Oren and David displaying bread loaves they made this Thursday as an activity that Oren suggested for holiday relaxation.
There is a change in the air and I don’t like it. I actually noticed it this past week on a
trip upcountry. I was on a 3 day field
visit and it did not rain once. People
are looking at the sky nervously as the arrival of the dry season one month
early will spell disaster for the harvest of the first planting season of the
year. The air is very still in
Bujumbura, and although it remains free of dust, I feel like I am adept, after
6 years of living here, at recognizing a change in weather.
The reason for being upcountry this past week was to
accompany MCC’s executive directors from the US and Canada on a three day
visit to our programs. Ron Byler (MCC
USA) and Don Peters (MCC Canada) were in the region for meetings in Nairobi
this week, but came about 10 days early to see programming in Eastern DRC and
Rwanda/Burundi. While it is a great
honor to host them, it was also a great responsibility and required no small
amount of coordinated planning with our partners to allow them to see memorable
things in a short time.
They arrived last Sunday by taxi from Bukavu in DRC. The trip is under 3 hours and they got here
in the evening. We had arranged for them
to stay at our house and were happy to host them at Chez Mosley, the Mennonite
Guesthouse in Bujumbura.
At almost any other time in the past several years, this
would have been perfectly appointed with constantly working electricity
(because of our back-up system) and 24 hour internet. But as it happened, our gardener plugged in
a high wattage lawn mower during our absence in South Africa and fried
our inverter. We could not get it
repaired quickly. And on the day of
their arrival a power surge somehow fried our router, so we had none of these
amenities on the day they arrived.
Fortunately Mennonites at all levels are not complainers
about living simply, so when they arrived to a dark, internet free house, they
made the best of it without complaint.
On Monday morning I left Rebecca and the kids in Bujumbura
and headed upcountry with them to see some of our programs. We started by traveling toward the Hope
School in Mutaho. Our plan was to arrive
in the late afternoon and stay the night at the Grande Seminaire de Burasira nearby and
visiting the school in the morning.
One of our other partners, the equivalent of Intervarsity
Christian Fellowship was also at the seminary for a 4-day seminar. So I was able to introduce Ron and Don to
them as well as have them meet Matt Allen, our SALT volunteer who works with
them.
They were a large group, over 100 and we had dinner with
them. After dinner, I had been asked to
give a talk (prior to our arrival). I
did a teaching on ‘the ministry of reconcilliation’ from 2 Corinthians 5, It went well and Ron and Don appreciated
seeing me speak in that capacity.
For them, as representatives of Mennonite Churches in the US
and Canada, they were interested in seeing ways in which MCC made its identity
as a Christian NGO known in its programming.
Seeing me speak to a group of Christian University students gave a good
example of that.
We spent the night reasonably comfortably in the monk-ish
rooms of the guesthouse, then headed up to Hope School the next morning after
breakfast of a roll and some milk-less tea to dunk it into. (no butter, jelly, etc.)
The school had prepared us a rousing welcome complete with
the traditional drum corps and some batwa dances. They made a huge impression on our
directors. We then visited every
classroom and greeted the students and ended with a meeting of administrators
and teachers.
Innocent, our partner presented the school well and as a
former principle, Don Peters was very interested to find out about the
administration of the school.
In the early afternoon we continued on to Gitega, the town
where we have three partners. We got there
in time for dinner and met Melody and Sata, our two services workers who work
with MiPAREC and UCPD respectively. Don
and Ron were interested in meeting our service workers to find out why people
join MCC and get a sense of who they were.
Both women made an excellent impression on them and represented well
their motivations for working with MCC.
We had visited MiPAREC in the afternoon that same day and
after spending the night at a guesthouse in Gitega, we met our UCPD partner and
followed them by car out to Bukirasazi where they do their programming. We saw the vocational training program we
support, where students learn sewing, masonry, and carpentry. More impressive though was a visit to a
carpentry workshop set up by graduates from a previous year who were now in
business for themselves—impact!
The day was a long one though, and after leaving them we
continued South to Rutana province where we met our service worker Jennifer
Price and Help Channel, our food security partner. They met us at an intersection on the road
about an hour from Gitega. They escorted
us to a demonstration farm and several other food security and watershed
management projects. Over lunch with
them we talked about how they present themselves as a Christian organization without proselytizing. Don and Ron appreciated the fact that the Help Channel founders had come out of the same campus christian movement MCC still supports.
After a late afternoon lunch we headed back to
Bujumbura. We got home about 6 pm, I was
pretty much spent and went to bed without dinner. Actually I had done my best to disguise the
fact that I had been suffering from diarrhea for the past two days and felt
pretty bad most of the last day of our trip.
It was good to get home to get some Flagyl and oral rehydration
solution.
Don and Ron left the next day (Thursday) and I think our
program made a very good impression on them, projects and staff.
That day happened to be International workers day, so the kids had a school holiday. We celebrated by making bread, spending a few hours at the pool with the high diving boards, visiting the horses at Cercle Hippique and finishing off at Oren's favorite Indian restaurant. Friday felt very strange to be back to school!
We had a very nice dinner with JJ and Courtney Ivaska, our
friends from World Relief. Our kids
played surprisingly well together and we were able to have some nice adult time
which was a treat.
The weekend marked the end of two of the hardest weeks of
the year for me. I knew it was coming
after our South Africa vacation, but I was dreading it a bit. In fact, with the South Africa trip it has been
a full month since I have been in any kind of regular routine.
The hard part of the past two weeks was that the week prior
to Ron and Don’s visit I had been in Rwanda.
It was the first visit there since before Lent and there were many, many
issues to deal with. We have a
particularly complex conservation agriculture and savings groups project we are
running through a consortium of partners and there is no end of crises that can
happen in the management of this project.
A visit was long overdue and our service worker Matt Gates was really
needing some input from us.
I spent 3 straight days in a dozen meetings, did about 5
straight hours of banking, checked in on the status of our registration in the
country. On top of all of that, I had
brought the Stoner-Ebys for a visit there for their first visit to Kigali. They have a long-term goal of relocating the
country office there and they were anxious to see the City and the place their
kids will eventually go to school. They
had a good visit, but I had to send them out on their own with a taxi on
several occasions.
There were also other visitors including our Area Directors
Mark and Angela Sprunger, and Suzanne Lind, the MCC Congo Rep. who was picking
up Ron and Don from the airport when they first arrived and headed off to Goma
with her.
I felt like I had been conducting a symphony by Mahler by
the time I was done with everything.
There was so much detail and so many timings that had to be worked out.
The best news from Kigali is that the registration process
in pretty much at an end and we may now legally apply for visas for staff of
our independently registered INGO. That
was no small accomplishment.
I can’t believe I have had enough ummphh this Sunday to get
this posted. I don’t mean to be losing
steam at the end, but things are really getting hard now. I don’t want to look forward to the end, but
I am looking forward to a less intense schedule.
I am starting to look at job postings in the Baltimore area
that can capitalize on my experience.
Will keep everyone posted as things evolve. –forgive the lack of proofreading.
Bonus Photo: Some members of our small group and the family of Phillip, a friend who just accepted a job in Juba with World Concern. They leave Bujumbura next week. We follow them a few months later out of Burundi.
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