Krystan and daughter Misha during a tea break at our team gathering this weekend.
Its amazing how quickly work can become overwhelming here. After a week of some respite we were in full swing again and there is really no end in sight. Not that it has been all bad, but we have been doing a ton of hosting the past 5 days.
The occasion was our team gathering. This is something we do several times a year and is an occasion for all of us to be together. At this time there are 11 of us all told and we are expecting another one in just over a week. This has been one of the gratifying parts of our job in the past 4 years, to grow our team, which had 2 service workers when we arrived.
Despite the size of the group, we did feel that we could still host them in our house. This has the advantage mainly of being far more economical than going to a guest house in town. Our house is more or less a guest house with its 4 bedrooms, but we had to do a considerable amount of doubling up with our kids sleeping with us, and the 3 SALTers and Yolanda sharing 2 rooms with Ruth and Krystan's family in Oren and David's room. Felix, fortunately could stay at his house which is in the subdivision right next to ours. He went home at night.
The gathering started on Wednesday afternoon with the two SALTers from Rwanda and Ruth and Krystan (with Misha) arriving by bus from Kigali. Felix picked them up and they did some work on their visas as soon as they got here. Yolanda had come down from Gitega the day before.
Our first activity together was dinner at our house. Marceline had prepared cabbage rolls and pasta. We had dinner then began our time together with an evening devotional and some singing (from the Mennonite Hymnal and Sing the Journey). We also used an Anabaptist Lenten devotional throughout the week, morning and evening for our times of reflection.
The focus of our retreat this week was not something new. We do it once per year as part of our reflection on our program. It is basically a review and critique of MCC's stated values and the extent to which these are reflected in our programming. As a team that means looking at this on several levels from program level to individuals seconded to partners.
There are 8 core values with several correlaries but here is a synopsis:
1) Relationships -- emphasizing the prioritization of relationships and maintaining respect for all in our work.
2) Learning -- emphasizing that we are a learning organization that adapts to the context as we come to understand (not control it.)
3) Flexibility -- again related to adapting to the context and being accountable to local experts on the ground.
4) Solidarity -- emphasizing our effort to have our own lifestyles on assignment not be too different than those of the people we serve.
5) Nonviolence -- like it sounds
6) Servanthood -- emphasizes humility, respect of local partners, and ways in which we steward our privileges.
7) Collaborative Decision-making -- as it sounds
8) Involvement with the church. Both individually and as a program.
The last one gave us some challenges because of what I have said in past blogs about the local Mennonite Church (or lack thereof). There was also some acknowledgement that as a donor organization, direct involvement or a accountability to a single church can be tricky because of the great temptation that creates for church leaders to try to get some MCC resources for church related projects that are not part of MCC's mandate. (My favorite example is the frequent request we get for musical instruments for a church choir when our work is in the domain of food security and peace and reconcilliation.) A church can find it baffling that we do not want to assist them with the former when it can contribute directly to evangelism-- their top priority. To see things like food security as a legitimate church activity may be a bit of a stretch.
We began the real discussion on Thursday morning after we dropped the kids off at school. We always began with singing and devotional then launched into discussions of each value. As with all of our work at MCC we do not end this in philosophy but are expected to come up with a concrete action plan for the next year to work on areas of weakness related to our values assesement. We also had, as part of this gathering, the opportunity to look back over last year's objectives to see if we had succeeded.
We shared lunch and then worked in the afternoon, hiring a childcare worker to help us. There were 3 kids in all with David, Oren and little Misha (R and K's daughter.) The afternoons did include some creative activities as well after our second round of meetings, we did make collages using old magazines to express the things that give us joy. It was a nice diversion and Oren and David even got into it a bit as well.
Thursday evening we did yoga together and many stayed up late to visit. (I fell asleep early.) Friday was more or less a repeat of Thursday, although in the afternoon, when we took Oren to Karate, we went over to his school and several of us threw a frisbee around. (Bethany is quite an ultimate frisbee enthusiast and even plays on an official team in Kigali.)
On Friday evening we also enjoyed watching a movie together (Midnight in Paris) a Woody Allen film. (That had been brought by Rebecca's dad 2 weeks prior.)
Saturday was our last day together as a group and since we had finished all of our business on Friday we made plans to go to the beach. Our original plan was to go down to 'Blue Bay' a beach about 2 hours south of Bujumbura which is very nice with very clear water. Ultimately, because of weather and other factors we decided to stay near and went to Club du Lak T. Among the reasons for not going was illness. Several people were not feeling great Oren had a very sore throat and a fever so Rebecca stayed home with him while I took David and the others to the beach.
We had a nice afternoon there and ate lunch as well. Here is a photo of grilled mukeke, a local fish unique to Lake Tanganyika, that is quite tasty.
When we came home we had a closing ceremony in which we came into a circle and went through the group one by one to affirm everyone. We also remembered that this would be our last team gathering with Ruth and Krystan present. They will be finishing their assignment in mid April and leaving Rwanda. The exciting news though is that they have accepted another assignment with MCC as Country Representatives for MCC Eastern Europe. They will be moving to Sarejevo in August after a stint at home in Canada.
I should mention that dinner Saturday night was awesome as well. We asked Marceline to not make food that night and we cooked as a team. With the help of Ruth, Yolanda and Annie we made and ate gado-gado, an Indonesian dish featuring various vegetables egg and other items over rice and covered with a spicy peanut sauce. (Annie was the expert on the peanut sauce.)
We went to bed pretty late on Saturday, but did get up on Sunday for church. By this point though, Oren’s fever was quite high and his throat was in agony, we started him on antibiotics, but I stayed home with him while Rebecca and David went to church. The rest of the team began heading out of town. Ruth and Krystan and Misha went with Yolanda to Gitega. Their plan was to visit Yolanda’s home then go on to Burasira to see Jodi (former MCCer). (This is where the Hope School is located.) It is such a nice place, they wanted to go one more time before they left the region. Their plan is to continue on to Kigali from there.
The SALTers are hanging out together for a few more days and pay a visit to Yolanda on Tuesday. Today (Monday) they did go down to Blue Bay for some swimming and had a bit of an adventure when a hippopotamus emerged out of the water just a very short distance from them. It actually ran into another swimmer. Everyone apparently cleared out of the swimming area. Fortunately there were no injuries.
Oren was home from school today, but looks markedly better. Hopefully he will be well enough to go back tomorrow. We will continue to have guests this whole week, but I’ll get to that another time.
I should mention one important piece of really good news. It goes back to some reports I was writing last year about a friend fighting corruption. This person was a model of patience and hope under tribulation and false charges and was even arrested and imprisoned for several months with no due process or even a credible charge. As of this week, all charges have finally been dropped and he and his wife were cleared to reopen their pharmacy. It had been closed for about a year and a half because of corruption.
I won’t mention it by name, but those of you who live in or have lived in Burundi in the mission community know who I am talking about. Justice does ultimately prevail if one is patient and courageous.
Bonus Photo: The MCC Rwanda Burundi program Team. (less Felix, Oren and David)
No comments:
Post a Comment