Misfortunes of a Fortuner

 The wrecker hauling away our Fortuner after it overheated 'in the middle of nowhere' in rural Rwanda on a trip to Kigali.

There are some days that are so difficult, that one of the small consolations of pushing through is the thought that it will make an interesting blog entry when I retell the story.  Today was just such a day, and although it is a Monday and technically part of next week’s accounting, I feel like I should begin here to put you in the state of mind I find myself right now.  Actually, my state of mind is probably not that interesting, I feel at this moment calm and somewhat resigned to deal with the challenge I am facing.

I was at least somewhat prepared for a challenging week this week, as I am once again on the road on a fairly ambitious trip.  I was driving to Kigali to pick up a visitor from MCC who is going to evaluate some of our education programs.  I was to leave early Monday morning (6am) and drive to Kigali in time to meet his plane at 1:30pm.  It started well enough, I was ready to leave by 6 and the kids were even up so I had a chance to say goodbye even.  The drive was easier as leaving this early meant I avoided much of the traffic going uphill at that hour.  The car seemed to be running fine and since I was alone it was not very heavily loaded.  

I was doing fine up to the border, where the engine light came on just before I stopped.  I was not sure what to do as the border is in a very remote spot far from any automobile repair facilities.  I did finish the customs and immigration procedures then tried to restrart.  The car did not want to stay started unless I held down the accelerator.  I decided to try to limp to Kigali without stopping so I could get it repaired and got about halfway there from the border.  (45mins)  Then the engine started making a noise, smoking and died completely. 

This was a very unfortunate event not just for the obvious reasons, but also because I was in a very remote part of Rwanda, not particularly near any town.  I was acutely aware that there is not AAA or Norstar system out here.  I was not sure how I would get help.  

Fortunately I did have my cell phone and I called Rebecca to let her know and then our service worker Ruth in Kigali.  Ruth gave me the number of a cabbie in Kigali I knew, Charles, so I called him and asked if he could find me a mechanic and drive him the hour south to where I was to evaluate the problem.  He said he would just as the minutes ran out on my cell phone.  

I did feel pretty stranded then and hoped Charles was good for his word.  I texted Ruth and Rebecca and asked them to send units.  Eventually they did but shortly after receiving them my phone battery died.

I did not remain in isolation long though, people were passing on the road and there was a nearby village and soon I had a group hovering around to stare.  There were a couple of guys that wanted to look in the engine (bicycle taxi drivers) so I opened the hood.  I have to say, despite the fact that I have not continued my Kirundi lessons, I was really grateful that I had enough to be able to communicate rudimentarily with them as no one spoke French or English.  (Kinyarwanda is essentially the same as Kirundi).

When we opened the hood I was stunned to find the engine was extremely hot and there appeared to be no water in the radiator.  What was shocking about this was that the temperature gauge in the car had not been indicating this and I had not suspected the problem, especially because it was a cool day and I was neither heavily loaded nor driving extremely fast.

My two helpers went and filled a bucket of water and we added water to the radiator, which seemed to disappear and I wondered if there was a leak somewhere.

The car would not start even with water in it but fortunately Charles was as good as his word and came with a mechanic who brought a couple wrenches with him and set to work removing the top of the engine block.  The problem was not obvious until he opened the oil pan at the bottom and found it full of water.  Apparently the overheating of the engine had burned through a joint in the engine and the oil and water had mixed.

At this point it was clear that he would not be able to repair it on the spot.  Fortunately there are a few wreckers in Kigali and he had the number for one.  It cost about $200 to have my car towed from there to Kigali and we waited another hour and a half for it to come.  

By the time we got to Kigali it was late afternoon.  Needless to say I had missed the arrival of our visitor (Lynn Longenecker from MCC’s Global Family project) but fortunately Ruth had made arrangements to pick him up.  The mechanic seemed to feel confident that he could fix the car the next day, but I have to admit I took that promise with a grain of salt as I have been in this culture long enough to know that there is no way to get a factual answer to a question like “how long will this take” when someone knows what you would be favorably disposed to hear.

I got more units and charged my phone at Ruth's house was able to commiserate with Rebecca a bit on mutual difficulties. She is trying to get Congolese visas for her and the kids this week as Felix is on vacation and has been having a mightily difficult time with logistics, (especially since David ran out of passport pages which adds another trip to the US embassy before she can even start the project.  She also had to wire me money as I found myself cash short as a result of the extra costs of car repair I had not anticipated.

dinner at Zaffon

So I am hoping the repair will take a day, as we were supposed to travel Tuesday and now will be a day late in continuing our journe by at least one day and have a very ambitious schedule of visiting at least 2 projects in rural Burundi.  Worst case scenario is that I leave the car here with our service workers and continue on by bus.  Not a pleasant prospect as we are continuing on to the Hope School and Gitega which are not routes frequented by public transportation.  It would be a very big challenge to continue without a car.

Despite the disappointment and challenges, the day did end on a good note with the Rwanda team and Lynn and I going out to dinner at Zaffron.  The food tasted especially good to me as Rebecca and I have been doing a fast of skipping breakfast and lunch during lent.  After the long day, it was great to have such a fabulous meal to break fast with in the evening.

I should back up a bit at this point and give a synopsis of the week leading up to the last day’s events.  We continued to have a fairly busy week as far as hospitality.  We continued to host our SALTers from Rwanda for several days after our team gathering from the week before.  They stayed the night on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.  On Wednesday we had an entirely different set of guests.  Two of our partners were in town for a planning meeting for a peace conference.  Antoine from Rwanda and Laurent from Congo were over for dinner and stayed the night with us before returning to their respective countries.

Emily's Birthday

Saturday afternoon we were able to be guests for a change, rather than hosts as we took Oren to the 5 year old Birthday party of his friend Emily.  It was a fun event attended by several of the little girls who take my ballet class, which made me somewhat of a celebrity there for them.

 On Saturday evening, Rebecca and I played host to John and Jonas, Scott and Danica’s kids so that they could have a date night.  This has been a nice exchange program that we have been doing monthly with them.

Despite all of this Rebecca and I were able to keep up our daily routines of swimming and prayer in the morning prior to work, and trading off childcare in the afternoons.  We continue to enjoy our family tea time at 5pm on the porch which is now considered to be an inviolable tradition by the kids and David will cry if we even suggest that it might be a bit late to have it.  It is actually a great addition to our daily routine that gives us a time to sit together, talk, and even play with the dogs a bit.  (Who are often starved for attention.)

family tea time

One change in routine this week was that I taught Sunday School in Rebecca’s stead so that she could hear the sermon.  (She is preaching next week and wanted to know what was going on.)  I did reasonably well, although the craft I had proposed, a kind of hanging mobile with the words Love, One, Another, hanging down was a fairly long an challenging project for the 3-6 year olds.

Sunday evening we continue to host our small group and it has been a real blessing.  We have in fact added another member, Felix our program officer who also attends our church.  We also play host to about 6 kids who are children of the families who attend, so we now have a child care worker while we meet. 

All together we had guests on 6 of the 7 evenings last week.

We did say goodbye to routine officially Sunday evening as the week of travel for me with Rebecca staying home with the kids and the following 2 weeks going to Kinshasa then Zanzibar after that, it will be a while before we enjoy our normal routine again.

A Team Gathering in Bujumbura

Krystan and daughter Misha during a tea break at our team gathering this weekend.

Its amazing how quickly work can become overwhelming here. After a week of some respite we were in full swing again and there is really no end in sight.  Not that it has been all bad, but we have been doing a ton of hosting the past 5 days.  

The occasion was our team gathering.  This is something we do several times a year and is an occasion for all of us to be together.  At this time there are 11 of us all told and we are expecting another one in just over a week.  This has been one of the gratifying parts of our job in the past 4 years, to grow our team, which had 2 service workers when we arrived.  

Despite the size of the group, we did feel that we could still host them in our house.  This has the advantage mainly of being far more economical than going to a guest house in town.  Our house is more or less a guest house with its 4 bedrooms, but we had to do a considerable amount of doubling up with our kids sleeping with us, and the 3 SALTers and Yolanda sharing 2 rooms with Ruth and Krystan's family in Oren and David's room.  Felix, fortunately could stay at his house which is in the subdivision right next to ours.  He went home at night.

The gathering started on Wednesday afternoon with the two SALTers from Rwanda and Ruth and Krystan (with Misha) arriving by bus from Kigali.  Felix picked them up and they did some work on their visas as soon as they got here.  Yolanda had come down from Gitega the day before.

Our first activity together was dinner at our house.  Marceline had prepared cabbage rolls and pasta.  We had dinner then began our time together with an evening devotional and some singing (from the Mennonite Hymnal and Sing the Journey).  We also used an Anabaptist Lenten devotional throughout the week, morning and evening for our times of reflection.

The focus of our retreat this week was not something new.  We do it once per year as part of our reflection on our program.  It is basically a review and critique of MCC's stated values and the extent to which these are reflected in our programming.  As a team that means looking at this on several levels from program level to individuals seconded to partners. 

There are 8 core values with several correlaries but here is a synopsis:

1)  Relationships  -- emphasizing the prioritization of relationships and maintaining respect for all in our work.

2)  Learning -- emphasizing that we are a learning organization that adapts to the context as we come to understand  (not control it.)

3) Flexibility -- again related to adapting to the context and being accountable to local experts on the ground.

4)  Solidarity -- emphasizing our effort to have our own lifestyles on assignment not be too different than those of the people we serve.

5) Nonviolence -- like it sounds

6) Servanthood -- emphasizes humility, respect of local partners, and ways in which we steward our privileges.  

7)  Collaborative Decision-making -- as it sounds

8) Involvement with the church.  Both individually and as a program.

The last one gave us some challenges because of what I have said in past blogs about the local Mennonite Church (or lack thereof).  There was also some acknowledgement that as a donor organization, direct involvement or a accountability to a single church can be tricky because of the great temptation that creates for church leaders to try to get some MCC resources for church related projects that are not part of MCC's mandate.  (My favorite example is the frequent request we get for musical instruments for a church choir when our work is in the domain of food security and peace and reconcilliation.)  A church can find it baffling that we do not want to assist them with the former when it can contribute directly to evangelism-- their top priority.  To see things like  food security as a legitimate church activity may be a bit of a stretch.

We began the real discussion on Thursday morning after we dropped the kids off at school.  We always began with singing and devotional then launched into discussions of each value.  As with all of our work at MCC we do not end this in philosophy but are expected to come up with a concrete action plan for the next year to work on areas of weakness related to our values assesement.  We also had, as part of this gathering, the opportunity to look back over last year's objectives to see if we had succeeded.

We shared lunch and then worked in the afternoon, hiring a childcare worker to help us.  There were 3 kids in all with David, Oren and little Misha (R and K's daughter.)  The afternoons did include some creative activities as well after our second round of meetings, we did make collages using old magazines to express the things that give us joy.  It was a nice diversion and Oren and David even got into it a bit as well.  

Thursday evening we did yoga together and many stayed up late to visit.  (I fell asleep early.)  Friday was more or less a repeat of Thursday, although in the afternoon, when we took Oren to Karate, we went over to his school and several of us threw a frisbee around.  (Bethany is quite an ultimate frisbee enthusiast and even plays on an official team in Kigali.)

On Friday evening we also enjoyed watching a movie together (Midnight in Paris) a Woody Allen film.  (That had been brought by Rebecca's dad 2 weeks prior.)  

Saturday was our last day together as a group and since we had finished all of our business on Friday we made plans to go to the beach.  Our original plan was to go down to 'Blue Bay' a beach about 2 hours south of Bujumbura which is very nice with very clear water.  Ultimately, because of weather and other factors we decided to stay near and went to Club du Lak T.  Among the reasons for not going was illness.  Several people were not feeling great Oren had a very sore throat and a fever so Rebecca stayed home with him while I took David and the others to the beach.  

We had a nice afternoon there and ate lunch as well.  Here is a photo of grilled mukeke, a local fish unique to Lake Tanganyika, that is quite tasty.

When we came home we had a closing ceremony in which we came into a circle and went through the group one by one to affirm everyone.  We also remembered that this would be our last team gathering with Ruth and Krystan present.  They will be finishing their assignment in mid April and leaving Rwanda.  The exciting news though is that they have accepted another assignment with MCC as Country Representatives for MCC Eastern Europe.  They will be moving to Sarejevo in August after a stint at home in Canada.

I should mention that dinner Saturday night was awesome as well.  We asked Marceline to not make food that night and we cooked as a team.  With the help of Ruth, Yolanda and Annie we made and ate gado-gado, an Indonesian dish featuring various vegetables egg and other items over rice and covered with a spicy peanut sauce.  (Annie was the expert on the peanut sauce.)

We went to bed pretty late on Saturday, but did get up on Sunday for church. By this point though, Oren’s fever was quite high and his throat was in agony, we started him on antibiotics, but I stayed home with him while Rebecca and David went to church.  The rest of the team began heading out of town.  Ruth and Krystan and Misha went with Yolanda to Gitega.  Their plan was to visit Yolanda’s home then go on to Burasira to see Jodi (former MCCer).  (This is where the Hope School is located.)  It is such a nice place, they wanted to go one more time before they left the region.  Their plan is to continue on to Kigali from there.

The SALTers are hanging out together for a few more days and pay a visit to Yolanda on Tuesday.  Today (Monday) they did go down to Blue Bay for some swimming and had a bit of an adventure when a hippopotamus emerged out of the water just a very short distance from them.  It actually ran into another swimmer.  Everyone apparently cleared out of the swimming area.  Fortunately there were no injuries. 

Oren was home from school today, but looks markedly better.  Hopefully he will be well enough to go back tomorrow.  We will continue to have guests this whole week, but I’ll get to that another time. 

I should mention one important piece of really good news.  It goes back to some reports I was writing last year about a friend fighting corruption.  This person was a model of patience and hope under tribulation and false charges and was even arrested and imprisoned for several months with no due process or even a credible charge.  As of this week, all charges have finally been dropped and he and his wife were cleared to reopen their pharmacy.  It had been closed for about a year and a half because of corruption.

I won’t mention it by name, but those of you who live in or have lived in Burundi in the mission community know who I am talking about.  Justice does ultimately prevail if one is patient and courageous.

Bonus Photo: The MCC Rwanda Burundi program Team.  (less Felix, Oren and David)

Contending with Patrimonial Justice

Rebecca and Oren enjoying a Chef Salad and Fruit Salad at Club du Lak Tanganyika on Sunday.


There are some weeks where a lot happens but little of it can be written about in a public forum such as a blog.  This is one of those weeks and I will say that this can be because a matter is personally sensitive but it is more often a problem of political sensitivity.  As open as I try to be about our life here, we are keenly aware that there are certain topics of discussion that are off-limits.

But in the abstract, I think there is some opportunity for reflection.  The matter that is on my mind has to do with 'justice'.  I am aware now how much I have made cultural assumption about what that word means in the ideal.  And whether or not our institutions live up to this ideal, the basic premise is that there are, created by civil society, laws (rights and prohibitions) that apply to all regardless of race, creed, or social status.

There are, of course egregious examples in our own history where we do not live up to our ideals, but generally this is met with disapproval and tongue clicking when looking back at such events.  (O.J. Simpson comes to mind.)

In a patrimonial culture as we find in Burundi, there seems to be a different idea of justice, not based on an external civil code to which all are accountable, but rather on hierarchical social relations, where right is decided by one's connections in the hierarchical net work to patrons or big men of varying social stature.  One's access to a just outcome is based primarily on how one is connected and not focused primarily on the facts in evidence or some universally accepted civil code.

What is even more complicated here, is that since Independence most countries here have a colonially inherited western criminal justice system which functions to some degree, but does not supercede the power of the patrimonial justice system which remains very much intact.  In fact these two systems will run in tandem with the former appearing to be engaged seriously in a process of inquiry while the other moves along 'behind the scenes.'

What happens as a result of these parallel justice systems can be very frustrating to a westerner who finds himself in the need of justice.  This can happen because of ignorance of a civil code, false accusation, or even more frequently through the corrupt machinations of government functionaries.

In this aforementioned event the simultaneous process begins, one in the institutions of justice like the courts, and at the same time in the patrimonial system of big-men.  I have sadly found in all the cases that have affected people I know to date, that the court system invariably reaches an impasse and finds itself unable to render any judgment at all because the real authority to decide a matter lies in the hidden network of big-men who have the real power and authority to make decisions and render judgment.

What this means also, as a westerner, is that if one mistakenly believes that justice will be done through the courts, he will find himself wasting a lot of time,'proving his innocence' and will ultimately fail.  In order to prevail, one has to work through one's contacts and social relations to find a big-man who is an advocate. Ultimately what justice amounts to is lining up the big-men against each other and the one with the biggest big-man will prevail.

I don't know how I feel about this.  There are times, like this week, where we see this system exploited to undermine and threaten people we know here to be doing very good work, and find little recourse in trying to fight false accusations in a court of law.  On the other hand, as an American and one who has been here for a while, I find that we are fairly well connected to some powerful people in government and could probably benefit from these connections for various advantages we may want or need.

That, in short sums up some areas of frustration we have faced this week without saying anything too specific.

I will say that one recourse we do have is prayer and it has felt to be the only place of recourse several times this week.  Fortunately Rebecca and I both belong to prayer groups that we attend separately during the week and on Sunday we have our small group which is already beginning to feel like a real place of empowerment.


To get into the less abstract events of the week, I would begin by noting that it seems that one or both of us were out every evening, or else hosting someone(s) at our home.  On Monday Rebecca was out with her friends for their monthly 'Ladies Night Out'.  This usually includes Naja, Tanja, Jeanette and one or two others (I was not invited so I don't know.)

On Tuesday we hosted a visitor from the Mennonite Mission Network, Steve Wiebe-Johnson who was here more or less on a fact finding mission about the emergent Mennonite Churches here in Burundi.  I have written about these churches before and the challenge they are for us as an International Mennonite Organization.  These churches were created by pastors who registered with the government as the legal representative of a Mennonite Church here.  The fact that they have no connection to the larger global Mennonite family did not seem to be a major issue for them (there are 2).  In effect, they bought the Mennonite franchise in Burundi.  It is hard to know to what extent the leaders are sincere in their faith or just opportunists, (I am not making in judgment here.)  But discerning this was essentially Steve's task in coming here.  We did have dinner with him on Tuesday and had a nice conversation.  He also thoughtfully brought several kids books for Oren and David and some homemade fudge for us.  Needless to say, he made a very good impression.

Thursday was date night.  This is thanks to our arrangement with Scott and Danica to do a babysitting exchange at least once per month.  Rebecca and I went out to our favorite restaurant in town called Botanika.  I will say the experience was hampered a bit by a bad toothache for me, but also because it seems that the management might have changed.  I felt this because while the menu remained the same, we found that everything kind of came out a bit like a Burundian version of what was described.  The roqueford salad, for instance came out with no cheese on it whatsoever but covered with raw onions.   e The pork tikka I ordered was just pork in a white sauce, no spice whatsoever. The veggies were also very typical, carrots and green beans.  I am hoping the managers were just away this week, but I fear that the restaurant might not continue to be a favorite place to go out as a couple.

Friday evening Rebecca was out again, this time at an elders meeting for the church.  She continued church work on Saturday afternoon with a Sunday School teacher's training seminar.  I entertained the kids through all of this, and on Saturday evening we had a nice dinner with our friends Thomas and Naja.  This does remind me that one of the highlights of the week was having a guest cook, actually Yolanda's cook Alphonsine was down from Gitega to learn some things from Marcelline and to teach her as well.  Alphonsine has extensive experience in preparing western dishes and even spent several years with a Greek family.  We enjoyed an babaganoush as well as moustafa and various soups when Naja and Thomas were here.  The kids had fun with Elias and Aviajah.

Unfortunately both David and I started to get a virus on Saturday and both went to bed with a fever.  We did wake up feeling better on Sunday morning though and after church went to the beach.  It was nice to go and swim with the kids and relax together.  I took the opportunity to try out the new camera with some portraits that I have put into this week's post.

This coming week we will be having a team gathering here in Bujumbura so another week with a full house of guests.

Seeing the Church in Action in Eastern Congo

Picture of Bukavu along Lake Kivu from the Guesthouse balcony.

I think there is a temptation, for those of us in the world of mission/development, to look with a certain smug cynicism on the history of the church in countries that were evangelized during the time of colonization.  While it is true that it is easy to point out the many failings of early missionaries, and even the complicity of some in clearly sinful injustice, I think we sometimes do our best to reinforce this narrative and even avoid seeing the ways the Gospel can be a transforming power in these places.  

For instance, this week, as I prepared to go to Bukavu in Eastern DRC I was reading King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild, an excellent, riveting history of the Congo from the 14th century on.  The first contact with the Portugese by the kingdom of Congo led quickly to lucrative slave trading (at first with the Congolese nobility in complicity, but later enslaving even them.)  In one chapter he explains that some priests who had gone out to evangelize and had established churches became so enamored of the potential for wealth that they sold their entire congregations to slavers.  He further notes that after the reformation, in a nod toward morality, some did refuse to sell their converts to any Protestant slavers because they did not want to send those baptized into their faith into the hands of heretics.

While such stories no longer shock me, I will say that I think it is a mistake to think that all Christians in any era were equally abominably immoral either then or now.   In this blog entry I am committed to tell a story of encouragement about the work of the church in Eastern Congo that is embarking on a noble and dangerous mission to bring justice and relief to groups of people virtually imprisoned by rebel groups in the bush.  

UN refugee camp where Rwandan refugees are processed
before repatriation

I should probably explain what I was doing in Eastern Congo this week.  In fact I was only there for 3 days and it was part of what I would call a learning tour or exchange visit between some of our Rwanda partners, and some MCC partners in Eastern DRC.  

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I actually left Bujumbura on Friday right after the kids got out of school.  From Bujumbura there is a fairly direct route to several places in Eastern Congo, and Bukavu, my destination was about 3 hours away.  The road passes through Rwanda for about 45 minutes before arriving at the border town across the Rusizi river from Bukavu at the bottom of Lake Kivu.  

The difference between the two countries is actually quite shocking.  Rwanda which has well kept roads and clean communities is in stark contrast to Bukavu which I would describe as  wreck of a city, which is sad because it could be beautiful.  It overlooks Lake Kivu from small hills and could easily pass for somewhere along the Italian Riviera.  But alas, when one arrives there you find that there has been no interest by the government in keeping up roads and infrastructure and the whole place looks like a dump,  in all the areas of public use.  Behind walled compounds though one can see very nice multi-story houses so there is wealth here, but not for public consumption.  The town is also a ghetto for numerous NGO's relief organizations and a large company of UN peacekeepers and other UN agencies.  Almost every car on the road that is not a taxi is a landcruiser with an emblem on it.

The state of the city is sad and does continue to confirm my belief that all the really good things in life come from investment in public goods through government spending and taxes.  (for roads, schools, parks, railroads, running water, sewage systems, electricity, etc.)  If you don't believe me come to Bukavu where there is no govt. spending whatsoever as far as I can see.  Ironically the cost of living here is extremely high and rents in Bukavu apparently exceed those in Kinshasa.  

I arrived with 5 colleagues from Rwanda at about 3pm and we crossed the border and took 2 taxis to our guest house.  It was fairly calm but had no consistent water or electricity.  They did run a generator at night.  Actually the 15 minute trip to the hotel is a story in itself.  Taxi drivers do not want to put a penny's worth of gas more than they will use, so there are people on the street that sell it by liter (quart) even less, in little bottles.  When you hire a cab the driver will buy a little bottle, put it in the tank and go.

selling gas by the liter on the road.

Our driver had so little gas that he found he could not get up a hill from the border to the center of town. That is until he turned the car around.  With the angle of the engine down the car started, so he backed up at about 30mph up the hill along the narrow street to the top, then flipped it back around and took us to the hotel where we spent the rest of the evening.

Before dinner we had a time of devotion with our group leader and the pastor of the Bukavu Mennonite Bretheren Church.  We went to bed and the next morning, after breakfast, went out by cab again to visit some partners of MCC DRC.   We visited several but I will recount the story of the work of one called the RRP (refugee repatriation program).  This group works to help bring Rwandese refugees out of the bush and get them repatriated back to Rwanda.  These refugees are primarily hutus who fled after the genocide and there remains quite a few thousand FDLR armed rebels hiding in the forest.  The problem is that they have with them many more thousand non-combatant Rwandese, particularly women and children who could go back to Rwanda and rejoin families or start a new life.  

Many are not aware of this option, and the rebels are committed to keep them in the bush with them as it gives them protection.  The work of the RRP is to get the word out to those who would like to flee the bush about the opportunity to be repatriated.  The RRP gives information as well as transportation out of the bush.  What makes it dangerous is, as mentioned above, the FDLR leaders do not want anyone to return and leave them in the bush alone without protection (human shields)

The other problem is that some of these people are in such remote parts of the forest that they are unreachable by the army or any NGOs. The RRP, however, has a very valuable network because it belongs to a larger organization of protestant churches that have small congregations everywhere in the region, even in extremely remote areas.  In many of these remote areas members of the rebel groups even go to these churches and would hear any messages brought by the local church leader.  

Pastor Kipindula who leads the organization told us that pastors can get the word out about the chance for repatriation and help organize 'escapes' from the forest for those who want to 'flee'.  In other words the church in uniquely positioned to be an agent of non-violent liberation and transformation in this situation and they are taking on that role willingly at great personal risk.

To date they have saved about 11,000 refugees who were stuck in the forest not knowing they could return to Rwanda and terrified of leaving for fear of being killed.

This has been a very effective campaign and far more effective, according to Pastor Kipindula than the campaigns by the Congolese army to route the rebels.  (Ironically all of their military campaigns are called things like "Peace", or "True Peace", and "Durable Peace")  The problem is that they tend to go in and fight rebels, killing some, which leads to retribution somewhere else, to which the army usually responds by massacring everyone they come upon in a remote community.  For many it is as if the war in the jungle is not over at all.)

The pastor also said that in the early days their work was even more hampered by the fact that the army did not support them talking to communities where the FDLR was because they were the enemy, and the FDLR in the communities would accuse them of being spies for the army.  Despite this, this organization has been working through the network of remote churches since 2006 at great personal risk,proclaim quietly the gospel: to preach freedom to the captives--AND to help them in their escape.  Most of those who have fled have been women and children, who are most frequently the victims of the conflict .

We saw the good work of several other organizations but I wanted to give details of this activity because it is a good counter-narrative to the one I often hear here about self-serving pastors and failed churches.

We had a chance to reflect on what we learned in the evening, then on Sunday morning we headed back to Bujumbura and Kigali (for our partners).  I was back home about the time Rebecca and the kids got home from church.

That was the end of the week, but it is worth mentioning some of the interesting events of the beginning as well.  We were in town most of the time and had a pretty full house.  Yolanda was down unexpectedly as she was sick and had tested positive for malaria.  We encouraged her to come down from Gitega to convalesce at our house which she did.  We also had Jodi down for several days with us, not because of illness.  Although all of us seemed to have something that was going around.  I was sick with a very sore throat and had to be on antibiotics.  Jodi, Oren, and Rebecca all had a touch of it at times as well.

By Friday, we were all feeling better though and Jodi and Yolanda returned back upcountry on the weekend.

Friday was a special day at school for David.  It was his first ever field trip.  His teacher and another teacher in the maternelle took their classes to see horses at Circle Hippique (a place David loves to go.)  They are studying the Cheyenne Indians in their classes and learned about the Indians riding horses.  The kids all got to put on their Indian headresses and shirts they had made and ride a horse.  

Parents were invited to go and Rebecca decided to go along to be sure he would be OK.  (We know from going there that the horses are often roaming around free and she did not want David to get stepped on.)  Apparently there were no mishaps and the kids had a great time as is apparent in the pictures.

Sunday afternoon I was back in time for our small group which is now meeting for its second week.  It is a real blessing to be able to share together especially in this season of Lent.  

Bonus photo:  Oren has been losing his teeth in the past month.  He is starting to look grown-up and pretty funny too.