Some weeks there are just enough small surprises to outweigh the larger disappointments. After complaining for several weeks now about major frustrations, it is good to be able to mention at least 2 events that made this week seem a bit lighter.
The first occurred on Friday mid-morning when Rebecca went to the post office. To her surprise there was a parcel sent by Grandma Jean. Upon closer inspection Rebecca realized it was a Christmas parcel that had arrived a mere 5 months late. It contained a small wooden steam engine (without a face) which was Oren's sole request as far as Christmas gifts. I ordered it about 3 weeks before Christmas which I knew was pushing it to have something mailed. Grandma Jean actually sent us about 5 parcels in the month of December and 4 arrived in less than 2 weeks. It was a real disappointment that this one did not. It did not, in fact, arrive at all, and we even left the tree up until Feb 1 to have it under the tree when it arrived.
We gave up hope in mid Feb. But here at the end of May, the parcel has finally arrived. We picked up Oren from school at lunch and quickly set up the top of the Christmas tree and put the parcel under it. When Oren happened upon it in the living room he asked what it was and we told him to open it. He and David were very excited that Santa's parcel had arrived in May and they opened it together and played with trains most of that afternoon.
The other pleasant surprise occurred this evening (Sunday). As part of a novel birthday gift given by the women of our 'missionary social group'--includes the Spanners from Denmark, the Hoffmans from Germany, Zachee and Bridget from Burund/Canada, the Van Eerdes from South Africa, and the Johnsons from US-- the women gathered to receive an Indian food cooking lesson from a woman whose kids are at the Ecole Belge. The husbands agreed to watch the kids while the women cooked. The women met at Tanya Hoffman's house at 3 and had lessons until 6. During that time the men were not nearly as coordinated so we went to several different beaches with kids. I took Oren and David to Club du Lac Tanganyika where they enjoyed an intense afternoon of body surfing and getting pummeled by waves. It was quite windy and a bit overcast which made for some big waves. I took some excellent video footage of some kite-boarders doing monster jumps and flips off of the breakers. The water was quite warm despite the lack of sun and the kids had a great time.
We got back a bit after 6pm, exhausted and hungry. Tanya's house smelled great when we all arrived back. There were about 9 adults and 9 children. We feasted on excellent food from paneer tikka masala and nan, to gujarati potato pakoras, and many different chutneys, vegetables, and dal as well. Everything had that really pucca Indian taste that you just can't get unless you go to a restaurant.
Distribution of the books will be the next problem in the weeks ahead, a task which will fall to some extent on our program assistant Felix as he will be here while we are gone on homeleave in 2 weeks.
We did have a full house again this week with our short-term volunteer Josh Miller here for his last week. He continued to go to work with Moisson pour Christ during the week, but was home for dinner most nights. Yolanda popped in as well toward the end of the week.
We also had a visitor from Tanzania, a former World Vision Africa program manager named Wilfred Mlay. He was here to do some preplanning for an annual cross regional conference called the Great Lakes Initiative, run out of the Duke University Center for Reconcilliation. He had the challenge of trying to get stakeholders who have been participating by virtue of a grant from MCC and Duke to 'buy in' for the next year, as most everyone has been coming for free up until now. This does not play very well in this part of the world.
It is interesting, in the US a conference is rarely seen as income generating activity by participants and usually one pays to go, or is sponsored. Here, a conference is seen as an opportunity to learn something, make connections, but also, importantly, pick up a bit of spending money in the form of perdiem, transportation, communication fees etc. (It always amuses me that people come up to conference hosts and ask for these 'perks' even when transportation, room and board, etc. is already pre-paid.) It is a precedent set up in the past 15 years or so of development work that people are paid to learn, (it was seen as a way to compensate the very marginalized for time spent away from farming, work, etc.) But what has happened is that since it is now understood as an opportunity to make some money, participants are no longer those very marginalized people, but rather a class of individuals who basically are professional conference participants. So to begin to ask these individuals and local organizations to start to pay a fee to participate is a hard sell to say the least.
Nonetheless we had a nice time with Wilfred staying with us and did a lot of 'comparing notes' on working with MCC vs. World Vision. (Conclusion: The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.) He was easy to host and brought a lot of wisdom from his many years of work in this context from the perspective of an East African.
I am happy to say that I suffered only one deeply embarrassing International incident this week. That was when I blew off a meeting with the Tanzanian Ambassador to Burundi. Let me back up...
I will say that I am not in the habit of missing a meeting with anyone, and particularly someone at the rank of Ambassador. But the circumstances were a bit extraordinary. To begin with, the Tanzanian Ambassador, His Excellency, Dr. James Nzagi is a Mennonite, possibly one of the only true African Mennonites in Burundi. We have a 'Mennonite' church in Burundi which I have written about in the past. It is a church that was founded by a pastor who filed papers to have his church recognized as the legal Mennonite Church of Burundi, followed shortly by another who made his church the legal Mennonite Bretheren Church of Burundi.
The Ambassdor happened upon one of these pastors while 'church shopping' and has since gone semi-regularly to the church. This has been a great boon for the pastor who comes by regularly to visit us at MCC to let us know that this man is now in his congregation in hopes that it will add some legitimacy to the church vis a vis the Mennonite World Connference. The pastor has been trying to seek MWC recognition for the church here and has a bit of a mistaken impression about MCC's role in that. (We are not a church nor do we act on behalf of the MWC.) I, on the other hand, have been encouraging him to make a connection in this context, that is the long-established Tanzanian Mennonite church rather than look to mzungus for legitimacy.
Anyway, two weeks ago, at the urging of someone in the Mennonite World Conference to whom I explained the situation, I did express interest to the pastor in question in meeting the Ambassador as he is a Tanzanian Mennonite. Apparently the pastor took this as carte-blanche for him to act as my personal secretary and schedule a meeting for me at the Ambassadors convenience. The pastor did not communicate this to me and on the day I was scheduled to meet, I was in Rwanda.
When I did get back this past week and called the Ambassador on my own initiative to greet him and make an appointment, I was appalled as the he immediately laced into me for scheduling and missing an appointment for which he had prepared to meet me the week before. I was flummoxed as I did not even know what he was talking about and stammered a profuse apology as I tried to understand what had transpired. I finally figured out the the pastor had done this for me and had not communicated clearly to me his actions (at least in a language I understood.)
That is not a good foot to get started on, but I did manage to be composed enough to set up another meeting (for which I was available.) We met on Friday morning in his office and actually had a very cordial and interesting conversation. I left feeling the meeting was worthwhile and he gave me some insight into his involvement in the church in Burundi. We also did agree on several points involving connecting the church better with the Tanzanian Mennonite church as a step toward bringing it into full recognition by the Mennonite World Conference. Although this is not MCC's first mandate, we are encouraged to accompany the local Anabaptist church in our country. I felt I did my part but remain cautious about being too involved in this particular church's journey.
The last item worth mentioning is something I have chosen not to mention the past several weeks, although I have known about it: Our service worker family the Horsts will be leaving us at the end of May. Although it is not the end of their term, they were offered a job with UNICEF in monitoring and evaluation of child rights in Kathmandu, NEPAL. They did not feel it was an opportunity to pass up and we respectfully accepted their decision to pursue this.
We will miss them here, especially Nathan's particular expertise in planning, monitoring and evaluation which was very helpful to Help Channel. Some of the past week, thus, has been absorbed by helping them with logistics of closing a house and ending a service worker term. We certainly wish them the best in their new assignment in Nepal.
Next week we will be upcountry for several days as we are holding our Annual Partner's Retreat. Pray that we will be able to keep it all together for the 2 weeks remaining until homeleave. They are packed full!
Bonus Photo:
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Lousy focus, but a photo of Josh Miller, Yolanda, and Jean Claude who hung out a bit to talk about life and peace work before Josh headed back to the US today. |
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