Thoughts on Educating Girls and a Trip to Kigali

David and Oren in Kigali.  Not many great pix this week, but they do like to get away from Bujumbura and explore new venues now and then.   Weather here continues to be hot, high 80s to 90 during the day.


As I sit here at 11pm starting this entry, I am amazed at how far we have come from the days earlier this year when I would rush to finish by 10pm before the power went off then would spend at least an hour on a dial-up connection to get the few pictures and text to upload onto the server.  Not that we are so far away from those days, something can always go wrong.  We do continue to have nightly black outs, but with a solar battery and a faster internet connection, it almost feels like I am in another country.

I do have to say, there is something to having a slower internet connection. (Our 'high-speed' here is still only about a megabyte every minute and a half).  There is a lot less temptation to web-surf or spend hours on the computer reading the latest spin on the political scene.  The little I get honestly makes me glad I am missing much of the blow by blow political debate in the US these days.

I did run across an excellent podcast recently of Bill Moyers interviewing Greg Mortenson.  He is the author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools.  He is the guy who is building schools one at a time in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan (for those who don't know.)  I was interested to hear that his childhood was spent in Tanzania where his dad was a Christian medical missionary.  Here is a link to the broadcast: http://video.pbs.org/video/1387129274/ 

What he says about educating girls is one of the most thought-provoking things I have heard in recent days, and I believe his experiences would be born out in our context in Burundi as well.  To paraphrase: "When you educate a boy, you educate an individual, but when you educate a girl you educate a comunity, because she will educate her children when she is a mother, and will even teach her own mother as she is learning in school."  He has found this to be true even in very conservative Islamic communities where women have few rights.  It is good to hear a really inspiring story and such a contrast to the partisan political hype that seems to be such an obsession in the news these days.

Generally life here is good in that way.  Despite the underlying concern about the political climate here and the threat of insecurity, we don't spend a lot of time listening to the news daily.  I do have some email services send us updates on the situation in the Africa Great Lakes region on a weekly basis, but do not keep up with the news daily.  It gives life here a slower pacing in some sort of way.  When I check in from time to time though, I am always surprised that actually things don't change a lot from month to month despite the steriod driven pace of the media.  Maybe I am just slowing down because of age, but I do like the slower pace of information here now that I have been weaned off the high speed internet 'crack' I used to crave when I lived in the US.  For those of you still there, maybe a 'fast' from media would be a good spiritual discipline to try for what remains of lent.

Actually this week was fairly uneventful despite the fact that we made a trip to Rwanda.  We left after school on Wednesday (actually after some more dental work I had) which meant we left Bujumbura around 3.  It is later than we have ever gone, but we figured it would not be much of a problem.  Little did we know that the border we liked to cross closed at 6pm.  We arrived at 6:15 and were told they were closed.  We begged them to let us through which fortunately they did, since I am not sure what option we would have had besides staying the night in the car.  Driving back to Bujumbura after dark was out of the question, and there is really nothing by the way of guest houses near where we were in Kirundo.

We got into Kigali around 8pm where the Africa New Life Guesthouse had dinner waiting for us.  Oren of coure was thrilled to be back there and even David seems to recognize it and ran around to do the things he remembered from the last time he was there.  We settled in for the night and made arrangements to meet with partners the next day.  It is the beginning of our new fiscal year so among other activities we have to sign new contracts for the grants we are giving them this year.

We went to Friends Peace House the next morning where we saw Ruth and Krystan and had some meetings with our partners.  Among the topics of discussion was the security situation in Rwanda and what contingency plans need to be in place to protect Ruth and Krystan if things get worse.  It was good to hear, from some of our partners, that they did not think that the recent grenade attacks were indicative of a larger breakdown of stability in the country.  They seemed to accept that in these countries some violent episodes around elections aimed at creating fear and intimidation were not abnormal, but that generally things in the country seemed quite normal and stable.

I was happy to know that this was how our partners were feeling.  On the other hand, I did find out from our Guest House staff that pretty much all of the short term mission trips they had anticipated from the US this year were precipitously cancelled on hearing news of the recent problems.  So I do think, that if instilling fear is the objective, the attacks are hitting their mark to some extent. 

Ruth and Krystan seemed to feel fine about thier situation at this time.

Besides meeting with partners, I was drafted into participating in the graduation ceremony of the Mwana Nshuti program.  This is a trade school that we support for street children.  It does a very good job of getting street kids placed in foster situations and given training in numerous skills including sewing, welding, farming, english language, hair cutting, as well as some peace and reconcilliation education.  They graduate a class every year.

I was expected, of course, to represent in an official capacity and sat with the other VIPS at the front of the room where the ceremony was.  It was not too long, and we chose to have Rebecca stay outside with the kids, so it went pretty well.  The kids who were graduating danced, sang,  some VIPs gave speeches, then I was asked to read the names of the graduates as they came up to shake my hand as well as the hands of several others on receiving a certificate for completing their program.  (I noticed with interest that 24 of the 25 graduates this year were girls.)

Afterwards we all drank a fanta (coke) which is an important part of any ceremony here, be it a funeral, wedding, graduation, etc.

We left Rwanda on Saturday morning and took a long way home so we could visit several potential sites for a partners retreat this May of June.  The trip back to about 8 hours so we arrived tired to our home in the evening.  (We were pleasantly surprised that Robyn and Yolanda had bought some bananas and avocadoes for us to make smoothies when we came home.)  The kids were shot though and we struggled with them in the hours before bedtime.

Sunday was better as far as the kids, but was a busy for Rebecca and I.  We both had responsibilities at the English fellowship in the afternoon.  I was preaching and Rebecca was leading Sunday school.  We enlisted Robyn to help us with David during the service.  She was happy to oblige.  I shared some thoughts on 'stumbling blocks to Christian character.'  It was a topic assigned to me, but I found it quite interesting in my preparation.  I felt like I had some good insight into this from my experience in the Kairos prison ministry.  Somehow though, I feel like it did not make much of an impression here.  I am not sure if it was just poorly delivered, but the looks on the faces of people there seemed to suggest they were a bit perplexed or perhaps bored by it all.  Well, I will get another chance next week as I will be sharing again, this time on Christian responses to conflict.  This is probably more up my alley as an MCCer.

This coming week will be more of the same as far as work.  We need to get MOUs signed and I will probably go up to Gitega this week to do that with our partners upcountry. 

I should add a quick footnote after writing about reading the signs of the times on last week's entry.  It is good to get a range of perspectives on this.  We did learn, that the official UN perspective is far more optimistic than we would have thought.  Apparently the conditions now are far more stable than even the 2005 elections at this point in the campaign promise.  Nonetheless, there is still some anxiety among the official expat. community and it even seems that most of the mzungus in Oren's school will probably leave the country from May to September.  There is even rumor that the school may close early.  We don't know what will happen, but we are not planning to take Oren out of school early.  Despite what I wrote last week, we are alert, but not giving in to unjustified fear.  We are committed to being here and supporting the mission of our organization, which has a ministry of 'walking with' the marginalized, poor, and vulnerable, and to bring in word and deed the gospel of peace.