Witnessing a Local Catastrophe

The Bujumbura Central Market on fire.  (Photo not taken by me--looks like it is from the Kiriri hillside.)

“In Burundi, markets always burn down on a Sunday morning.”  This observation is offered to me on Monday morning in the aftermath of a local catastrophe--the complete demolition of the Central market in Bujumbura.  Astere, an acquaintance of mine who had until yesterday a market stall in which he sold T shirts and shorts his brother would bring from Tanzania, clicks his tongue and shakes his head.  I am not sure what to say.  The word on the street is that the fire was no accident.  Not terrorism, but something by which someone will profit, probably in a rebuilding project. 

The ordeal began about 24 hours before when I woke up Sunday morning to a rising column of black smoke visible from our back porch.  There was ash on our driveway and car, but from our house it appeared to be some kind of small fire in the neighborhood.  We got ready for church and when our day guard arrived he asked if we had heard the news.  I said no and he told me the Central market was on fire and burning out of control.  We ran out to look again at the tower of black smoke and realized that although it was at least 4 kilometers away it was enormous.  The image of a tower of smoke rising up on a clear morning did conjure up a haunting reminder of 9/11, and probably in terms of per capita income the damage to Bujumbura is comparable.  In fact, until this, the central market here had the distinction of being one of the largest covered markets in Central Africa.

View from our porch.

 We did go ahead and drive to church although we avoided the center of town and hugged the lake.  We were a bit worried that no one would be there because the market area is also the transport center for local buses, but most people were there.  Everyone knew what was happening and we prayed for those who were affected and for protection of the Burundi economic system which will be negatively affected by this devastating loss. 

When we returned home the smoke was still rising and there were helicopters shunting water back and forth from the lake in a large sort of cask.  I tried to listen to the radio but most of the news was only in Kirundi.  From what I could understand, the cause was unknown.  The Vice President announced the establishment of a commission to investigate the cause and is expected to release a report soon.

I sit with Astere in my office on Monday, and reflect on the events of the past 24 hours and hear him recount his own attempts to get to the market to recover some merchandise.  He is wearing a pair of pants that is all that is left of his stock.  He had actually taken it out for a customer the day before.  Others were not so lucky, at least one woman died when she returned to recover 500,000,000 Burundian Francs she had locked up in her stand.  ($312,000)

He is actually lucky as he has two income streams having recently acquired a car that he uses as a taxi.  He tells me he will not go back and restart his market business again.  Those who are less fortunate will have to figure out what to do next.  This is barely a culture that uses banks, or credit cards, but fire insurance and other social safety nets are nonexistent outside gifts from the international foreign aid community. 

Astere is telling me the rampant rumors that the fire got out of control quickly because there was an accelerant that was spread around and that some vendors were supposedly even warned about the blaze the day before.

I have to say I remain skeptical of Astere’s rumors.  The Central Market did not have any safety features built in, and was extremely crowded full of wooden stalls where fabric and clothing were stored.  Even without electricity, one could imagine some kind of small fire from a charcoal stove or phone cord catching a stall on fire and having that burn out of control.  But I am also skeptical that any fact finding mission by the Vice President will give us any insight into the real cause.  This is not a country where people really want to dig deeply to know the truth about most things, and I further doubt that there are any arson forensics teams with sophisticated enough capacity to make a determination anyway. 

Rumors are rampant here and conspiracy theories abound.  For instance, it is a commonly held belief by many in the region that AIDS was an illness deliberately planted by white people to control the population of blacks.  There is also a fierce belief in the Illuminati (a Satanic cabal of world political and financial moguls that control the world) and their manipulation of world markets to keep Africans poor.  I had a customs official actually ask me at the border, after seeing my passport, if it was true that the Illuminati controlled the entire US entertainment industry.  I told him I did not believe in the Illuminati although there are powerful monied interests that exert quite a bit of control in our country.  He did not seemed convinced and either thought I was naïve, or else was part of the Illuminati and was covering for them.

By the same token, many mysterious deaths of infants and young children here are explained away as witchcraft even though the complete inadequacy of child and maternal healthcare to treat preventable illnesses could very easily explain the high infant mortality rate.

All that to say, I don’t know what the cause of the fire was nor do I think there will be any conclusive finding.  I think the likehood of it being an accident is just as plausible as some kind of deliberate action.   Don’t get me wrong, I do know there are many here who would gladly do something to profit for themselves at great cost and suffering to many, but the ones who do that are generally fairly shielded through political connections from consequences for their actions and are almost never exposed to justice.    What I do know is that it is a local catastrophe that will have ongoing consequences for the economy for some time.

I'm the designated dog-walker

Despite this event, our Sunday was not entirely abnormal, we did in fact go to church, I helped Rebecca in Sunday school, and in the afternoon we went to small group.  I did notice that the smoke rose throughout the day but by evening seemed to be pretty much out.

The earlier part of the week was also blessedly normal as far as routine for Rebecca and I.  We were both home all week, the first time in months.  The kids were not sick and went to school without incident.  Our weekly routine includes certain rituals: a morning swim for Rebecca and I, an evening walk with the dogs on the weekdays, tea time on the porch as a family on Mondays and Saturdays.  Oren does karate on Tuesday and Thursday and soccer on Wednesday and Friday, I teach ballet Friday afternoon and evening.  We also go out for icecream as a family after karate on Thursday.  There is one store in Burundi that sells softserve.  (It is a machine brought from Dubai).  It is a big treat that the kids really look forward to.

Some variations in the routine included visits from Melody Musser who was in town at the beginning of the week.  She did some work with me on a new 3 year project proposal for a Peacebuilding Institute.  She left to return to Gitega on Wednesday but Teri-Lynn Jordan (our SALTer) arrived on Friday from the Hope School in Mutaho.  She needed a break for a few days as her assignment is very isolated and her living situation is very simple.  To come down to our house in Buja is like coming to the Hilton.  (Her blog about life at the school is here.)  By the way, she has created a Facebook page for the Hope School where she works.  (The link for the Hope School page is here.)

field visit.

She seems to be doing well and always has many stories about life there and teaching.  We were excited to hear that the school has broken ground for a new library which should be completed in the next several months.

Rebecca went on a field visit to one of our partners who runs an AIDS clinic and watched them running a training on taking meds regularly and how HIV is spread.  She was sad to see that the biggest challenge for those taking ARVs is that many cannot afford to buy enough food to be able to take the meds with a meal and consequently cannot keep them down without suffering extreme nausea.  Even with free meds available, poverty continues to make the actual effective use them nearly impossible.

Other variations to the weekly routine have included a late celebration of Advent with the children because we finally received our first Christmas package in the mail this week! Included inside was our chocolate advent calendar from Gramma Jean. We decided to have a week of Advent during Epiphany. Oren, who really loves solemn ceremony, has helped us find our way: 4 advent doors per night (with one chocolate for each of us), 4 lit candles, all other lights out. And Oren did the reading of the Christmas story, sounding things out fairly well in English!

Isabel's cake

Friday was interesting as Teri-Lynn joined one of my classes for ballet.  She has not been before and it was great to see a well-trained dancer in class.  I have mentioned before my surprise at how many people with dance training find their way into development work and end up in Third World countries like Burundi. 

In the evening Oren and I had a father-son night and went to a French film together being shown at his school.  (actually it was ParaNorman)  He was quite scared but really liked the chance to have me alone.  (The kids are in a pretty intense sibling rivalry phase this year.)

water balloon fight

Saturday we enjoyed seeing a large number of other missionary families at Isabel's Birthday.  (Isabel is the daughter of Tim and Jeanette (South African friends.)   I think just about everyone from

Rebecca has a few unrelated notes to add at the end here:

Our mechanic Musafiri stopped by the office saying, “Congratulations!”. “Why?” we asked. “Because you got one of your computers back!” “Yes, but how did you know?” Well, I was going to make a few inquiries for you with the street kids I know, but they told me that the mzungu had already gotten his computer back.” Cool? Creepy? You decide!

obligatory bouncy castle:-)

David wrote his name for the first time all by himself (in our sight) in Sunday school last week.

When one disposable diaper costs more than your daily food allowance for your family, how do you cope? I had some guesses, but finally got to see a mother change her child’s diaper in a poor urban neighborhood meeting this week. She had a piece of local cotton fabric, very colorful, folded over many times into a long rectangle, and then double folded at the front end, just like we did with our cloth diapers. She passed that through the child’s legs and then whipped out an old plastic shopping bag with the handles cut and stretched out. The back-side was tied around to the front, and the front side tied around to the back, and Voila! Plastic pants! Very good use of resources.

Give us Courage for the Journey--GLI 2013

Participants praying at Lake Victoria during the GLI pilgrimage.

When you descend from the mountain, how can you describe the view from the top to those who remained in the valley all during your climb? (And judging by last week’s blog, my husband was certainly in the valley) How can you communicate the thrill of possibility, as you were able to glimpse a distant horizon, visible only to you and your fellow travellers?

This year for me, participating in the Great Lakes Initiative Institute felt like a long climb, but with a particularly satisfying sense of accomplishment at the end. I was actually fairly sick from the end of December right through my arrival to Uganda. So I was very concerned about my energy level to fulfill my role, helping to facilitate worship at this ecumenical, multi-cultural, multi-lingual conference. But also, I departed for Uganda feeling as if I might have already made my most important contribution before the Institute even happened.

Duke Divinity School’s Center for Reconciliation has been the catalyst for this Institute – this year was the seventh gathering that they have hosted in the Great Lakes region. Yes, in some ways, you might think that it is just another conference on reconciliation for Christian leaders. But what makes it so different is that it is deeply Christian, deeply theological, and deeply committed to bridging the divide between Protestants and Catholics.

As a partner of the GLI, I found myself reflecting six months ago about how important it was to bring together the right people to consider this message together. We needed to be more strategic – and one glaring deficiency lay right before our eyes: the Burundi delegation to the GLI had been100% Protestant for at least 3 years. Unlike every other delegation from the 7 countries in the region, no Catholics were consistently involved in this movement, in spite of the fact that Burundi is at least 70% Roman Catholic.

I must confess that I felt quite intimidated about approaching the Catholic hierarchy about participating in the GLI this year. But with the help of our program assistant Felix, we reached out to the Archbishop of Bujumbura and he enthusiastically agreed to send two key people, the Vicar General and the Executive of the Justice and Peace Commission. Our friend Jodi also helped us to make a better connection with Father Zacharie Bukuru from the monastery of Buta, and he agreed to come. And we helped the GLI with logistical support to get Maggy Barankitse to Kampala this year. In then end there were 6 Catholics total out of 17 Burundians present – a big improvement in numbers. Even more encouraging was to see how engaged and receptive this delegation of Catholics was. I found all of them very open to learning from the larger gathering, and spotted them in deep, intense conversation with our Protestant leaders throughout the week. And so the week unfolded through a series of questions:

New Creation – Reconciliation towards what?

On the first full day, GLI Ambassador Wilfred Mlay helped us consider the whole biblical story. God’s mission of reconciliation began in the garden and has an assured ending in the new heavens and new earth. And day-by-day, new creation is being revealed, in us as new creations in Christ, and in the work we do faithfully to reveal his kingdom among us. As Christian leaders we are not simply called to work on plans to bring peace to the region. Together we were challenged to let go of our own agendas, and go out as ambassadors of reconciliation relying on God’s resources and methodologies rather than our own.

Maggy Barankitse with Emanuel Ndikumana and
Father Zacharie Bukuru.

Maggy Barankitse brought witness from Burundi about how new creation is possible. She told a number of poignant stories about children whom she helped to rescue and raise during the Burundi civil war, and who now are forming a new community of hope where ethnic hatred has been transformed into a new identity as a people. She spoke of a young girl named Gloriose who watched a man murder her parents and then was raped by that very man. The rape led to a pregnancy, and Gloriose was given the option to terminate the pregnancy. But she decided that she would give birth to this child, whom she decided to name Namahoro (Peace). That child conceived in violence now just finished secondary school and is a beautiful young woman who offers a vision of a new identity in Burundi.

Lament – What is going on?

Dr. Katho from Bunia, Congo, taught from the prophet Jeremiah – drawing from the moment when the prophet is so deeply discouraged by his own mission and the suffering that God has led him into that he wishes he had never been born. Both Katho and other participants from DRC shared raw and fresh stories of the suffering they have witnessed or experienced, particularly from the invasion of Goma in November. There was a real knife-edge of pain throughout this day, as the Congolese participants couldn’t help expressing their frustration with Rwanda for contributing to their suffering. Many Rwandese were quietly angry about being accused in this way. The community found ourselves confronting a dilemma: some wanted to write a petition, to ask for political action, to advocate for a certain position. But as ambassadors of Christ (not any of the nations present) to whom do we write, and what kind of petition would Jesus write?

One of the most satisfying aspects of this day for me was being given permission to include a very Catholic worship service in the week. We cannot celebrate the mass together without being divisive. But I was able to ask Father Zacharie and the other priests to lead us in a traditional evening prayer. They led beautifully chanted psalms of lament, and the highlight of the time of worship was a very long period of silence into which God could speak.

The next morning, I was reading Genesis, the story of Jacob the trickster, heading back home to face his brother Esau. Jacob, who stole the birthright and the blessing from Esau, who had been gone for 20 years, spends all night alone, wrestling with God. And finally in the morning, he sends out herds of livestock (restitution?) to Esau’s approaching band of 400 armed men. What fear Jacob must have felt, and yet what courage to finally face his enemy! And at last Jacob is warmly received by Esau, and he blurts out “to see your smiling face showing me favor is like seeing the face of God!” And maybe that is really true – that we can’t even see God’s face until we see the smiling face of our enemy.

Pilgrimage – what are the signs of hope?

Dr. Ellen Davis, professor of Old Testament from Duke Divinity School, gave a beautiful lecture from the little book of consolation (Chs 30 – 33) of the prophet Jeremiah. It was thrilling to see how God promises Jeremiah a restored community in which power relations are reorganized to include the weak, there is personal spiritual renewal, and there is a new value of the covenant promise of the land. It was interesting to be sitting next to a Burundian agronomist during that session, hearing for the first time that his calling is one that is deeply blessed by God. But of course, from the beginning, God promised his people the heritage of the land from generation to generation, not just as a monument, but as a blessing, a place where they could grow food and sustain their communities. And now, we’ve lost that sense of the value of the land. It has become just another commodity to sell and profit from. We forget that when foreign investors make land grabs in central Africa, there are families who become displaced into perpetual poverty without the resources to grow food for themselves and their children. And in over-populated Rwanda and Burundi, land conflicts between returning refugees and those who stayed through the civil war, pose the greatest threat to peace.

We also made a walking pilgrimage together to Lake Victoria, a time that offered many of us the chance to make new friends and stretch our legs. But it also gave us a time to pray for the region and for all the difficult aspects of our context. Most of my photos from the week come from that day.

What kind of Leadership is needed?

Emmanuel Ndikumana, the founder of our church community in Burundi, spoke from his heart on this question. His essential point was simple: we need to be leaders who are willing to follow the example of Jesus. And this is not easy. It entails suffering and forbearance. We need to know we are on God’s mission, not our own. That was what gave Jeremiah the endurance for his 40 years of prophesy, in which he stood alone against a complex, corrupt system. We also heard a wonderful testimony from Dr. Sam Orach, a Ugandan physician who humbly told the story of how he founded a hospital and became the director of Catholic medical services in Uganda. He is a man clearly motivated by following Jesus, and he has suffered ostracism, misunderstanding and even threats on his life for doing so.

Spirituality – Why me? Why bother?

From the night before, I was really praying for God to do something that hadn’t yet happened at this GLI gathering. And I believe on this day that he did it. During morning worship, there was a very special feeling of reverence and prayer, including a chant of Psalm 103, led by seminarians from Ggaba National seminary (our host venue). Then God worked powerfully through Faith Mlay, as she challenged each of us to bother about the daily and extraordinary atrocities that happen in our region, to let “something that is in you that connects to God the Father be pierced.” She was followed by Father Zacharie, who told the story of the 40 martyrs of Buta. (See our blog from Sept 2008 for more details). These were seminarians he had trained and healed of ethnic hatred at the beginning of the civil war, and when they were finally attacked, they refused to separate by ethnic group and died for that commitment. The remarkable thing about Fr. Zacharie’s story was that his recounting of horrible events was permeated by a sense of joy and wonder at God’s marvelous works. Everything was inspired by Jesus’ victory through the cross, his refusal of violence and his deep, deep love of his enemies. Even as his students were being shot, God was ministering love and healing and forgiveness to Zacharie, preparing him to face the horror of their deaths.

We ended the day with a worship celebration that was incredibly simple and wonderful. A Kenyan pastor led us in an extended time of prayer, in which special groups of people were asked to stand and receive blessing, including the ambassadors of Christ from Congo and Rwanda who need extra courage right now. And then each of us were able to go and ask for a blessing from some of our “elders.” The worship team led us in quiet music at first but then, we got to the very simple song, “God is so good,” which we were able to sing in almost all the mother tongues of GLI participants, and then a bunch of young men got behind the set of traditional Ugandan drums in the chapel and there was nothing to do but just spend several minutes dancing in thanksgiving as we praised God for his goodness.

Some Burundi GLI participants.

So, among the joys for me was the gift of being able to involve lots of different people from different cultures and traditions in the community worship. It is something I love to do, and learned about from my old friend Donna Dinsmore at Regent College. It’s a great challenge, but as Emmanuel Ndikumana said, it is practice for heaven. I was also blessed to work together with a wonderful Rwandese woman named Josephine Munyeli. She has a such a sweet spirit and was a blessing to me (on the last night, I was fussing with lots of things in the chapel and trying to get ready and she said, “why don’t you just sit down for a moment and rest in the Lord?”). Six weeks before the GLI, we had met to prepare some of the worship music. No previous theme songs had been adequate, so we decided that it would be worthwhile to write a theme song especially for the GLI, set to the tune of a well-known African hymn. To my great joy, this song really blessed the community and seemed to help us pray what was in our hearts, as we started and ended each day. The text is printed below and we’ll try to attach an imperfect video of the community singing the hymn on our last morning.

Til all things reconciled

We your people sing your praises

As together we are sent
to reveal your new creation

In the shadows of lament.
Give us courage for the journey,

Shepherd Jesus be our guide;

Help us lead with hope and passion,

Til all things are reconciled

Bon Berger ton peuple t'adore

Ici en Mission pour toi
A travers les lamentations

Vient la nouvelle création
Guide nous sur ce voyage

Et nous aurons la Passion
Le courage et l’Esperance

Pour la réconciliation

Text: 2013 © Rebecca Mosley and Josephine Munyeli

Music: African traditional hymn

Doug Hiebert

So the GLI ended, we got on a plane and left Saturday morning. I was so happy to see my husband and kids at the airport, and to get all the kisses I missed all week. We had a special pizza lunch by the lake and then went to the zoo to celebrate being together again. It was so good to be with them! And I was tired after a week of little sleep and lots of attention to things happening in the spiritual realm. This morning at our church, it was a blessing to see Doug Heibert (our MCC rep predecessor) leading worship and preaching.

And what are the things on the horizon? I think we all glimpsed for the first time the possibility of some real collaboration between Protestants and Catholics in Burundi. We will have to see what shape that takes – theological reflection together on reconciliation? Learning together how to prepare the church for biblical reconciliation in the upcoming TRC process? Working on healing our own wounds of brokenness and division? Speaking prophetically to the government about restorative justice – so that truth can be told and justice can be done and yet reconciliation can still be reached? For the short run, I will be reflecting on Father Zacharie’s words, “I don’t have hope for change from the political arena. Reconciliation is God’s business. And reconciliation cannot be delegated. It is up to me to do what I can.” May God help us all to do what we can.

Movie of GLI participants singing theme song.

Debordé After a Week in Kigali

Matt Gates in Kigali in front of his house with his pet Turkey.  Sorry no other photos this week.  Rebecca has the camera in Uganda.  More next week.

Some days are tougher than others, but this past Thursday was a real doozy.  It was not that there was anything particularly bad about it, in fact I spent half the day on a bus coming back from Kigali where I had just spent the past 4 days with partners and our service workers, helping them prepare project plans and reports for the next fiscal year.  I usually try to schedule travel in the first half of the week so that I can teach my dance classes on Friday and also be home for the weekend.  (Which we try to not use for work.)  

The problem was that my return was coming just hours before Rebecca's departure for a full week to Kampala, Uganda, where she is helping to lead worship for an annual conference hosted by Duke University called GLI (The Great Lakes Initiative.)  Both of these trips were to be challenge as one of us had to be away while the other did full time parenting for many days.  But having only Thursday afternoon and evening for transition between the 2 trips was just about the limit of what we could manage.

Rebecca's conference has required a tremendous amount of coordination as she is essentially leading a delegation of church VIPs from Burundi as well as some service workers and local partners.  She will also be leading worship there as part of a team.  This has meant a lot of last minute scurrying about to make sure plane and bus tickets are in the right hands, and everyone knows where they need to be to catch their rides.  There are about a 18 people going from  Rwanda and Burundi and Rebecca has been responsible for all their logistics.  

This did mean that much of our transition day was spent preparing for the next trip rather than reflecting on the last one, and precious little time for us to reconnect as a couple of family.  We did successfully get her off on the plane on Friday morning though after dropping the kids off to school and taking a swim.  Friday afternoon was a bit of a challenge as I teach my 3 ballet classes and Oren goes to soccer.  I brought the kids with me to class and through coordination with some mothers there, I was able to get the kids dropped off back home where Yolanda and Melody has come down in preparation for joining Rebecca in Kampala the next day.  

……………………………. 4 day interlude……………………………………….

Debordé is a french word I have come to appreciate.  It basically means overwhelmed, but it summons up this image of a boat either taking on too much cargo or water and beginning to sink below the surface.  It describes fairly well how I have been feeling the past few days since Rebecca's departure.  The weekend went well enough, we had yoga and then I took the kids to the lake for the afternoon on Saturday.  

We went to church on Sunday and I ended up helping in David's class as there were not many monitors and he has not been good about staying in the classroom.  We had a leisurely afternoon and then went to small group where the kids played very well with their friends while the adults met.  I felt I had the single parent routine down pretty well, even got Oren's homework done for Monday morning.

We got off to school in good time on Monday and I went to work.  When we got back for lunch though I discovered there was no one home.  Apparently our staff was sick.  Odifax came in a bit later and said he was getting better, but when I called our cook Marcelline she said she was in the clinic and was doing quite badly.  She did not anticipate being well before the end of the week.  

This would prove to be a challenge as not having a cook and needing to take care of the kids is a bigger challenge here than in the US where there are prepared food options available at grocery stores and fast food restaurants.  Not only that, but she cooks for our other staff as well so it means that there is no food ready for anyone.  I did make some lunch with leftovers for us on Monday and made a plan to buy stuff for sandwiches in the days ahead.  I would have some time to shop in the mornings while the kids were at school.  We did well together on Monday despite the fact that it is the night Oren has to do his dictation homework, but by evening I noticed David was very stuffed up.

David was not much better on Tuesday, but I did manage to get off to school again once more and continue our daily routine.  We went to karate after school and got the kids to better at a reasonable hour.  I was able to talk to Rebecca as well who said that things were going well at the conference.  David was definitely worse and the next morning (Wednesday) his eyes were glued shut with secretions and I dropped Oren at school and took David to a doctor to get drops for pink-eye.   Having no cook and a sick child, which meant no time for work proved to be about as much as I could handle.  

At that point I did reach out to some friends and contacted Naja and Thomas (our Danish friends) and asked if we might possibly come over for dinner.  They were able to have us which was very nice.  Today (Thursday) David is better and I sent him to school and have been able to follow our normal routine.  But I will say that without Rebecca or any other support at the house I have felt far to occupied (or pre-occupied) to sit down for a period of time substantial enough to write a blog entry.  I remember reading Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own in which, at one point she imagines what Women's Literature might look like as a discipline.  She observed that women would probably have to write in shorter increments, perhaps smaller works because of the multiple claims on their time and even space to work.  --I think I had a real sense of what that experience was like.  Feeling, between the requirements of parenthood, work and other responsibilities the impossibility of having time alone with energy enough to sit, reflect and write.

Before recounting this past week, I was wanting to reflect on my visit to Kigali.  I had left the previous Monday and was there for 4 days.  The visit had multiple purposes.  It is the time of year when partners are writing their next set of strategic plans and need some advising.  I also wanted to check in our service workers:  2 SALTers, Janelle and Alyssa, and Matt our 3 year food security coordinator.

I was very encouraged by the work I saw there.  What particularly pleased me was to find that with Matt's help, all of our partners have decided to collaborate together as a consortium to execute an impressive livelihood project.  It involves them taking all of their existing groups throughout the country and sub-grouping them into regional zones.  Each zone will be overseen by one of the partners.  They are training all the groups in a savings strategy called VSLA  (basically they use their own assets by saving together and loaning the savings to each other to help them develop themselves.)  The groups will also each collaborate in an improvement in agricultural technique project, renting fields together and testing some conservation agriculture methodologies taught by Matt.  These combined projects should lead to improvement in livelihood for those involved and their communities.

What I particularly liked about the new spirit of cooperation in the project was that often partners compete, seeing assistance as a 'zero-sum' resource--If you have $1000 and you split it you each get less then if you kept it yourself.  What I am seeing though is that as they collaborate, they attract other donors to the projects they do as they demonstrate increased capacity.

What I am also inspired by is my own learning as I look back over 5 years.  I think I probably came in to this job with a normal 'western' naiveté about poverty.  To some extent I would say that, like most of us I believed that if someone had no shoes and you gave him a pair, you have actually improved his condition.  It took a while to appreciate that this could actually create a bigger problem of dependency or may hurt a local cobbler industry.

But even the wiser perspective we hear "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he will have food for life'. Also has a certain naiveté to it.  Indeed it can be patronizing to come to 'teach men to fish' and not notice that in fact they do know how to fish, and reason they have so few are far more complex and may involve complex structures of injustice that cannot be easily changed or removed by some 'well meaning' missionaries or development workers.

After 5 years I see how we are learning none-the-less how to bring change.  First, it takes time, it requires humility, especially about what we think we have to offer.  It is important to develop an eye to help others see their own assets rather than affirm their poverty.  Finally, change has to happen from within those who need it.  It cannot be done to them.  At best we can accompany others in their journey of self discovery and resist trying to rush them to arrive at objectives that reflect our priorities not theirs.  

I feel as a Christian mission organization we can, at our best, be powerful agents of transformation, but at our worst, can easily be arrogant, judgmental and ultimately do more harm than good.  (Jesus admonished the Pharisees of his day of being 'The blind leading the blind.")

The last thing that struck me about the visit to Rwanda was how close the end of our own term is coming and how hard it will be to leave.  We do have a year and a half left and that may seem like a while, but now we have at least 4 staff whose terms are longer than ours, who will be here after we leave.  The plans we completed in Rwanda are all 3 years long and will end after we have left.  It is a bit strange to think of these projects and people, in many ways feeling like offspring, that will go on to mature after we are gone.  (Planting

 seeds we will not harvest.)

It is interesting to realize how attached we have become to our work.  How the idea of leaving things we have begun here is actually painful, even at this point.  I am sure I will have more to say about this in the year ahead, but I think this is the first foreshadowing I have really experienced about the inevitability of leaving and how hard that will be to do.  It is a good thing to experience amidst the many frustrations of daily life in certain weeks.