A Field Visit in the Shadow of Volcanoes

Helene, a widow living in Rwanda near the Ugandan border who is a recipient of a goat from one of our partners' self-help projects.



If I were to try to report all the things that happened this week this entry would be quite long so I will try to synthesize a bit and hit the high and low points.  This week was a big one for us here because we were preparing for a visit from our Area Director Mark Sprunger.  He actually arrived last Sunday evening on schedule and we had an extensive week of field visits planned in both Rwanda and Burundi.  Rebecca had done a lot of prep. work scheduling visits to some remote projects in both countries and we had planned to start with conversation with partners and volunteers in Bujumbura on Monday, then head upcountry on Wednesday and continue into Rwanda to eventually leave him off at the Congolese border in Goma on Sunday morning and make our way back home the rest of the day.

It was a very ambitious schedule and one that was going to create a lot of challenges with regard to keeping the children well behaved as we planned to stay in different guest houses each night along the route.  But we were up for it and I even promised Rebecca that she could go to most of the actual sights with Mark while I watched the kids.

The early warning signs of our best laid plans going awry came on Monday morning when David woke up with fever and a lot of drooling.  It was obvious he could not go to pre school, (only his second week.)  We were disappointed as we had looked forward to maintaining our new routine of working together in the morning and then splitting child care in the afternoons.  Now we would have to go back to tag teaming.

We did do some work at home on Monday with Mark, had some meetings with him and brought volunteers over to meet with him.  On Tuesday David was no better and by now we had started on antibiotics at the recommendation of our pediatrician.   Rebecca watched David at home again while I took Mark to visit a project run by Help Channel.  MCC had donated some canned turkey meat and AIDS care kits (which included sheets and towels, rubber gloves, etc) to Help Channel and Help Channel in turn had distributed them to a nursing home in Bujumbura.

This was a bit of a novelty, in fact really unheard of.  Nursing homes really do no exist in Burundi as elderly people are normally cared for in their families.  But because of the war, this system has broken down some and, in fact, there are quite a number of 'abandonned' elderly people left to wander about on their own. 

The nursing home is run by a Catholic nun and Cassien, the director of Help Channel brought Mark and I over to meet them during the delivery of the goods MCC had donated.

To say the nursing home was modest by US standard is a huge understatement.  I worked as an emergency medical technician (ambulance driver) in the 80s and had seen my share of poorly maintained nursing homes, but this was far below anything we had in the US.  The home had about 60 residents who were kept in about 4 rooms.  Basically a line of beds in each room with a bathroom at the end of the hall.  The beds barely had spaces between them for a nurse to pass.  The elderly folks there possessed nothing really.  

When they were not in bed, there was a courtyard where they could sit around.  There were no games, books or other things for them to do.  They could pretty much just chat.  

The home was staffed almost entirely by volunteers and much of their work was spent doing laundry by hand.  This was a true mission of mercy as many of the elderly there were incontinent.  I saw the laundry area where women worked tirelessly before a mountain of soiled sheets and clothes.  

We were given a tour of the place, and greeted the elderly residents in the courtyard.  There was a small formal presentation of the boxes of goods we sent (the rubber gloves were particularly welcomed by the volunteers who did the laundry and cleaning).  There was generally a great appreciation of the items received and Mark and I were pleased to see the goods distributed to this nursing home.  

One of our concerns about giving sheets in the kits was that sheets have great commodity value here and we were concerned that they would simply be taken out and sold by a clinic (or the staff) for the money.  Hospitals rarely supply any kind of bedding for patients that have to stay the night.  It is expected that people bring their own stuff or do without.  But we felt very confident that the nuns who ran this home would use the sheets for the elderly in the facility.

By Tuesday afternoon, when we returned, we found that Oren had a fever as well.  We did not send him to school in the afternoon and I stayed at home with the kids while Rebecca took Mark on some errands. The bigger concern was what we would do about Wednesday if the kids were not better.  We did not think it would be wise to travel with sick kids (and Oren began vomiting as well by evening) but the idea of splitting up for 5 days seemed an equally difficult challenge.  

By Wednesday morning it was obvious that neither child was going to school.  I stayed home with them in the morning while Rebecca took Mark to meet another partner.  We had planned to head upcountry around noon.  When Rebecca got back home close to lunch it was obvious that we would have to make a quick decision to completely change our plan.  She would stay home with the sick children and I would take Mark upcountry and to Rwanda.  But before leaving, we would find her a car so she could get around, especially in an emergency.  Luckily Help Channel had a car for her to borrow.

We left about 2pm, 2 hours behind schedule.  Mark, Felix (our new program assistant) and I headed off up into the hills while Rebecca and the kids stayed back.  Unfortunately all of this put us a bit behind schedule so by the time we did leave I had to cut a visit to Gitega off the schedule to see partners there because we would not have been able to stop there and arrive at our second stop Burasira (the remote village where Jodi works) by dark.  

We got to Burasira in the evening and had a nice visit with Jodi as well as Yolanda who was up there for language immersion lessons.  We talked a lot about farming because Jodi had bought a small plot of land there and was cultivating it.  One thing that came up was the changing face of MCC missionaries.  Historically MCCers were young people who grew up on farms and came to do a few years of service overseas.  They were often placed in rural assignments and probably felt empowered to contribute there because of their own experience as farmers.  Nowadays, many young MCCers are College grads who have never set foot on a farm and may have some theoretical development or other 'expertise' but have little by way of practical agricultural experience.  (That includes me.)  

We lamented a bit this trend, but also realized that it is reflective of the general move away from the family farm model of American agriculture toward agribusiness. I know from personal experience that my grandparents were farmers and my mother had been raised on a farm, as well as many of my cousins, but I do not think any of my generation own a farm at this time.  (Cousins reading this, please correct me if I am wrong.)  But I would also wonder if going and doing mission work would appeal to rural folk in the US as much as it did in the past.  It seems that those who are drawn to do overseas mission work are of a more liberal/intellectual bent rather than a rural/'salt of the earth' type.  I would say that if there are any farmers out there reading this, please consider sharing some of your experience in an overseas assignment, we could use your experience out here.

We left Burasira early Thursday morning and headed to Rwanda.  The drive was not too long as Burasira is about half way there.  We arrived around lunch and met Ruth and Krystan and their new daughter Micha at our guesthouse.   It was good to see them and this was their first opportunity to meet Mark as well as Felix.  We went to visit our partner Friends Peace House in the afternoon and had a long afternoon of meetings with them and a visit to their new Peace Library as well as Mwana Nshuti, the job training program they run for street kids in Kigali.  We did some shopping with Ruth and Krystan in the late afternoon then joined the FPH people for dinner in the evening.  (Sharing food is an extremely important ritual in Burundi and Rwanda, especially when an honored guest arrives.)  There was another long exchange of formal expressions of gratitude, new requests, and responses from us followed by the presentation of gifts.  (I admit that I am not one to stand on ceremony and often find these kinds of events a bit trying.  I was relieved that the kids were not with us at that moment as they would have been very antsy.  Occasionally I have used them as excuses to get out of such ceremonies.)

Friday we planned to head up north to see some projects FPH and some other partners were doing close to the Ugandan border.  It is actually quite a spectacular part of the country (and world) as it is the near the home of the mountain gorillas as well as a long row of active volcanoes that extend along the Ugandan and Congolese border.  We got there in the late afternoon and settled into our guest house for the night.  There are several nice hotels in the area for tourists on safari, but generally as missionaries we stay in the more modest church run guest houses during field visits.   This one actually had running water (but no toilet seats.)  There were several of us in tow by now as we brought some of our partners up to show us around (2 of them).

On Saturday morning we got up late as it was community service time in the morning and no one is really allowed to travel around except to do work.  But by 11am we went to visit some sights.  Our partner called CAPR had some impressive self-help projects.  This group receives virtually no money from us, but by charging small monthly dues to its members, it is able to make loans and collect back interest in the community.  At this point they have raised enough money to buy all the members in the organization a goat which they use for fertilizer.  They also raise the goats to be able to give goats to others.  They had several high producing milk cows as well and even ran an informal feeding program for very vulnerable children in the commune by providing them milk twice per week.

What I like about the work of this group is that it is not really donor driven and makes good use of the assets in a community to help people help themselves. Often donor money is not used nearly as effectively, and even microfinance loans are rarely repaid as effectively as when people are borrowing and repaying money from their own community.

We shared food with the governing committee of the organization as well as 'fantas' again part of the ritual of being in solidarity with people.

I will pause for an aside here to say that eating on these trips is a bit of a challenge.   Generally food on these visits up county consists of goat briochettes (shish kabobs) and french fries with a coke.  Add the fact that despite the short walk to a sight, most of our time is spent sitting on our butts in a car, or in a meeting room.  

I have found that mission work can be very unhealthy from a physical/dietary standpoint.  The fact that vegetables are rarely an option and declining a meal is seen as an insult, I quite look forward to the 2 days of fasting each week at home as the only dietary corrective to these forays.  

We actually had field visits with FPH the same day so we were obliged to repeat the whole ritual again.  We were mercifully saved though by the fact that we were way behind schedule and needed to get to Gasenyi, the town at the Congolese border before dark.  (We did not have a reservation at a place to stay and I had not been there before and had no guides going with us.)

We bid our partners good bye and headed to the West near the Ugandan border to Lake Kivu.  We found Gasenyi and the border crossing in Congo at the city of Goma.  We could see the large active volcano above Goma that had rained lava down on and destroyed much of the city less than a decade ago.  But the area around Lake Kivu is very beautiful and there were quite a few big hotels on the Rwanda side.

We found a small Catholic Maison de Passage to stay the night.  ($8 per person).  We spent the night there then left Mark at the border at 8am Sunday morning to start the 10 hour trip across Rwanda and Burundi back to Bujumbura.  Mark was to meet the MCC Congo rep in Goma that day.

Felix and I spent most of the drive in silence.  Both of us completely worn out.  He had had a real baptism by fire as he did a lot of translating for us from kinyarwanda into French.  

I was anxious to get home because of the kids.  I had called Rebecca about 3 times a day to check on them (luckily my Burundi cell worked everywhere in Rwanda).  I don't know all the details but I do know that Rebecca took the kids to the doctor on Wednesday where they were both diagnosed with strep.  The pediatrician started them both on injectable antibiotics.  I know how painful these are as I had to get 5 in my buttocks.  I could not imagine Rebecca trying to take Oren and David for these daily alone.

She did tell me that on day 2 for Oren she, the doctor, and a waiting patient had to pin Oren down so he could get his shot.  They were both out of school all week.  Luckily Yolanda came back to Buj on Thursday and was able to help out  a bit but it was a rough week for her.

As hard as it is to travel and do field visits with the kids, it is harder when we are apart because of the very disparate experience Rebecca and I have.  She is worn out from being home bound and stuck with constant childcare, and I am worn out from work and travel and am missing the kids terribly.  Getting back in sych is hard.  

It was good to get home Sunday evening although all of us fell into bed exhausted around 9 pm.  We are hoping the kids will be well enough to go to school this morning.  I am really looking forward to a swim!