Saturday, May 25, 2013

A PSA and a Serendipitous Day


Like Father like son, or maybe it is mother—daughter.  These were among the 8 hippos we watched basking at Cercle Nautique Saturday.




PSA--  For any ex-pats living in Burundi or planning to come to Burundi, I need to advise you all that laptop theft is completely out of control these days.  Besides the two we had stolen at least 8 other friends have had theirs stolen in the past 3 months.  It is an easy target to snatch.  Light, portable and in unbelievably high demand here.  Armed robbery is not the modus operandi here, but expect your car to be broken to, or any carrying case left momentarily unguarded or carried casually to be snatched.  Best strategy is to have a well-maintained back-up drive.  --And don’t come with one you can’t afford to lose here.


David and Isabel
There is change in the air.   Although we are getting a few last throes of thunderstorm, the rains are coming much fewer and further between.  The mountains of DRC are starting to fade into the haze that will keep them hidden for the next 4 months. 

Besides the weather, there is a certain agitation that begins as the academic year draws to an end.  This is the time when we get the final word on who will be staying and who will be leaving as the summer break is the main time of transition between long-term arrivals and departures.

Minotaur sandwich
and homemade battleaxe
We are moving into the end game with several of our close friends this year.  Our German missionary friends, the Hoffman’s will be returning home this year after 4 years here, as well as our very close Danish friends, the Spanners.  They are actually taking a job with World Relief in Baltimore, so it is very likely we will see them again in the future in the US.  Another family from the UN is leaving as well who we have enjoyed through yoga, children’s ballet, and early music singing.  Others are just departing for the summer, including us. 

In all of this there is a certain jostling of social events to try and have some final meaningful times together.  So we are going out a lot with friends in various groupings quite a bit these days.  It is actually enjoyable but there is also a certain giddiness as people  begin to look forward, with excitement or trepidation to imminent departures.

This is also the time for those staying to watch for great sales on things others are leaving, although after 5 years, Rebecca and I are definitely stocked to capacity.

Among the social events that populated the week were the following:

A Birthday party for Zack Johnson.  His family are American missionaries who have been her for generations.  Zack is about Oren’s age and had a Star Wars party.  I took Oren and David last Saturday as Rebecca was at an overnight meeting and returning from Gitega.  It was a nice event with many mutual friends there, including a few newcomers.  The kids had a great time playing together and Joy had planned several Star Wars themed games and food, including a cake with Yoda, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leah and CP30 all made out of marzipan!! 

An outing up to Ijenda with the Hoffman’s as well as the Van Aardes, our South African friends.  It was a chance to have another final get together with the Hoffmans and the kids all enjoyed playing together.  David and Isabel were the featured children with Oren and the older boys setting up a wedding for them under a little shelter which houses a peculiar wooden lion statue


A dinner with the Millers at Ubuntu.  They our American missionary friends who are here as physicians with the Free Methodist Church.  We had a pleasant evening with them over pizza while the kids ran around the garden like maniacs.  They will be going back to the US for the summer, but fortunately not leaving.


Michael, Melody, Yolanda with
Julie
This weekend we are also hosting several of our service workers who are down for the weekend from Gitega, as well as Michael who is visiting from Bukavu.  He had also recently had his computer stolen and needed a little break from Eastern Congo.  Yolanda and Melody were down as well with a friend of Yolanda’s who is visiting for a few weeks. 


David and Isabel looking
at the hippos in the lake.
A Serendipitous outing to Cercle Nautique.  After having successful outing with our kids one on one, we decided to repeat that on Saturday.  Rebecca went with Oren to Cercle Nautique but then immediately called David and I because there were 8 hippos lounging there as well as 2 different groups of our friends--the Van Aardes, and the Johnsons.  Jessie Johnson had brought fishing equipment so the kids fished while the adults visited and we all enjoyed watching the hippos bask in the sun.  After that we stopped by the Cercle Hippique to see the horses and found Naja Spanner and Courtney Ivaska and their kids there as well!  Rebecca remarked that we could not have planned it better if we had tried.


Besides hosting and socializing we have had a fair amount of work between the two of us.  Rebecca was asked to preach last Sunday and continuing in the theme of stewardship that we have been exploring, she was asked to talk about a Christian approach to environmental stewardship.  She worked hard to great a visual, prophetic image to go along with the sermon and succeeded in her attempt. 

She began by reading the creation story while wrapping a box in beautiful paper on a table in front of her.  When it was wrapped she finished the story saying that God found it all very good before he rested.

She then unwrapped and opened the box to reveal a very nice, very colorful dress.  She talked about certain theologies that go against a notion that we have, as Christians, a responsibility to protect the environment.  As she talked she began to cut chunks out of the dress that was hanging on a stand on the table.  When she finished she took many of the cuttings and set fire to them on a plate.  The dress was completely ruined as she finished her discussion of these errant doctrines.

In the rest of the sermon she used a passage in Leviticus to talk about Sabbath and how God even instructed those using land to give it a Sabbath rest as well every seventh year.  She talked about the Jubilee year as well and tied environmental stewardship and economic justice together as a unified idea in the levitical laws.  I also sensed that in all of this she brought home the reality that God expects us to steward our resources in a way that allows for renewal.  Not using up, but rather restoring, as a commandment coming from the idea of Sabbath, for man, the animals, and the land.

Her sermon was well received and we enjoyed a very nice Sabbath day after that on Sunday with the kids at the beach. 

Children participating in YPI conference.
The other work event that took some of my time was a conference in Gitega on using children as peacemakers.  The person presenting the program was adamant that children were one of the most effective means of disseminating a message of peace and reconciliation as they even had capacity to influence parents.

There were quite a number of people in attendance representing several major institutions in the country including the Catholic and Anglican churches, several Universities, and other donors like World Vision.

My favorite part of the conference was on the first day when we sat in a plenary session.  We were a group of adults, mainly men, sitting at a large semicircle of tables facing a projector.  I noticed about a dozen places empty and thought there had been quite a few no-shows.  Then suddenly a dozen 6th grade Burundian children came and took the empty places like they were adults.

They had been invited to participate and give feedback.  It was really interesting to be sitting in the room of grown-ups with them as we sat and discussed obstacles to the plan, possible solutions, and worked in small break-out groups to do strategic planning.

We are always trying to find ways to have beneficiary involvement in the planning of a project but this was a stroke of genius.

I was away on Wednesday and Thursday, but did get back in the evening despite some heavy rain upcountry.  I needed to be home of Friday because we are getting to the last two weeks of ballet classes and the little girls classes are preparing a presentation for their parents.  They are pretty excited about this and have been working hard to get ready.

That brings us back to today through a quick synopsis of the past 10 days.

In other non-chronological news, we have had several challenges in the past week, the hardest being the news that our one year volunteers in Rwanda (the SALTers Alyssa and Janelle) were actually denied visas that they have been in the process of applying for for the past 10 months.  It is a bit ironic because they have been in limbo this whole time and are only here for an 11 month term.  They will be able to finish their last month in Burundi as visa requirements are much less strict here, but it does leave us puzzled as to why. 

The immigration office claims that it is because of lack of qualifications but that does not really make sense.  The fact that there is some tension between the Canadian and Rwandan government could be another reason. We are also aware that Rwanda is getting much more strict about visa requirement since the M-23 crisis in Eastern DRC.  Anyway, we don’t understand completely what happened, but it does mean we will need to think hard about what we can do about bringing volunteers there in the future.

I will be traveling to Rwanda next week to talk to some of the leaders of the church that is sponsoring them.  Hopefully they will be able to shed some light on the situation.


Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Stewarding Power at a Partners Retreat


 David during one of his frequent visits to the farm at the Seminary in Burasira where we had our Partners Retreat.



I see that it is time again for another update.  I fear the past several might give one the impression we spend, between us, all of our time out of town.  Some months that seems to be the case, and this past week was no exception.

The occasion was our Annual MCC Partner’s Retreat.  Being our fifth year here, this is our fifth such retreat, and I will preface my remarks by saying it was one of least complicated most crisis-free ones we have had.

I say that because if you were to look back at past years of this blog in the months of May and June, you would see that most were uncannily timed to fall on some of the most serious health crises we have had here in the past 5 years.  I would say that almost every one of them was almost cancelled at the last minute, and at one Rebecca was recovering from malaria, while another, I was required to deal with a health crisis of a service worker family that prevented me from going all together.  Other years it was Oren or David who were seriously ill.

Felix, Matt, Pastor Jeredie, Melody, Yolanda
So when I say that this one was uncomplicated and crisis-free, I am saying it like I feel some kind of hex has finally been broken over this event. 

The retreat was held last Thursday through Saturday (we actually arrived Wednesday evening) at Burasira, the site of the Grand Seminaire near the Hope School for the Batwa.  It is really an ideal place with a very modest guest facility, conference rooms, and a cafeteria, all in a very picturesque setting in a fairly remote part of Burundi between Gitega and Ngozi. 

It is also ideal in that it is roughly half-way between Bujumbura and Kigali so that people traveling from different countries  come about the same distance.  We were also fortunate to have a week in May when the kids only had three days of school (Ascension Day is a Holiday weekend in this Catholic Country).   So we went as a family bringing Marcelline, our cook, along as a nanny for the kids. 

Antoine and Musafiri
Burasira is a very familiar place to them as they have been coming up since Oren was 3 years old.  It was where our service worker Jodi Mikalachki used to live and is the current home of our SALTer Teri-Lynn Jordan.  It is about a kilometer away from the Hope School itself and the seminary, although rustic, is a child’s paradise, with a labyrinth of gardens and courtyards as well as a farm complete with stables full of cows, goats, pigs and rabbits. 

Having planned this kind of event before, Rebecca and I were able to use our templates from the past to organize a schedule, plan music, and invite everyone.  Transportation was arranged by partners from each town (Buja, Kigali, Gitega) and no one was even late to arrive on Wednesday evening for the opening supper and introductions.

Jean Baptiste, Teri-Lynn, Felix
Activities for the 3 days include praise and worship, prayer, free time to walk around as well as do some sports (there is a basketball court, as well as soccer field).  We also have a theme every year and try to do some practical work related to MCC planning and reporting criteria.  This year the theme was “The Stewardship of Power”—an idea that came from me as we have been talking about stewardship in our church the past several weeks.

The basic premise of the theme is that power, defined as the ability to change one’s environment by causing and preventing actions, is something we all want an unlimited amount of.  (In our session I actually asked for a show of hands of who had too much in their lives.)  

I discussed different ways in which power is exercised and made this list:

Negative:
Force—Power exerted by threat to another’s life or well being to cause one to act in an INVOLUNTARY manner.
    (Ex.  Slavery, rape, Capital Punishment in certain cases)

Coercion— Power exerted through pressure of negative social consequences to cause one to act in an INVOLUNTARY manner
  (ex. Sexual harassement, but also mandatory vaccinations)

Manipulation---Power exerted through persuasion or misdirection to cause one to act in an INVOLUNTARY MANNER
   (ex.  Propaganda, certain kinds of advertising or fundraising based on guilt)

Neutral:

Influence:  The capacity to persuade others to act in your interest because of any number of personal traits or social relations.
(ex.--went to same college, good speaker, nice looks, same clan, money-as salary or bonus)

Expertise:  The possession of special knowledge by an individual or group that has intrinsic values to others.
(medical doctor, professional experience)

Positive:

Authority:  The right to exercise power delegated by an institution or another person (or group of persons) to an individual (or group).
   (ex.  President of the Country, or a Court of law, Legal Rep of Church, school teacher, etc.—note: can be given power to use force coercion, etc.)

Rights:  Protections given by an institution (or State) to individuals or groups that are enforced by that institution.  (Right to fair trial, bear arms)  note—sometimes rights are symbolic (representing an ideal) if an institution is not actually empowered to enforce them.  Ex. Right to work


Paul, Francois, Melody
Using this framework to understand how we exercise power, I then talked about the one most relevant to us in our institutions: Authority and Rights and made the case that exercising power in this way is in fact (in its ideal) a stewardship of power.  That is, the power that one has is not one’s own, but power given by another person or group to be held in trust by the one entrusted to use it.

I did acknowledge that there can be ‘illegitimate authority’ (like having an army) but focused on the more common experience we have of institutions, organized to take actions using a legitimate distribution of power through the delegation of authority.

The challenge is that we can be good or bad stewards.  We can abuse our power, or use it inappropriately, but also the ones delegating power may not put clear limitations on the power one is given.

Authority clearly defines and limits power.  I mentioned the crisis I see in many of Burundi’s churches is a crisis of abuse of authority where the institution has not put clear limits on power and those given stewardship over it find ways to exceed their authority in their natural desire to have unlimited power.


Oren venerating the Blessed Mother
I won’t say more here, if you are interested I can send my lecture notes.  The partners found it very interesting, particularly two questions I posed:

1)   Can one use negative ways to exercise power to achieve positive ends?
2)   Can one use positive ways to exercise power to achieve negative ends?

The answer is yes to both and we find abuse of power in both circumstances.

We ended our discussions with a workshop where we worked in small groups addressing some very practical situations  in small groups.  The idea was to address the problem first, and then second, propose some institutional policy that would prevent this problem from happening in the future.  (setting limits on power.)

Here are two examples of the questions I gave:

1) You are in a managing position in your partnership and a female field officer confides to you that a married male manager (your colleague) is trying to find opportunities to work alone with her and making many inappropriate compliments about her “good looks”.  He has asked her to accompany him on an upcoming field visit.

2)   You are running a school through your partnership.  A teacher reports that during the school day, a father of a student came and started to beat his daughter on school grounds while other teachers and administrators looked on.

Yves, Pacifique
How would you manage this situation? What policies might one put in place to prevent this problem in the future? 

In the US it might seem pretty obvious how these situations would be handled because the State guarantees certain rights, especially in the latter case.  But in a place like here, where the State does not have very consistent capacity to enforce any rights, it is important for our partners to consider what policies they will enforce in their projects and how they will do so.

The discussions were very interesting and I think the lesson about seeing authority as a stewarding of power was very helpful for them in thinking about other situations, even outside of their partnership where this would be applicable.

While that is a synopsis of the work we did on Friday, we did many other things as well.  The afternoons were off and many of the partners enjoyed playing basketball and were quite good.

Teri-Lynn with some of her kindergartners.
We also did a field visit up to the Hope School one morning and were able to see many of the classes and hear some of its history.  They greeted us with their drum corps which is always a treat before visiting the classes.  Since we were on Teri-Lynn’s home turf she took us to several classes where the kids could show-off their English through songs they knew.

The Hope School kids seemed to enjoy the attention, but especially liked to see David and Oren who came along for the visit.  David was particularly amusing and at one point walked alone into one class and sat down at a little desk and chair as if he were a member of the class.  The other children found it quite amusing and did a chorus of “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” for him.

Jean-Baptiste, Normand with Marceline
trying out the drums.
The Hope School is definitely one of our successful projects that is very nice to show to others as its impact on the community is palpable even during a short visit. 

Generally the retreat is a good time for partners to meet each other, network, share experiences.  We have not really changed our partners the whole time we have been here, so most know each other quite well.  I find that this way of working has been very effective and to see our partners looking for opportunities to collaborate rather than compete for scarce resources is very impressive. 

The only real setback in the whole retreat was the fact that our two Rwanda SALTers, Janelle and Alyssa, were not able to leave Rwanda to come to Burundi because they are having a lot of trouble getting their resident visa and could not get their passports back in time to travel.

The visa situation has been particularly difficult in Rwanda this year, especially for Canadians.  We are hoping for better luck next year in terms of getting visas in a timely manner.

We all returned to our respective homes on Saturday midday, and our family was back at the house by late afternoon.  We had a quiet evening together watching a movie.  The kids had been very good with Marceline during the trip and enjoyed visiting the farm animals quite a bit.

Sunday was quite normal and we went to the beach between church and our cell group meeting.

Monday was a very special day where Rebecca and I took a true Sabbath.  We took the morning off together, and after dropping the kids at school, went over to the Lake and enjoyed a morning swimming, talking, praying together.  It had been too long of working hard side by side or apart without a chance to relate to each other as a couple. At lunch, when we picked up the kids, I took Oren out for lunch and Rebecca took David out.  They both loved having special time with just one of us.  We have to do that more.   All in all, it was the perfect closure to a very busy long weekend.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Rooting reconciliation in the region


Last Monday began normally for the boys as we dropped them off at school. But it was a very usual day for Paul and I as he dropped me off at the airport to travel to Arusha, Tanzania. I headed off for a meeting of the Partners and stakeholders of the Great Lakes Initiative – it’s that big gathering of Christian leaders on reconciliation, which I have attended the past two Januaries. Duke University has been the major initiator of the GLI, but has found partnership in different ways with our organization MCC, with World Vision international, and with African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries (ALARM). So there were reps from each of those groups at the meeting, along with four Christian theologians from the region (two University rectors from Eastern Congo, a Catholic priest from South Sudan and our friend and founder of the theological school and church we attend here in Burundi, Emmanuel Ndikumana.) Because of my participation in the GLI since 2009, going to this meeting was work, but it was also an opportunity to work with good friends I’ve made along the journey.

Our task for this week was to better analyze what the GLI has been doing and what it should be doing for the future. And in addition, we were trying to plan a road map for rooting the GLI better in the region (in terms of coordination), rather than have coordination happen in North America at Duke University.

We started our process by charting a history of the GLI, which is not simple when it involves seemingly unconnected things happening in different parts of the world by different actors. But thanks to an awesome innovation called “Sticky Wall,” we were able to work as a team of 12, pool our knowledge, and come up with a decent timeline of events and impacts.

The GLI was birthed out of a time of ecumenical theological reflection in 2004, when 50 scholars from all around the world and from different faith traditions wrote a document called “Reconciliation as the mission of God.” Those convictions have guided our yearly gatherings, but have often puzzled people who have come looking for more practical training on conflict transformation or for political petitions to sign to guide their advocacy work. So we also needed to better define the “DNA” of the GLI – which is demonstrated pictorially here. What people have found is that in this region, Christian leaders have made peace-building their business and their project, if they even think of it at all. This approach often, ironically, leads to kingdom-building, organizational conflict, narrow political thinking, discouragement and despair. The GLI tries to create a space for Christians to consider that reconciliation doesn’t start with us – it has been and will be the central mission of God vis-à-vis his whole creation. And we are called
personally to be God’s ambassadors of reconciliation, called to be converted, coming to terms with the barriers in our own hearts and seeking to create a new community with those very different from us – something we practice every time we meet as an ecumenical, inter-ethnic, multi-lingual group from the region. In particular, we have tried to target and invite key Christian leaders who seem to be tired of the old model (where the church is another power base which divides people) and could make a difference if they came and were encouraged.

It takes a long time to say what I just said! So we also worked to define in a mission statement what the GLI is about – we needed to do this because not everyone, even in our own organizations, understands or is fully supportive.

Our mission is to mobilize restless Christian leaders, create a space for their transformation, and empower them to participate in God’s mission of reconciliation in their own communities, churches and contexts.

On our second day, we started working on defining the current organization of the GLI, which is very ad hoc and hard to picture, because of the nature of different partners coming in and contributing at different levels. And then we tried to imagine a better organizational structure. We need a resilient, small organization, with simpler leadership coming from the region, and we feel like we were able to approach a good model of that. And finally on the third day, we worked on the specific milestones we will need to reach in the next three years to achieve that vision.

One of the exciting outcomes of the specific planning is that all 3 NGO partners expressed the need to plan from the country level, from the bottom up, rather than from the regional level. Each country in the region has different issues. We have seen how the GLI makes so much sense in the context of Burundi and the calling of the church in this country to speak into the political / spiritual issues that will be part of public life in the near future (elections, truth and reconciliation commission, general trauma healing). We are already making progress in developing a Burundi GLI country group as a community of leaders. We talked about some sub-regional gatherings as well, in Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, to try and work through the specific tensions here. And there is a possibility of doing some cross-border work in Northern Uganda and South Sudan, another area of conflict.

So, personally, I enjoy being part of this work because it is one key place where my professional role connects well with my training in theology. According to normal missionary gender roles, it is not often that I have the opportunity to participate in a conference or meeting like this. I love being a mother and a wife, but I also miss the kind of engagement around ministry that I enjoyed in seminary, for example. In the GLI, it is a real privilege to spend time with African theologians and scholars who could be my teachers, but who engage me as an equal, though I am a woman and a westerner.

Another gift of the week was the facilitator of our meeting, a man named Bill Lowrey. Along with leading us through fun and different processes for doing our work, he also gave us some personal, spiritual input. His specialty is in helping peace-builders develop personal resilience, so that they can be effective for the long haul and not burn out too quickly. I really appreciated what he had to say, but I also clearly felt that I am wearing very, very thin right now.

I knew that going into the week and I was also anticipating a time of rest and reflection, being away from the kids for a few days. On the good side, I was able to take two good long walks/jogs in the lovely countryside around the retreat center where we stayed. I never got to see Mt. Kilimanjaro throw off its blanket of clouds, but the environment was very fresh and the community around there was not apparently impressed enough with foreigners to follow me around. On the unfortunate side, our group ended up working until 10 pm every night on details of the next gathering in Uganda. So much for alone time!

I traveled home on the same flights with Emmanuel Ndikumana and he was good enough to give me some very long, detailed explanations of things that are currently happening in the church in Burundi. Some things were encouraging, such as the legacy of the late bishop Elie Buconyori of the Free Methodist church. Others were enlightening in a discouraging way, and strengthened my conviction that we need to have a place like the GLI where Christian leaders are challenged with the truth that the center of the gospel is sacrifice and reconciliation, not power.

Following this week away, I felt very worn out. And right away on Friday, we had to frantically start putting the pieces into place for our Partners’ retreat, which starts – today, actually! I was busy unloading other tasks, which I had unwisely taken onto my plate earlier (like postponing preaching at our church).

Paul gave me the report that the kids were good during the week and he really didn’t have a problem with them. I won't mention here all the issues he was dealing with during the week, involving immigration, others'  health issues, volunteers, etc. They had a school holiday on Wednesday and he took them to the beach for lunch and to our local zoo. They were certainly very affectionate to me, and loved being able to snuggle for our family movie night on Friday. On Saturday we had a nice group of people over for yoga, but I found I was too exhausted to participate, so I played with David instead. After everyone had left, Paul took a long look at me and gave me permission to go back to bed for the rest of the day. I didn’t refuse and found that I actually could sleep for the whole day, something I haven’t done in years I think. We had a quiet Sunday with church, pizza lunch at Ubuntu and our small group.

One funny moment was pointed out to me on Saturday, when our house was full of newcomers to Burundi.

Me: “Oren, put down the machete!”
Beth: “That’s not something you hear every day at home!”

It underlined for me in a moment some of the vast distance we will need to cross when we return to the USA. Here, a machete is just a standard piece of gardening equipment. It had just been used for pruning a large bush in our yard. I was chiefly concerned that Oren had picked it up and was deep into his imaginary role as a Minotaur fighting the Telmarines and was starting to wave it about. In America, it is a deadly instrument and no family would even own one! Oren was in tears about giving it up, but I think even he saw the logic that his own cousins would NEVER be allowed to touch one. We better safely hide the machete away before they come visit in June! ;-)