Advocacy Tour and Existential Ruminations

Advocacy team with Rwandan partners at Friends Peace House in Kigali.

Sometimes getting this writing started seems to be an existential problem.  Who is it that is writing this blog?  I feel like I used to know.  But I am changing, a lot.  Maybe this is becoming more conscious to me because I am able to see the end of the road from here.  We are less than two months away from completing our term, but I don’t know in what way I will be going ‘back’ to anything, because I don’t seem to be me anymore.

This came to mind last week on a field visit to the Kigeme refugee camp in Southern Rwanda.  I have been there several times before as we support a project there in conjunction with the Friends Church.   We provide financing that has trained refugee volunteers in the camp in conflict mediation and trauma healing.  They act as peer counselors and mediators in the camp and have given testimonies about the amazing positive affect these interventions are having.

Vivine

I was there bringing some members of MCCs advocacy offices (from the UN and Washington DC) to see the work we are doing in the region.  They are trying to better understand what policy recommendations we should be making to the UN and US government with regard to the region. 

The meeting with the refugees was very enlightening and we stayed with them for several hours asking them questions ranging from how they ended up coming to the camp, to when they thought it might be safe to return to the DRC (in North Kivu.)

The overwhelming challenge for them is having sufficient food every day.  They get a set amount of rations from the UN, corn and beans.  But to grind the corn they have to pay a miller about 20% of their ration for the month to have it milled into flour to be used for making the corn dough they like to eat (fufu).

Through all of this, what struck me was how completely normal this felt to me.  Sitting and discussing very practically and thoughtfully how one might be able to eek out a living for another day.  I felt neither horror, nor guilt, nor pity.  I was there to help and to better understand them.  And they did not seem 'other' to me in any way.  We were all humans with very different problems, but all of us want the same things, food to eat, some clothes, a safe place to sleep, a place for our children to go to school, and a way to earn some money.  These came up over and over again.

Ester

I appreciated the time with them and the advocacy team was thrilled with the chance to hear from refugees in Rwanda.  But as I left I was struck by this question, of who I have become.  When did I become a person who feels at home with refugees?  Who finds discussions of where one’s next meal comes from, a topic of interest? 

When I emerge from that world, and return to our guesthouse to look at Facebook, the New York Times, or anything else, I find myself at a loss.  These worlds seem utterly incompatible.   I find the partisan wars in politics tedious, the injustice against the poor infuriating, and the obsession with self-care and the endless pursuit of personal happiness, completely baffling.  Most surprisingly, I cannot imagine myself ever being immersed in an interesting escapist TV series like Game of Thrones or The Wire.

I don’t know who I am anymore or who is going to be going home to try to reintegrate into my own culture.

The past week I was in Kigali to meet the aforementioned advocacy team.  I went up with Melody Musser who agreed to help me take them around to visit some partners and other sights when I had other work to do during the three days they were there.

Patrick Maxwell our Bukavu service worker, who had been down in Bujumbura with his dad the week before, came up and joined us as well.  He plays an advocacy role with the DRC program so he was a welcome addition to our team.

We arrived on Tuesday, a day ahead of the team who came Wednesday.  The guesthouse that we usually stay in was full last week and we needed to find lodging elsewhere.  We ended up at the Good News guesthouse in the Gikondo neighborhood.  I can highly recommend it if you need a place to stay in Kigali with hot water and excellent internet. 

When the team arrived we began our tour with a visit to the genocide memorial museum in Kigali.  I honestly have avoided visiting such memorials after my first year here because it is not something I find I need to remind myself of.  Nonetheless, it was worthwhile looking again at the way that they are trying to preserve the memory of those killed---many photos and stories.  There is a good explanation about the events that led up to the genocide.  While the genocide is not the only thing that we want one to think of when one comes to Rwanda, it does not help to deny it.  This is a deep trauma that touches the life of everyone here, yet no one talks about in a personal way, certainly not to a foreigner. 

We spent the late afternoon there before going out to dinner.  We were joined at dinner by our SALTers and Mark, Angela, and Ben Sprunger, the MCC area Reps and their son.  They had arrived in Kigali the same day.  The area Representative office for Central West Africa will be re-locating to Kigali this summer and they are the avant-garde.

We all enjoyed going out to eat at Sola Luna with the entire group.  The next morning the advocacy team met with some of our partners for  a local perspective on Rwandan politics.  (Can’t say more about this as it is classified.)  In the afternoon Matt Gates took them on a tour of one of our Conservation Agriculture projects.  There was a mishap enroute when the hood of the Fortuner, not securely fastened after a fill-up, flew up and cracked the front windshield.   Despite this, the visit went fairly well.

Friday, their last day, was our most ambitious, we spend the morning with someone from UNHCR who filled us in on work with refugees in Rwanda.  From there we took a 3 hour trip to the Kigeme camp I wrote about above.  Although we only spent a few hours there before making the 3 hour trip back to Kigali, the trip was well worth it.  On the long drive home we listened to a Mahalia Jackson CD and for the first time I really felt like I understood Gospel music.  Every song reminds you that things are bad now but its gonna be be better in Heaven.  (Where we are all going to get shoes!)  I don’t think it makes any sense to listen to this in a culture of excess, but here, after hearing the testimony, despair and hope of the refugees, it really spoke to me.  They are primarily Christian and thanked God even for our visit, and a reminder that they are not forgotten.  They were obviously uplifted by our visit and seemed even happy, in the way that the gospel music seemed to uplift me on the drive back.

The advocacy team left Saturday for the DRC with Patrick.  I headed back to Bujumbura with the Sprungers, the whole family.  Several MCCers stayed in Rwanda for a half marathon (Matt Gates, Matt Allen, Julia Downer, and Melody Musser)  The amount of MCC movement in the region is a bit crazy these days.

English reading club Moms

I arrived home with the Sprungers in the afternoon.  Angela Sprunger was here on business and was going to do an evaluation of an AIDS clinic we support. 

It was good to be back to see Rebecca and the kids.  They had been busy with lots of social activities, tennis, english club.  The highlight of which was a Lord of the Rings Birthday party complete with maps, bows and arrows, wooden daggers, swords and capes.  (Thanks Zack Johnson).

It was good to be back into a normal routine again the following week. We did have new guests arrive on Monday though.  Matt Alan’s (our SALTer) parents were visiting from Canada so we had a full house much of this week.

We did do some touristy stuff with the Sprungers, like visit Avril the chimp at Pinnacle 19.

Rebecca was particularly occupied this week continuing to watch over Marceline and her baby.  She had just finished explaining the importance of breast feeding the week before when Marceline called Monday to say the baby was not eating, had diarrhea and a terrible throat infection.

Mark and Ben Sprunger with Matt and his parents.

Rebecca went out and got her and the baby and took them to a good clinic.  He was unresponsive for several days.  Last night she was quite sure he would die.  But we went back to the clinic this morning to find him in better health, the antibiotics apparently worked.

We talked to the doctor privately to find out about lab results.  He very matter of factly explained that throat infections are common when an infant of 5 days is given a uvulectomy! (cutting out the uvula in the back of the throat.)  We were stunned.  Why would they do that?  Her husband insisted that it was a doctor at another clinic that said it was necessary, but the doctor at the clinic she was at told us it was a common practice here coming from some traditional medical superstition. 

It is bizarre to me that they are very conservative evangelical Christians who preach and sing in the choir, and would still go to some traditional ‘witch doctor’ with their new-born to do this highly dangerous and unnecessary procedure. 

Sometimes we feel like we need a break.  This episode encapsulates in a way our experience here.  We work hard for change, we do all we can, but so often we are clueless about the complex motivations and practices of those around us and we are foiled, in our efforts to make things better. Even after six years we are shocked by new information we never knew. This is not the first time where we feel like our work to assist completely contradicts the practices of those we are trying to help.  And they seem to be their own worst enemies.

We are getting tired, perhaps the timing of the end of our term is not altogether bad.  But I still don’t know who is coming home this August.

Bonus video, David and Oren playing with Avril the chimp on the trampoline.

The Pain of Childbirth, Lost and Found

Marceline with her new baby Jaquin Darvarcy

This is Rebecca writing this week. Our cook Marceline has been expecting her first baby and she actually began her maternity leave in the beginning of April. Last Saturday night, she got very worried; the baby had stopped moving. She went into the private clinic where she had been receiving check ups.  The baby seemed OK, but they tried for 24 hours to induce labor. By Monday morning, they were ready to do a C-section. Surprise, surprise: this was Clinique Cesar.

I wasn’t able to be there because I was scheduled to drive up to Gitega on Monday morning. But I called when I got to Gitega and was so relieved to find that Marceline had given birth to a healthy baby boy. I have known of at least 4 women who have died in childbirth, including women of means. I know we’ve said it before, but having a baby in Burundi is nerve-wracking and dangerous, not a prospect filled with pure joy.

I had a good 24-hour visit with our two volunteers in Gitega, Sata and Melody. It was also time to sign new MOU’s for our projects this year. And there were some project issues to discuss with each of our 3 partners. So it was one of those packed visits going late into the night, and starting again at dawn.

I actually even enjoyed the drive up and back, from the perspective of having some alone time to listen to music and marvel at the beauty of Burundi at the end of the rainy season. However, it was awful to see the way the road has deteriorated this season. Part of that was due to the catastrophic flood near Bujumbura in February.  But further up the mountain, erosion is causing the road to subside in many places, and even washing away the dirt and rock support from under the road itself, so that it’s as if there’s just a bit of asphalt hanging out over an open drop. Burundi will need to recruit some very talented and honest engineers to fix that all-important road, as soon as things can move beyond the politics of power.

I finished in Gitega early enough to get back to Buja by mid-afternoon and so I went directly to visit Marceline. I was shocked to find her in so much pain that she could hardly speak. The baby was apparently not doing very well, on antibiotics and not nursing yet. We talked through the issues, and it seemed like there were some GI issues that take time to get resolved after a C-section. That’s normal and uncomfortable. But Marceline kept insisting that she felt like she was not simply bloated, but full of wounds. I started imagining all kinds of bad scenarios.

Proud father, David

I went to speak to the doctor personally, because I realize that having a Mzungu advocate can really improve patient care in this country. And I was paying for Marceline to have her baby at this private clinic because I couldn’t stand the thought of either of them losing their lives due to the all-too-common kinds of malpractice one finds here. The doctor was jolly and reassuring: She’s fine. She’s normal. I’ll take good care of her. I was doubtful, but went back to her room and prayed with her and her husband and the three other women hanging out with them.

I went back home to rejoin my family and on the way back, I went over the situation in Marceline’s room. Suddenly, it occurred to me: when I delivered my first son by C-section, I had morphine on demand for the first day and I still felt horrible. That certainly doesn’t exist in Burundi. But that wasn’t all. Marceline had no Percocet. No ibuprofen. Not even Tylenol. She felt like she was full of wounds because she WAS full of wounds, with no pain management whatsoever.

I found my David sick when I got home, so I couldn’t go back to the clinic in person for the next two days, but I tried to keep track of things by phone. Marceline was better in the evening after I left. But the doctors refused to prescribe pain medication until I finally insisted on it when helping to get her discharged on Friday. I was relieved to see the baby nursing before I paid the bill, but Marceline was still hardly able to walk across the room. It was a nice suite, with a salon and a bedroom with an extra bed for a helper (yes, you bring your sheets, towels and your own nurse), but the absence of pain killers (which is apparently typical in Burundian health care) made the experience really awful.

Yoga brunch with lots of MCCers

We had a fairly relaxing day on Saturday, with a big crowd at yoga in the morning. Then we took the kids to Pinnacle 19 in the afternoon to play with Avril the chimp. We adults spent time with one of our volunteers, Patrick, and his visiting father. But it was a super-windy day on the beach and the water was full of debris. So David and I elected to swim in the little pool there. It was fun to play together, and I’m glad I have a kid who loves to swim so much and take my mind off of the many constant stresses I’m dealing with these days.

Sunday morning was special, but not simply because of Mothers’ Day. (My impatient kids had to give me their gifts straight after school on Friday, so you could say we celebrated early.) Paul was preaching, and I was teaching Sunday school, so that added a dynamic to the morning already. 

early mother's day gifts

Also, our home bible study was sending off one of our members to a new job in South Sudan, so we wanted to seize the opportunity to share our experience with the congregation before he left. Really, it’s been an incredibly stabilizing and encouraging thing to meet with our international Anglophone group every Sunday afternoon. Our discussions on the bible are so helpful, especially because many members bring an African cultural perspective that is similar to the Hebrew perspective. But it’s the constancy in prayer that I’ve appreciated most. And we’ve seen some really amazing answers to prayer in the past two years. Yes, we are still waiting for answers to a lot of things, even now. But we’ve had a precious experience and we wanted to encourage other people in the church to be part of home cells, too. We even sang a few songs that we often sing together in our living room, including that oldie but goodie, “We are one in the Spirit.”

Paul, preaching for Mothers' Day
(sorry no synopsis, but I was with kids!)

Later in the service, when I went forward with David for the children’s prayer, I had a thrill of surprise: there was my bible in its velvet case, sitting on the shelf of the podium! I had lost track of my bible two weeks ago while in church. I asked the pastor about it last week, but it hadn’t turned up in the lost and found. I had to resign myself that someone probably had stolen it while I went to take the kids to Sunday school. Things like that happen in the context of poverty. But here it was! Returned to me! I was so happy and practically skipped down to the room where I was teaching Sunday school.

Where I stopped dead. My backpack was gone. Containing our Bluetooth speaker. And all the crafts and books for Sunday school for that week. My heart sank. I asked the other teacher, Lizzie, to look after my class while I tried to find the church guard. He didn’t know what had happened, but went to look for the other guard. I returned to our Sunday school, and when the singing was over, I told the kids that my backpack was gone. I asked one kid to pray about it, and just as she opened her mouth to pray, in comes the guard with a smile on his face! My bag had been moved for safekeeping apparently.

Mother's Day with mommy

I told my class this whole story, and one of the kids said, what are you going to lose next? Your glasses? Your earrings? Oren? I said, let’s not go there!

After church, we drove through town to drop off two church friends. As we were stopped to let them off, Oren suddenly yelled, “Hey, that guy took the iPod!” Sure enough, Paul had noticed a suspicious young man walking close to the car and had locked the doors, but didn’t realize that Oren’s window was down. He had been listening to an audiobook, and the iPod was snatched right out of his hands. Then the guy took off running around the corner.

After some moments of fury and impotent anger, Paul chased after him on foot and I took the wheel and tried to drive around the block to find the guy. We stopped to talk to a group of ne’er-do-wells ensconced nearby (clearly a gang of thieves). Yes, they saw the kid running away, they knew who he was. We promised a reward if they returned the iPod.

Next we went to the Bata store, where “vendors” lurk outside, happy to sell you cheap (stolen) electronics. Again, we contacted the guy in charge (chef des voleurs) and promised a reward. All these guys wanted an advance payment of 10,000 Francs for transport and communications to find the iPod. We laughed and said, it was an investment. If they found the iPod, they’d get money. Well, we did give the one guy 500 Francs. And then there was nothing else to do, so we went home and changed all our passwords. Argh.

One of the friends who had been with us is the daughter of a Burundian woman in our bible study. She’d contacted her mother right away, and it turns out that the mother had come into town and reported the theft to the police. By the time she came to bible study, the police had arrested two of the young men loitering near the theft area, the same guys we’d talked to. We were really uncomfortable with this – often the police just beat gangsters until they will give the name and address of their compatriots. But Goretti said it would be difficult to simply release these accomplices. We said, tell them to be gentle. By the end of bible study, these police had also detained the man who had taken 500 francs from us.  They certainly were skilled in following our tracks.

In the morning there was no new news. But at 3:30 in the afternoon, Goretti called to say that the iPod had been found. We should come to the station to pick it up. And here is where it really gets weird. We met in town and walked through the crowded, chaotic streets around the remains of the burned central market. Right up to the front gate. Shook hands with the cluster of uniformed police, who exuded a mixture of curiosity, hostility and lewdness. Went on through the barrier, right to this triangular bit of the market that sticks out in the front, part that wasn’t burned. There were a couple of guys milling around, in t-shirts and old track pants, mostly. They looked for all the world just like the chief of thieves right across the street at Bata.

We were apparently waiting for one of these guys. It was stinking hot. The air was filled with this odd, fermented smell which I finally realized was more related to the burned market debris still lying around, than to any beer-drinking which had been done by the guys who were chatting with us. No, apparently, the whole “team” had been working since dawn on my case, and hadn’t stopped to eat or drink all day. Finally we followed the guy in charge into a tiny room inside the apparent police station. The rough wooden door had to be held shut with a broken metal chair. The chief (still in t-shirt and track pants) explained to Goretti how they had pursued the case, from the thief to the vendor to the man who had purchased the iPod this morning. His assistant picked shreds of molten debris off of the slatted glass windows, facing right into the destroyed market behind. Really, if I had wanted to design a movie set of an extremely shady deal going down, I couldn’t have dreamed up anything this good.

Finally, for dramatic effect, the chief unzipped his pants pocket and pulled out…our very own iPod. I couldn’t believe it. In that sense, these guys were good at their job. There was a certain amount of haggling over how much “encouragement” this team of plainclothes police officers needed to cover the costs they had incurred in taking on our case. Really, looking around me, I was sure that there was no budget for phone calls or taxis, let alone a working chair (or door) in an office of the central market police station. The chief said he was a Christian and so he wouldn’t ask for more than was needed. So I ended up handing over to the police the exact sum I had promised as a reward to the chief of thieves across the street.  And walked away wondering to what extent they are really two sides of the same coin. But also elated to have our very personalized little piece of equipment back.

Bujumbura expat friends, if you get something stolen, you could certainly try to report it to the police at that market station. If you can find the place. If you can figure out which of the shifty guys in plainclothes is really in charge. And really able, not only to find your stolen goods, but to return them to you, rather than keeping them for profit. I am certain that a personal home-village link had a lot to do with the excellent service we received from the police. So it’s probably not worth wasting your time unless you have a really good, generous friend like my friend Goretti to lead you through.

Paul will be in Kigali all week, introducing yet another team from MCC to the complexities of the Great Lakes region. I'm here with the kids, trying to hold down the fort til Saturday. Hopefully, Paul will have all the interesting experiences for writing the blog next week!

Bonus photos: Oren with Boa at zoo

No photos of those snakes mentioned  above,
must make do with the much more enjoyable
snakes of musee vivante

A VIP Visit

Oren and David displaying bread loaves they made this Thursday as an activity that Oren suggested for holiday relaxation.

There is a change in the air and I don’t like it.  I actually noticed it this past week on a trip upcountry.  I was on a 3 day field visit and it did not rain once.  People are looking at the sky nervously as the arrival of the dry season one month early will spell disaster for the harvest of the first planting season of the year.  The air is very still in Bujumbura, and although it remains free of dust, I feel like I am adept, after 6 years of living here, at recognizing a change in weather.

The reason for being upcountry this past week was to accompany MCC’s executive directors from the US and Canada on a three day visit to our programs.  Ron Byler (MCC USA) and Don Peters (MCC Canada) were in the region for meetings in Nairobi this week, but came about 10 days early to see programming in Eastern DRC and Rwanda/Burundi.  While it is a great honor to host them, it was also a great responsibility and required no small amount of coordinated planning with our partners to allow them to see memorable things in a short time.

They arrived last Sunday by taxi from Bukavu in DRC.  The trip is under 3 hours and they got here in the evening.  We had arranged for them to stay at our house and were happy to host them at Chez Mosley, the Mennonite Guesthouse in Bujumbura. 

At almost any other time in the past several years, this would have been perfectly appointed with constantly working electricity (because of our back-up system) and 24 hour internet.   But as it happened, our gardener plugged in a high wattage lawn mower during our absence in South Africa and fried our inverter.  We could not get it repaired quickly.  And on the day of their arrival a power surge somehow fried our router, so we had none of these amenities on the day they arrived.

Fortunately Mennonites at all levels are not complainers about living simply, so when they arrived to a dark, internet free house, they made the best of it without complaint.

On Monday morning I left Rebecca and the kids in Bujumbura and headed upcountry with them to see some of our programs.  We started by traveling toward the Hope School in Mutaho.  Our plan was to arrive in the late afternoon and stay the night at the Grande Seminaire de Burasira nearby and visiting the school in the morning. 

One of our other partners, the equivalent of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship was also at the seminary for a 4-day seminar.  So I was able to introduce Ron and Don to them as well as have them meet Matt Allen, our SALT volunteer who works with them. 

They were a large group, over 100 and we had dinner with them.  After dinner, I had been asked to give a talk (prior to our arrival).  I did a teaching on ‘the ministry of reconcilliation’ from 2 Corinthians 5,  It went well and Ron and Don appreciated seeing me speak in that capacity.

For them, as representatives of Mennonite Churches in the US and Canada, they were interested in seeing ways in which MCC made its identity as a Christian NGO known in its programming.  Seeing me speak to a group of Christian University students gave a good example of that.

We spent the night reasonably comfortably in the monk-ish rooms of the guesthouse, then headed up to Hope School the next morning after breakfast of a roll and some milk-less tea to dunk it into.  (no butter, jelly, etc.)

The school had prepared us a rousing welcome complete with the traditional drum corps and some batwa dances.  They made a huge impression on our directors.  We then visited every classroom and greeted the students and ended with a meeting of administrators and teachers.

Innocent, our partner presented the school well and as a former principle, Don Peters was very interested to find out about the administration of the school.

In the early afternoon we continued on to Gitega, the town where we have three partners.  We got there in time for dinner and met Melody and Sata, our two services workers who work with MiPAREC and UCPD respectively.  Don and Ron were interested in meeting our service workers to find out why people join MCC and get a sense of who they were.  Both women made an excellent impression on them and represented well their motivations for working with MCC. 

We had visited MiPAREC in the afternoon that same day and after spending the night at a guesthouse in Gitega, we met our UCPD partner and followed them by car out to Bukirasazi where they do their programming.  We saw the vocational training program we support, where students learn sewing, masonry, and carpentry.  More impressive though was a visit to a carpentry workshop set up by graduates from a previous year who were now in business for themselves—impact!

The day was a long one though, and after leaving them we continued South to Rutana province where we met our service worker Jennifer Price and Help Channel, our food security partner.  They met us at an intersection on the road about an hour from Gitega.  They escorted us to a demonstration farm and several other food security and watershed management projects.  Over lunch with them we talked about how they present themselves as a Christian organization without proselytizing. Don and Ron appreciated the fact that the Help Channel founders had come out of the same campus christian movement MCC still supports.

After a late afternoon lunch we headed back to Bujumbura.  We got home about 6 pm, I was pretty much spent and went to bed without dinner.  Actually I had done my best to disguise the fact that I had been suffering from diarrhea for the past two days and felt pretty bad most of the last day of our trip.  It was good to get home to get some Flagyl and oral rehydration solution.

Don and Ron left the next day (Thursday) and I think our program made a very good impression on them, projects and staff. 

That day happened to be International workers day, so the kids had a school holiday. We celebrated by making bread, spending a few hours at the pool with the high diving boards, visiting the horses at Cercle Hippique and finishing off at Oren's favorite Indian restaurant. Friday felt very strange to be back to school!

Saturday was a return to normalcy with yoga, the Stoner-Ebys have started coming, and we had a nice brunch with them afterward.  In the afternoon Rebecca and I took the kids to the zoo where they can easily pass 2 to 3 hours.  We are so used to being there that we will even open the cage of the banana snakes and get one out on our own to play with. 

We had a very nice dinner with JJ and Courtney Ivaska, our friends from World Relief.  Our kids played surprisingly well together and we were able to have some nice adult time which was a treat.

The weekend marked the end of two of the hardest weeks of the year for me.  I knew it was coming after our South Africa vacation, but I was dreading it a bit.  In fact, with the South Africa trip it has been a full month since I have been in any kind of regular routine.

The hard part of the past two weeks was that the week prior to Ron and Don’s visit I had been in Rwanda.  It was the first visit there since before Lent and there were many, many issues to deal with.   We have a particularly complex conservation agriculture and savings groups project we are running through a consortium of partners and there is no end of crises that can happen in the management of this project.  A visit was long overdue and our service worker Matt Gates was really needing some input from us. 

I spent 3 straight days in a dozen meetings, did about 5 straight hours of banking, checked in on the status of our registration in the country.  On top of all of that, I had brought the Stoner-Ebys for a visit there for their first visit to Kigali.  They have a long-term goal of relocating the country office there and they were anxious to see the City and the place their kids will eventually go to school.  They had a good visit, but I had to send them out on their own with a taxi on several occasions.

There were also other visitors including our Area Directors Mark and Angela Sprunger, and Suzanne Lind, the MCC Congo Rep. who was picking up Ron and Don from the airport when they first arrived and headed off to Goma with her.

I felt like I had been conducting a symphony by Mahler by the time I was done with everything.  There was so much detail and so many timings that had to be worked out.

The best news from Kigali is that the registration process in pretty much at an end and we may now legally apply for visas for staff of our independently registered INGO.  That was no small accomplishment.

I can’t believe I have had enough ummphh this Sunday to get this posted.  I don’t mean to be losing steam at the end, but things are really getting hard now.  I don’t want to look forward to the end, but I am looking forward to a less intense schedule. 

I am starting to look at job postings in the Baltimore area that can capitalize on my experience.  Will keep everyone posted as things evolve.  –forgive the lack of proofreading.

Bonus Photo: Some members of our small group and the family of Phillip, a friend who just accepted a job in Juba with World Concern.  They leave Bujumbura next week.  We follow them a few months later out of Burundi.