Stewarding Power at a Partners Retreat

 David during one of his frequent visits to the farm at the Seminary in Burasira where we had our Partners Retreat.

I see that it is time again for another update.  I fear the past several might give one the impression we spend, between us, all of our time out of town.  Some months that seems to be the case, and this past week was no exception.

The occasion was our Annual MCC Partner’s Retreat.  Being our fifth year here, this is our fifth such retreat, and I will preface my remarks by saying it was one of least complicated most crisis-free ones we have had.

I say that because if you were to look back at past years of this blog in the months of May and June, you would see that most were uncannily timed to fall on some of the most serious health crises we have had here in the past 5 years.  I would say that almost every one of them was almost cancelled at the last minute, and at one Rebecca was recovering from malaria, while another, I was required to deal with a health crisis of a service worker family that prevented me from going all together.  Other years it was Oren or David who were seriously ill.

Felix, Matt, Pastor Jeredie, Melody, Yolanda

So when I say that this one was uncomplicated and crisis-free, I am saying it like I feel some kind of hex has finally been broken over this event. 

The retreat was held last Thursday through Saturday (we actually arrived Wednesday evening) at Burasira, the site of the Grand Seminaire near the Hope School for the Batwa.  It is really an ideal place with a very modest guest facility, conference rooms, and a cafeteria, all in a very picturesque setting in a fairly remote part of Burundi between Gitega and Ngozi. 

It is also ideal in that it is roughly half-way between Bujumbura and Kigali so that people traveling from different countries  come about the same distance.  We were also fortunate to have a week in May when the kids only had three days of school (Ascension Day is a Holiday weekend in this Catholic Country).   So we went as a family bringing Marcelline, our cook, along as a nanny for the kids. 

Antoine and Musafiri

Burasira is a very familiar place to them as they have been coming up since Oren was 3 years old.  It was where our service worker Jodi Mikalachki used to live and is the current home of our SALTer Teri-Lynn Jordan.  It is about a kilometer away from the Hope School itself and the seminary, although rustic, is a child’s paradise, with a labyrinth of gardens and courtyards as well as a farm complete with stables full of cows, goats, pigs and rabbits. 

Having planned this kind of event before, Rebecca and I were able to use our templates from the past to organize a schedule, plan music, and invite everyone.  Transportation was arranged by partners from each town (Buja, Kigali, Gitega) and no one was even late to arrive on Wednesday evening for the opening supper and introductions.

Jean Baptiste, Teri-Lynn, Felix

Activities for the 3 days include praise and worship, prayer, free time to walk around as well as do some sports (there is a basketball court, as well as soccer field).  We also have a theme every year and try to do some practical work related to MCC planning and reporting criteria.  This year the theme was “The Stewardship of Power”—an idea that came from me as we have been talking about stewardship in our church the past several weeks.

The basic premise of the theme is that power, defined as the ability to change one’s environment by causing and preventing actions, is something we all want an unlimited amount of.  (In our session I actually asked for a show of hands of who had too much in their lives.)  

I discussed different ways in which power is exercised and made this list:

Negative:

Force—Power exerted by threat to another’s life or well being to cause one to act in an INVOLUNTARY manner.

    (Ex.  Slavery, rape, Capital Punishment in certain cases)

Coercion— Power exerted through pressure of negative social consequences to cause one to act in an INVOLUNTARY manner

  (ex. Sexual harassement, but also mandatory vaccinations)

Manipulation---Power exerted through persuasion or misdirection to cause one to act in an INVOLUNTARY MANNER

   (ex.  Propaganda, certain kinds of advertising or fundraising based on guilt)

Neutral:

Influence:  The capacity to persuade others to act in your interest because of any number of personal traits or social relations.

(ex.--went to same college, good speaker, nice looks, same clan, money-as salary or bonus)

Expertise:  The possession of special knowledge by an individual or group that has intrinsic values to others.

(medical doctor, professional experience)

Positive:

Authority:  The right to exercise power delegated by an institution or another person (or group of persons) to an individual (or group).

   (ex.  President of the Country, or a Court of law, Legal Rep of Church, school teacher, etc.—note: can be given power to use force coercion, etc.)

Rights:  Protections given by an institution (or State) to individuals or groups that are enforced by that institution.  (Right to fair trial, bear arms)  note—sometimes rights are symbolic (representing an ideal) if an institution is not actually empowered to enforce them.  Ex. Right to work

Paul, Francois, Melody

Using this framework to understand how we exercise power, I then talked about the one most relevant to us in our institutions: Authority and Rights and made the case that exercising power in this way is in fact (in its ideal) a stewardship of power.  That is, the power that one has is not one’s own, but power given by another person or group to be held in trust by the one entrusted to use it.

I did acknowledge that there can be ‘illegitimate authority’ (like having an army) but focused on the more common experience we have of institutions, organized to take actions using a legitimate distribution of power through the delegation of authority.

The challenge is that we can be good or bad stewards.  We can abuse our power, or use it inappropriately, but also the ones delegating power may not put clear limitations on the power one is given.

Authority clearly defines and limits power.  I mentioned the crisis I see in many of Burundi’s churches is a crisis of abuse of authority where the institution has not put clear limits on power and those given stewardship over it find ways to exceed their authority in their natural desire to have unlimited power.

Oren venerating the Blessed Mother

I won’t say more here, if you are interested I can send my lecture notes.  The partners found it very interesting, particularly two questions I posed:

1)   Can one use negative ways to exercise power to achieve positive ends?

2)   Can one use positive ways to exercise power to achieve negative ends?

The answer is yes to both and we find abuse of power in both circumstances.

We ended our discussions with a workshop where we worked in small groups addressing some very practical situations  in small groups.  The idea was to address the problem first, and then second, propose some institutional policy that would prevent this problem from happening in the future.  (setting limits on power.)

Here are two examples of the questions I gave:

1) You are in a managing position in your partnership and a female field officer confides to you that a married male manager (your colleague) is trying to find opportunities to work alone with her and making many inappropriate compliments about her “good looks”.  He has asked her to accompany him on an upcoming field visit.

2)   You are running a school through your partnership.  A teacher reports that during the school day, a father of a student came and started to beat his daughter on school grounds while other teachers and administrators looked on.

Yves, Pacifique

How would you manage this situation? What policies might one put in place to prevent this problem in the future? 

In the US it might seem pretty obvious how these situations would be handled because the State guarantees certain rights, especially in the latter case.  But in a place like here, where the State does not have very consistent capacity to enforce any rights, it is important for our partners to consider what policies they will enforce in their projects and how they will do so.

The discussions were very interesting and I think the lesson about seeing authority as a stewarding of power was very helpful for them in thinking about other situations, even outside of their partnership where this would be applicable.

While that is a synopsis of the work we did on Friday, we did many other things as well.  The afternoons were off and many of the partners enjoyed playing basketball and were quite good.

Teri-Lynn with some of her kindergartners.

We also did a field visit up to the Hope School one morning and were able to see many of the classes and hear some of its history.  They greeted us with their drum corps which is always a treat before visiting the classes.  Since we were on Teri-Lynn’s home turf she took us to several classes where the kids could show-off their English through songs they knew.

The Hope School kids seemed to enjoy the attention, but especially liked to see David and Oren who came along for the visit.  David was particularly amusing and at one point walked alone into one class and sat down at a little desk and chair as if he were a member of the class.  The other children found it quite amusing and did a chorus of “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” for him.

Jean-Baptiste, Normand with Marceline
trying out the drums.

The Hope School is definitely one of our successful projects that is very nice to show to others as its impact on the community is palpable even during a short visit. 

Generally the retreat is a good time for partners to meet each other, network, share experiences.  We have not really changed our partners the whole time we have been here, so most know each other quite well.  I find that this way of working has been very effective and to see our partners looking for opportunities to collaborate rather than compete for scarce resources is very impressive. 

The only real setback in the whole retreat was the fact that our two Rwanda SALTers, Janelle and Alyssa, were not able to leave Rwanda to come to Burundi because they are having a lot of trouble getting their resident visa and could not get their passports back in time to travel.

The visa situation has been particularly difficult in Rwanda this year, especially for Canadians.  We are hoping for better luck next year in terms of getting visas in a timely manner.

We all returned to our respective homes on Saturday midday, and our family was back at the house by late afternoon.  We had a quiet evening together watching a movie.  The kids had been very good with Marceline during the trip and enjoyed visiting the farm animals quite a bit.

Sunday was quite normal and we went to the beach between church and our cell group meeting.

Monday was a very special day where Rebecca and I took a true Sabbath.  We took the morning off together, and after dropping the kids at school, went over to the Lake and enjoyed a morning swimming, talking, praying together.  It had been too long of working hard side by side or apart without a chance to relate to each other as a couple. At lunch, when we picked up the kids, I took Oren out for lunch and Rebecca took David out.  They both loved having special time with just one of us.  We have to do that more.   All in all, it was the perfect closure to a very busy long weekend.