Testing--A picture of Noel, one of our dogs, using the new camera I bought today.
I skipped a week of blogging. Something I almost never do. It is a discipline that I really don’t enjoy
doing as much as I enjoy being awed by the sheer volume of writing I have done
since being here.
I did not skip it because we were overwhelmed by work. It was a very busy 2 weeks, but the real
reason was a loss that hit me harder than I expected. Not a loss of life, although there have been
several deaths of children of some families we know that have hit close to
home. But the loss that shut me down
last week was the theft of my camera.
Theft has been a continuous problem here, but it has been on
the increase in our organization in the past several months. The theft we experience is rarely if ever, violent crime. Although that is a
problem in the poorer quarters it rarely touches expatriates.
But the type of theft we most often experience is a kind of
slow bleeding. Sadly it is usually done
by someone who works at the house in small increments. I
have had to help at least one service worker get rid of several house staff,
but it seems that money disappears from nearly everyone here, a little at a
time.
I suppose it is understandable as prices continue to rise
bit by bit, as the currency devalues and salaries remain the same. I don’t think that theft is a good or
sustainable coping strategy, but it seems to be one that is common here to make
up the difference.
I think being robbed bit by bit by people you know or trust
has a long term effect of weakening one's resolve. Anger and a sense of betrayal eventually give way to a kind of emotional fatigue. The masaai tribe likes to take some blood from the neck vein in a cow to
mix with its milk. They do not kill the
cow but do receive nourishment from both the blood and the milk. Ingenious perhaps, but I think I know how the
cow feels.
I don’t want to be overly morose, that was last weekend so I
have recovered somewhat. It seems to be
a fact of life here and we have generally learned to be diligent and not leave
things out that might be temptations.
The camera had been used and was in the car in our driveway with the
gate locked when it disappeared. The likelihood
of an inside job is very high. But I
have no way of knowing for sure.
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| Felix with Rwandese partner Antoine in Kigali |
The past week was spent in Rwanda from Monday to
Thursday. It was a trip that was fairly
routine as far as being a monthly visit, and it was an opportunity to be in
touch and do some worker care for our three Rwanda volunteers.
Felix went with me and we also met all of our partners to
sign our yearly contracts with them for upcoming projects since April is the
beginning of our fiscal year. We also met with our Rwanda advisors to
discuss aspects of our program including the ongoing challenge of getting
long-term visas for our volunteers.
Rwandan immigration has gotten a lot tougher since the M-23 rebel
problems in Eastern DRC. I don’t know if
there is a direct connection, but there does seem to be a higher degree of
scrutiny of foreigners in the country.
I did not go on any field visits, out of town that is. Actually I did visit one field, a model field
demonstating low tillage conservation agriculture techniques that Mat Gates our
service worker has cultivated near his house.
It seems to be doing well and he had some corn already growing out. We have not started the full-blown
conservation agriculture project, still waiting for final approval of the
grant, and our partners are chomping at the bit to begin. Part of my job this week was to tell them to
be patient.
The only thing that did not go well was a momentary panic
attack when I went to my car and found my briefcase with computer missing after a lunch meeting with our volunteer Alyssa. I nearly fainted and weakly called Matt to
tell him send Felix. When Matt answered
he also asked if I wanted my briefcase and computer which I had left at his
house. I was relieved but surprised at
how close to the edge I am after all of the aforementioned thefts.
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| In field with Antoine and Alyssa our SALTer |
On the way back to Bujumbura on Thursday, Felix and I swung
by Burasira (an hour and a half off the main road) to pick up Teri-Lynn, our
SALTer working at the Hope School. There
was flooding in her area and she had no water or electricity and wanted a few
days R and R in Bujumbura.
I took the opportunity to get some video of her teaching
that I will try to post on the Hope School Facebook page soon. The library is well underway and is just
missing part of the tile roof. I was
told that this would not be finished until rainy season was over as the tiles
are being made out of clay on-site and right now it is too rainy to let them
dry properly.
We arrived in Bujumbura Thursday evening. It was great to be home with Rebecca and the
kids. Friday morning it was great to swim. I went to work in the morning but spent the
time preparing a sermon which I was asked to preach on Sunday. Fortunately on the drive home I had had a
clear well-ordered inspiration of what I would say.
Friday afternoon was ballet which had not happened the past
2 weeks because of school holidays. It
was fun to be back and the kids were all there.
We are getting close to a little recital we will do in the first week of
June. They seem to be excited about
this.
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| Library construction. |
Teri-Lynn came to the older girls and the adult class. It is always nice to have a dancer come to
class and I think it did inspire the girls and even the adults as I was able to
use her in a few cases to give an idea of what the aesthetic is supposed to
look like on a trained body. (There are
not a lot of trained classical dancers here.)
Friday evening our family went to Ubuntu and had pizza with
Rosel and Isaac Froese some friends of ours who had been here several years
ago, as well as Tim and Jeanette. The
kids love to go there at any time.
Probably our favorite restaurant in Bujumbura, still.
Saturday was yoga and a meeting at church which directly
followed. Oren was invited to a knight
birthday party of a German friend from school in the afternoon. He got to make a shield mounted on wood, as
well as roast bread on a stick. Rebecca
and I went as well as we are friends of the parents who work with GIZ, the
German development agency.
Sunday was church and I felt the sermon went very well. I was preaching on stewardship and made the
point that stewardship is not ownership and requires that we:
- Know the will of the owner
- Be willing to submit to his will
- Do his will in the right way
I actually used the passage of the bad tenants in Matthew 21
to make my point. I won’t recount it all
here, but the last part, doing the right thing in the right way has particular
relevance here where I experience, especially among Christians, a tendency to
use any means to justify moral ends.
This happens often with situations involving money which is given
for one purpose and used for a different one, which may seem ‘higher’ or more
urgent than what the giver intended.
Accomplishing good ends in the wrong way is just as bad as doing the
wrong thing.
I gave the Biblical example of Saul lighting a sacrificial
offering when it was clearly not his job.
Ultimately Samuel complained that “ To obey is better than
sacrifice.”
I talked about the freedom one can find in voluntary
submission, rather than coerced obedience by describing my own experience in learning
classical ballet where submission to a ballet master led to an experience of
physical and artistic freedom I never could have accomplished on my own.
Forced submission makes one a slave, and is a gospel
preached by slave masters, but voluntary submission leads to a freedom we could
never obtain in our own power.
I will leave it at that.
It seemed to be well received and after church we went to Club du Lac
for lunch. On the way home we tried to
drop Teri-Lynn back on a bus to go upcountry but there were no more seats so
she came back home with us. She
participated in our small group which was a bit of an odd gathering with only a
few regulars. Nonetheless it was nice to
meet together after a two week hiatus.
The discussion was lively as well.
On Sunday our service worker in Gitega, Melody, also came
down and stayed with us as she and I were going to have a meeting with partners
on Monday morning. It was an advisory
committee meeting on the Peacebuilding Institute that is run by the partner she
is seconded to. It seemed to go well and
among other things, she unveiled the website she had created for it. (Great Lakes Peacebuilding Institute.)
The meeting lasted most of the day and Rebecca and I even
had dinner with one of our Rwanda partners who had come down for it.
I did start the blog afterwards but fell asleep before I
could finish it. The sermon on Sunday
had lifted my spirits considerably and I felt the rhythm of disappointment and
joy is not so out of balance that I want to run away or curl up in a shell for
too long.
Today is Tuesday and started with a very refreshing swim
after missing most of last week. The
morning was routine for a change and at lunch I actually met an expat. who was
selling a camera and had advertised it on a Bujumbura professionals site. I bought it from her so I once again can make
photos. (Sorry for the dirth this week.)
In the afternoon I went back to work and to pay some bills
but got caught in a terrible rainstorm on the way home. I am always wary of accidents on days like
this and was driving cautiously when the young woman darted out from between 2
stopped cars on the other side of the road and without so much as glancing, ran
right into my path. I slammed on the
brakes and skidded to a stop, hitting her as the car came to a full halt.
This is like a worst nighmare here and there are many horror
stories of drivers being dragged out of cars and beaten to death after hitting
a pedestrian. I always dreaded the thought of what I
would do in such a situation. Would I get out? Drive off and look for a police officer?
Surprisingly, I seem to have an auto-pilot that kicks in in
such emergencies, maybe it is from EMT training. I immediately stopped and jumped out without
thinking about what would happen to me.
The woman was conscious and seemed shocked, lying on the ground but not
obviously injured seriously as she was moving around. I went to help her up and get her into the
car to take her to the hospital.
I had almost succeeded when 3 other guys ran up to help as
well. One was yelling ‘sister’,
‘sister’! They got into the car with us
after helping her in and I sped off to the nearest hospital. (Bumerec for any Burundi expat readers.)
We helped her in and we were taken immediately to a room and
she was seen by a doctor who ordered
some X-rays. Her brother talked
to me outside in the lobby while we waited.
He said that they were coming back from church and she had crossed after
them. He said she was his big sister. He said they were all University students.
After a while we got the x-ray results. I paid for all care which came to under $15
for an ER visit, Xray and some painkillers.
The doctor said there were no serious injuries and she would be
fine.
We were all relieved and I offered to file a police report,
but they were all against it. When we
went out to the parking lot the young woman’s mother arrived and the girl went into
the car in which her mother came. The brother talked to me a bit privately and I knew he would want a bit of money for helping. He also asked for some money to replace her
shoe which had been destroyed. I was
happy to oblige and gave him another $30 in francs. He walked away with his friends and I went to
say good-bye to the girl and her mother.
I told them that I had given her brother something for her to replace
her shoes. Her mother and her looked at
each other perplexed and she said: “That
guy was not my brother, those 3 guys that jumped in the car with us were total strangers to me.”
I did give the young woman my business card, but she seemed
to be OK. I left feeling the way I seem to
feel a lot here---Ambivalent.---Relieved that I had
been spared something worse; I cannot
imagine having to live with the guilt of killing someone by hitting them in a
car. But on the other hand, I was a victim
as well. At a time of feeling very vulnerable and trying my best to do the right
thing, someone had come along and
extracted, once again, a bit of blood from my carotid artery.
I talked to my colleague Felix about it afterward. He said that it was extremely common in a bad
accident that there will be among first responders a fair number of thieves who
take advantage of the opportunity to help victims to be able to steal their
things.
I think I will be ready for a little cultural recess by
summer. Hopefully things will be less
hairy between now and then.
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