen because the parents all share english as a common language, but for the children, the common language is french--as most of them do not know english.)

We debated as I mentioned, taking the day off today (Monday) and decided to do so.  We had heard that several of our friends were going down to Blue Bay resort, a nice hotel on the beach about an hour 10 minutes south of Bujumbura.  It was a beautiful place and the day was lovely.  The surf there is quite high and the kids as well as we, enjoyed splashing and body surfing on the tide.

We had lunch of grilled mukeke on the beach--a local fish only found in Lake Tanganyika.  We headed back home about 4:30 pm and got home by dinner time.  Since we had no staff on this holiday I made dinner, a ground beef and spinach curry that did not taste bad at all.

The rest of the week prior to the weekend had been relatively busy, especially since we had been in Kenya the week before.  There was actually a line of people waiting for an appointment with us when we arrive to the office on Monday.  Sadly most are acquaintances that make semi-regular rounds to ask us for money.  That is something that comes with the turf here, and brushing them off without being rude is a challenge.

Among the good things was the return of Oren's friend Emily.  She and her mom had been in the US for the last month.  Oren was very happy to be saying hello rather than goodbye to someone.

Probably the bad news of note was the loss of 25 metric tons of corn (about a container) due to the ineptitude of Burundian customs.  In earlier blogs I had mentioned our partner Help Channel that runs a large food security food-for-work program.  They import grain regularly that is provided by the Canadian govt. through CFGB.  Help Channel had been complaining to us about the increasing difficulty of getting things through customs in the last year.  The shipment had been in port for at least 4 months and had not been released because of reams of new paper work the government had begun to demand.  Sadly, when the grain was released on Friday, it was unfit for human consumption.

It is extremely frustrating to see so much food aid lost for such a stupid reason.  The problem is, as always, that many people have the power to say 'no' but no one has the power to make something happen.  Many officials have signature power on various parts of the process and often hold it up to get some kind of a handout (often).  In this case it was a few delays to long.  Cassien and Nathan are trying to fight this legally to demand some kind of repayment, but I am not confident they will get far with the government here.  Please pray that future shipments do not face a similar demise.

I don't want to end on a low note, but it is getting late and I think this will have to be a short one this week.  It will be good to finally send both kids back to school tomorrow.  David was off for the second week of his spring break last week eventhough Oren was off.  I am looking forward to the routine again.