Conflict Mediation, Beach Evangelism, and the Guilty Dog

Here is a picture of Bella taken shortly after an entire loaf of banana bread disappeared off the table and was never seen again on Saturday morning while everyone was out of the dining room .

As the minutes tick steadily toward 11pm on Sunday night, I realize that I am under the gun to get this blog entry up. This is not only because I want to meet my weekly deadline, but because the power in our neighborhood (like most of Bujumbura) goes off between midnight and about 7am. So at midnight, everything I do is on battery power.

There is a lot to say as it was a full week, and we are still hosting our three students from New York who have been doing quite a bit this week.

One thing I hope I can avoid is making this blog a recanting of the litany of illnesses that are visited upon Oren and David. Most of the time I think the various viruses they pass back and forth are more the product of Oren being in nursery school than of us being in Burundi. But this week has been a bit exceptional because Oren has had mumps! This is particularly dismaying as he has been vaccinated against them. We told his teacher about this, and she told us that about 6 kids in his class have been out with mumps this past month. I wish I could say that the illness was over right now, and he did return to school on Wednesday, but this weekend he appears to be having some complications and we are not sure what is going on. Prayers on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

It is true that if there is one area of anxiety I have and cannot surrender to God’s care, it is our children’s health. I don’t fear much about living here except the unavailability of good urgent health care. We just don’t have a lot of options if things go seriously wrong acutely.

David is also on antibiotics this week with pretty bad bronchitis. One thing I do hope is that we do not send our guests back to the US with any of these illnesses. So far they have remained relatively healthy.

This week was fairly busy for Rebecca and I as we are preparing for a retreat for our partners next week. We have been working on creating a unified program, and it seems like ‘transformational development” is to be the theme. For my part I plan to do 2 messages during the retreat. One will be from the passage in Ezekiel about the valley of dry bones. (I have used that before) And the second one will be about Jesus healing the blind man at the pool of Siloam (in the book of John). I think both of these speak to the nature of poverty and the obstacles to development. I hope to elaborate on this next week when I have actually written it all down. I am trying to decide right now if I should do it in French or English. French would be better, but much more work to prepare.

While we were doing that, we dropped Alicia, Justin and Bridget off at a nursery school run by a church, where they taught some English to 3 and 4 year olds. Every time I picked them up for lunch I found them smothered in delighted children who seemed to see them as playground equipment to be climbed on. The students did enjoy the work there anyway and felt they did have something of value to contribute.

On several afternoons between Monday and Wednesday, they taught some computer courses. None of them have any formal computer training, but the level of understanding of how a computer works is so low that even a session on how to turn it on and off is greatly appreciated.

On Thursday and Friday we connected the students with our partner Moisson Pour Christ (Harvest for Christ). It is an evangelical group that runs some trainings on campuses in peace and reconciliation. The students attended one of these trainings and spent the entire day Thursday and Friday learning about conflict resolution and mediation tools. I think they are, at this point, fully qualified to do conflict mediation. Maybe they will have the chance to use it on their campus. I was able to sit in on some of the workshop, and it was quite interesting. The premise was that conflict itself is not bad, it is a natural, normal, and neutral part of human interaction. BUT, how it is managed can make the difference between a transformative positive result, and a tragic negative result.

Many of the discussions centered around ethnic group conflict on campuses in Burundi, and I learned later that Onesphore (Moisson leader) had deliberately targeted as invitees, students who led groups of opposing political parties (which are divided along ethnic lines.) It was pretty gutsy, I think, to invite these leaders of antagonistic groups to learn about conflict mediation and non-violent approaches to conflict management together. But it really seemed to work. At the end, one of the most vocal and negative individuals said he had been seriously transformed and was committed to work peacefully with his counterparts in opposing parties.

Our students were also able to contribute some perspective from the US context as well. Especially with regard to race.

On Friday night I was happy to get back to capoeira after a pretty long period of absences due to the fact that we have been out of town on several Fridays in a row. Cassien (Director of Help Channel) and his wife Beatrice came over for dinner as well to meet our guests.

On Saturday our students spoke to another campus group then led a Bible study in the evening. Rebecca and I took turns going to these events and staying home with the kids. I was able once again to see how well received our students have been and am committed to creating other similar mission opportunities for youth from the US to visit here in the future.

Sunday morning was not at all typical. Simon had talked to us several weeks ago about the beach evangelism ministry that Moisson Pour Christ runs at 6:30 am Sunday morning. It involves about 45 mins of calesthenics on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, in which onlookers are invited to join, followed by sharing the gospel with those who join on a one-on-one basis after the exercise. Context is important here. Sunday’s and particularly early mornings, are historically a time for doing sports: running, soccer, basketball, calesthenics, etc. On any given Sunday morning, along the shores of Lake Tanganyika, there are literally thousands of people stretching, running, exercising, alone or with groups. It is pretty wild.

It took some courage to get up and go, but Justin, Alicia, and Bridget were up for it. I agreed to go with them while Rebecca stayed back with the kids. It was really quite an exhilarating experience, I must say, and I hope to do it again in the future. We had hoped that our presence would draw more curious onlookers to our group, and to some extent it did, but mzungus are not nearly such a curiosity in Bujumbura, even when they are doing calesthenics.

I was wide awake, for church at 9am needless to say. In the afternoon we invited Jean Claude to come over to the house with his fiancé Francine for a visit. Jean Claude was the person who had gone to Burasira with us to translate for our work with the Batwa. Like so many Burundians, his story is one deeply marred by trauma (including the violent death of both parents) but a living testimony to the transforming power of God’s love. He is both and inspiration and a great cultural liason for the students.

Since he has been in the US and speaks great English he was very willing to answer many awkward cultural questions the students had, especially about hutus and tutsis. He was happy to answer them and ask some awkward cultural questions about them as well.