A Fall Birthday in the Land of Perpetual Summer

Photos this week are from David's 1st Birthday Party. Here he is enjoying his cake.


I am writing this blog from the Africa New Life Guesthouse in Kigali. We drove here right after church and arrived about 5pm. It is a quick visit, just 2 days, but necessary as it is the only opportunity we will have to come the entire month of November. One thing I am really noticing is the toll that these trips are taking on my back. I was never one to complain about back pain, but the driving requirements here in a truck-like vehicle on rough roads is really changing that. Nonetheless we got here without incident.

We had dinner with Ruth and Krystan who updated on the what is happening here with our partner, as well as their own encounter with Don (the ‘unexpected visitor’ who came to do photography work with Jodi and the kids at the Batwa school in Burundi.) Don then came to Kigali and Jodi had given him Ruth and Krystan’s number. He had not yet called them, but had gone into a coffeeshop. He was having trouble using his phone in Rwanda and went up to another mzungu and asked him if he knew what numbers needed to be entered to use and international phone in the country. The mzungu (who happened to be Krystan) looked at the number Don wanted to call and saw that it was his number! So that is how Don connected with them. They had an interesting visit before Don headed off to Tanzania,

Back to our own week. I will say that probably one reason my back is so sore is that this is my second trip upcountry in one week. On Wednesday I drove up to check in on the final day of the Great Lakes Peace Initiative (GLPS). I made this trip alone as Oren was in school this week. The conference was interesting and I learned a lot even in the few hours I was there. Bridget (Zachee’s wife) was facilitating and was doing a unit on conflict analysis. At one point in the lecture, the question came up whether or not poverty was an instigating cause of conflict. After much debate the conclusion was no. Poverty in itself is not a direct source of conflict, although other conditions that may cause poverty may also create conflict.

I have been reading a book by the author of the term ‘conflict transformation’ and I took the opportunity to finish it while in Gitega. Lederach (the author) argues that in his experience, the root cause of conflict is almost always ‘identity’. I was quite surprised by this, but he made a good case for this and showed how the ‘flashpoint’ of a conflict may not reveal this and may need to be ‘resolved’, but real transformation requires some capacity to address this root issue, or other similar types of conflict continue to erupt periodically.

This could certainly be said to be true of Burundi, and the Great Lakes Region where identity is a huge issue. I have been especially keen on the extent to which displacement is a big factor in this. This region has millions of displaced people, and the problem is that such people (refugees) do not have, often, any hope of going back, and no hope of being accepted and assimilated in the place they are. This was demonstrated poignantly to me when I talked ot a young ‘Rwandese’ woman there. She was ‘banyamulenge’ a group of Rwandese that fledthe country in the 19th century and have been living for over 100 years in Congo. But even though her grandfather was born in Congo and every generation since then, she is not considered Congolese. She is seen as Congolese as Rwandese and since there is tension between those countries, she has been persecuted in Congo, many of her family killed and forced to flee back to Rwanda….Of course in Rwanda, though the banyamulenge were accepted back, they are not considered to be real Rwandese and do not have status of citizens.

This is just one group, but a real problem. People who have no sense of place, home, are vulnerable, and often dangerous. Unlike the USA almost no country around here considers birth in a place to be a valid reason for citizenship. Many displaced people raise families in places where their children will never be citizens, but the children can never go home and feel like they belong in their ancestral homeland as they never grew up there. The woman I talked to (Lucie) told me that she considers herself and her children to be Congolese as they lived their whole lives there for 3 generations, but she will never be accepted as that.

The visit was good, and I felt it was important to show our support of this program by going and being a part of it for a day. I have to say, it is very inspiring to see so many individuals from Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi, coming together who have such a passion for bringing peace to the region. Not surprisingly, all of them have a deep wound that has attracted them to this work. Also, seeing Bridget facilitate is great, she is such an intelligent, experienced peace worker in the region, who has become a very good teacher as well.

I got back on Thursday on time to teach my ballet class that afternoon. I brought Jodi back with me from Gitega as she needed to come down to Bujumbura for the weekend. It felt like a long day. Rebecca did well with the kids, although she was quite sick on Monday and Tuesday with the same illness I had that required the course of injectable antibiotics. It seems this is quite contagious as both kids and several of the SALTers got it as well.

I should also mention that we did get our solar power installed this week and it finally all works! I feel like we have this incredible luxury of power 24 hours per day now. Granted it takes a manual switch-over when the power goes off, but it still works well. Now all we need is a decent internet connection and we will be living the dream!

Friday was a particularly memorable day as it was David’s 1st birthday! We had Enoch teach Marcelline how to make a cake. Rebecca and Oren frosted it though. It was a great cake. We invited Zachee, Bridget and Tim, as well as the Brandon, Yolanda, and Robyn (the SALTers) and Jodi to his birthday party. It was a very nice evening or David and the Burundi MCC team. Timmy and Oren really enjoy playing together and I think Oren considers him to be his best friend at school.

Saturday was eerie only in the fact that Halloween is not celebrated in Burundi in any way whatsoever. No costume parties, trick or treat, pumpkin carving, etc. I never thought of myself as particularly fond of that day, but the absence of it makes me realize something is missing, and that thing is Autumn.

I aware of the perpetual summer in which I live when I swim in the morning. Swimming was something I used to do in Poughkeepsie, but there I was keenly aware of the change in season as I waited in the early morning hours of fall and winter for the door to be opened. Here there is no change, no bitter cold. I go to an outdoor pool and I swim, then take a cold shower, put on a short sleeved shirt, and never feel a bit cold. I can’t explain why, except that I have some kind of biological clock, but it jusr feels a bit weird.

We are making the best of it though, and we spent our Saturday at the pool with Jodi and the kids. Oren is loving the pool, and David loves to do anything Oren is doing.