Sustaining Hope

Mama Gogol, one of the beneficiary farmers of our food security projects.

Sometimes I am compelled to invite those who follow this blog regularly behind the scenes into the work we do here.  While some readers are all too familiar with the world of development, there are definitely some of you that might have a hard time picturing what we really do with ourselves much of time.  Looking back over the past several months, we certainly seem busy, and also appear to have had a heavy social calendar, but it does not give a really good picture of how we spend our work hours.

For many who knew us when we left our home and jobs in the US 5 years ago to take an assignment with MCC as ‘missionaries’ with a  Christian humanitarian aid organization, I can imagine a certain image of what we would be doing that we probably projected ourselves.  That is, a kind of compassion-driven flinging-of-oneself-off-the-cliff-of-reality into the abyss of abject poverty.  A place peopled with orphans, widows, and vacant-eyed, forgotten, Africans clamoring to be touched by the bright torch of our loving faith.  Our salaries would largely be paid in smiles from those who received our hugs, and who's tears we wiped away, as we meet their small needs for the basics: shoes, soap, small change, and candies pressed into the eagerly outstretched hands of hungry children.  

Probably overstated, but the point is I do not think there is a sense of much of what I would call a left brained rationality to the work we do.  Ultimately it  is a heart thing. 

While I do want to affirm the importance of being resolved in one’s heart about the step to work overseas in this field, I would want to change the image of this work to bring hope as entirely an activity of the heart--hugging, affirming, impulsively giving stuff away, or even Evangelization. 

The first thing one realizes after spending more than a few months in a place, is that, in fact, there are very few ‘forgotten’ people.  The very rich and very poor live here in highly complex social relations, and it is often these very relations that are keeping them in their difficult situations, but taking them out, would often be worse.  One realizes quickly the struggle against poverty is more about justice than compassion.  It is not atypical to go through a phase of anger as one butts up against what I call the obduracy of poverty.   Even those most negatively impacted by it seem completely ensconced by their own rational choices.

 I think it is important to work in such a context long enough to move beyond naïve pity, anger, despair, and into a mindset that prepares one for the long hard slog into the world of ‘development’.  I feel that getting to this place is not an abandonment of faith but rather a deeper affirmation of it.  This is the real road to Calvary.  It is far different than being willing to throw oneself off the cliff and burn-out after a few months.

PMEL.  That is an acronym too familiar to those of us who work in development projects.  It stands for Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning.  It is the backbone of all the work that Rebecca and I do here, be it in providing humanitarian aid, peacebuilding, education, or development. It is definitely more of a head thing than a heart thing!

The idea is that if we want to have an impact we have to think small, not big.  We are no longer here to save the world, we are here to help say: 22 rural savings groups to learn an improved agricultural techniques in order to improve their crop yields by 20% per year over a 3 year period. 

This may sound a bit pedantic, but following-up, understanding the reasons for success and failure, helps us plan better the next time, or be able to replicate good results in a future project.  Changes are not measured in lives transformed but in how many meals per day a family is eating as a result of the work, or how much shorter the ‘hunger-gap’ is between harvest seasons. 

We plan, we implement, then we watch, we record, we adapt, and we plan again.  Little by little we hope to see some measurable progress.  Many of the project ‘seeds we sow’ we will not be around long enough to reap.  Change can happen over a decade, and may not be a steady path upward, but rather truncated over time.

Cassien showing a contour line to Mike.

I am writing this because I spent much of last week on a field visit evaluating the project of one our partners.  The partner is one of our high capacity ones and implements a large food security project based on the input of ‘food for work’.  The premise is that in the communities where they are intervening there are many people who are so poor that they eat a meal or less per day.  To improve their situation, our partner has created a program where they are invited to work---a day of work provides a kilo of rice and a kilo of beans, and is enough to feed a family of 6 for one day.  This is offered every day for the duration of the project (3 years).  The project provides enough food to feed several hundred workers per day from a pool of about 800.

The payment in food provides some short-term food security, but the goal of longer term food security is related to the projects upon which they work.  Most of it is watershed management.  Burundi is built on hills and low soil fertility because of run-off is a huge problem leading to very low yields.  The food-for-work crews planted trees on high lands, built 40 kilometers of contour lines this year to trap water and soil, and slow erosion, and rehabilitated roads leading to markets.

Our group visiting beneficiaries in Mabanda
recent returnees from Tanzania.

The work is impressive, particularly the contour lines.  For those who have not seen them, they are like a terrace only not as extreme.  They are a series of low trenches that follow the contours of the hill.  Above them grasses and trees are planted.  They trap the topsoil that runs off In the rain and it is put back on the field above.  They usually do about 15 lines of 250 meters coming down the hills.

The improvement of watershed management allows for better yields and contributes to longer term food security.  So this project uses a short term food relief input to improve longer term food security.

It is not exactly Jesus feeding the 5000, but it is a more sustainable way to address the problem of people not being able to grow enough to eat on a regular basis.

Mike and Matt puzzling over the cause of very poor
maize yield from a recent harvest.

A group of about 12 of us went out for3 days last week to see several of these Help Channel projects.  The main VIPs were two people from Winnipeg: Mike Salomans who works for the Canadian Food Grains Bank (CFGB), and Vurayayi Pugeni from MCC.  Our Help Channel project is funded through CFGB and MCC Canada to the tune of 1.5 million dollars.  So there is definite interest in checking up on the success of this project.

Along with Mike, Pugeni, and I were Matt Gates, our agronomist from Rwanda, Jennifer Price our service worker with Help Channel, Michael Sharp, from Bukavu, one of our advisors named Pacifique, as well as the heads of Help Channel and some support staff.

Matt and Michael tagged along because they wanted to have an idea of what Help Channel was doing, but also because they have their own CFGB funded projects and wanted a chance for some on- on-one time with the visitors.

a contour line planted with grasses and
agroforestry trees.

The trip was fascinating.  We spent days in the fields, evaluating improvement in the soil, the depth and proper maintenance of contour lines, harvest yields, as well as talking to some of the beneficiaries of the project about their sense of improvement in life.

Overwhelmingly we were impressed by what we saw and received much acclaim from those who have been benefitting from the work.

In the evenings we stayed in different guest houses each night, but generally sat and met late into the evening brainstorming, hammering out new proposals, and playing Carcisonne (which Michael really liked to play.)  We returned via the lake coming up from the Southern tip of Burundi back to Bujumbura on Thursday.  Friday was a full day of meetings before our guests left on Saturday.

If I could sum up a field visit in a single adjective, it would have to be 'gritty'.  Long hours in Land Cruisers on dusty roads, then standing in fields in hot sun, sweating, only to come back to a guest house room with no running or cold water gives a pretty accurate picture of the experience.  (Actually on the first night the place we stayed did have hot running water, but I have never seen that before upcountry.)

Rebecca and Felix waiting
outside the bride's house.

I felt the visit went very well but was quite exhausted after the ordeal.  It was nice to have a somewhat quiet weekend as everyone had left by Saturday, but we were truly Burundian in the number of social events we had planned on Saturday.

Rebecca went as our representative to a dowry party for Felix, our program assistant, in the early afternoon.  She has some pictures of her waiting with the grooms family to enter the bride’s house.   She was not even able to stay the whole time as we also had a good-bye party to attend in the evening for our German friends the Hoffman’s.  It was a nice party and Rebecca and I were asked to provide some folk dances for people to do together as a sign of our communal bonds. 

a skit at the party at Hoffman's

The kids went with us and it was a late night, but we did enjoy ourselves there.
Sunday was mercifully normal but we spent most of the afternoon helping Oren study for his comprehensive finals which were to continue up to Wednesday.

Monday was another travel day for me as I headed up to Kigali again.  I am currently in the process of registering MCC officially with the Rwandese government and I had to do quite a few meetings with govt. officials and hire someone temporarily to help us move the process along. 

I stayed with Matt Gates and we did some work on a CFGB proposal as well.  I took the bus up and without a car, did most of my traveling by taxi-moto.  I did fly back on Wednesday though in order to be home on time for a very special event…

THE ARRIVAL OF REBECCA’S BROTHER’S FAMILY!!!  Yes Paul, Gwendolyn, Miriam, and Gabriel arrived in the afternoon, just ahead of me.  Here is a picture of our families at Cercle Nautique today.  More on them later as we will be vacationing with them in Kenya in the near future.