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“Factoids”

Climate – it’s hot and humid, but not as bad as I’d feared.  Think Hawaii, more than anything.   Well, Hawaii without the ocean breeze, without the cleansing rain.  Hawaii with a constant smell of smoke in the air and a layer of haze that just never leaves that’s made of fog, smoke, dust, and who knows what.

Security – while there are police and soldiers everywhere (all packing the ubiquitous Kalashnikov) they seem quite benign for now.  We went up today to the school that Prosper is building in the province of Cibitoke.  The province is on the border of Congo.  A year ago, another visitor said they had to pass many military checkpoints to get there.   Leduc says that 3 months ago there was heavy fighting in that area and the road was to all intents and purposes closed.  Today, the road is open to anyone willing to face the bonecrunching potholes.

Bugs – Again, not as bad as I’d feared.  I’m usually a pretty tasty morsel for mosquitos, but I haven’t seen (or heard) them in throngs.  We use mosquito nettings at night, but I think my hand presses up against it because I almost always wake up with a new mosquito bite or two on the back of my right hand.  Maybe it’s the spider who lives in my closet who’s snacking on me nightly.  If so, I’m glad to feed him if he’s keeping the mosquitos down.

Distances – are mostly small.  The hotel Prosper has put us at is out of Bujumbura city center.  It’s a nice place near the edge of Lake Tanganyika.  It’s simple, but (to me anyway) completely adequate.  It’s maybe 5 or 10 minutes to Prosper’s office downtown, and maybe 10 or 15 minutes from there to Carama.  Maybe 15-20 minutes to the airport.

Roads – are abominable.  Really really bad.  The main roads through Bujumbura have sections where the tarmac is completely worn away and you bump and jolt your way along like a carnival ride.  Peculiarly, while the cars travel on the right, like in the US, the steering is also on the right, like in England.  This is a really stupid idea, because the driver is on the curb side rather than the center side of the car.  In the constant weaving in and out, passing trucks, slower cars, potholes, pedestrians, or whatever, the driver has a worse view of oncoming traffic than the person riding shotgun.  This can make riding shotgun a harrowing experience.  Whenever I ride shotgun I try to maintain a peaceful acceptance.  The speeds are generally not high, and accidents are probably not usually fatal, and the driver must know what he’s doing.  Right?  That’s what I tell myself, anyway.  I’m actually more concerned for the bicyclists and pedestrians that we pass with what seems like millimeters to spare, it’s amazing that we don’t see carnage of bicycle riders and pedestrians who were too slow everywhere.  When Wes rides shotgun he jokes and makes a girlish “AAHHH!” when we make what seems to be a close call.  It’s usually pretty funny but it can be a bit distracting to my otherwise zen-like calm.

Language – French will really take you a long way here.  Lots of people, especially in Bujumbura, speak French.  In the countryside, French is less helpful.  It’s easy to pick up a smattering of Kirundi (Hello, thank you, peace) that will get you in peoples’ general good graces, although maybe they’re just laughing at the stupid white guy.  Kiswahili is also used a bit – particularly the word “musungu” which is a semi-pejorative term for “white man.”

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Meeting Godefroid – Truth & Reconciliation

Thursday

A few days ago, Bob was finally able to contact one of his “private contacts”, a fellow named Godefroid.  Godefroid’s office is actually in walking distance of the hotel here.  He and Bob spent a few hours together.  That evening, Bob told us that he’d been pretty excited by what he heard, that Godefroid has some really heavy stuff going on and that he volunteered to get some of his friends who are professionals in Bujumbura to join us tonite for a brief meeting.

I tried to steel myself up for what has become a fairly typical program.  People come in, they tell us how they’re helping the poor, the neediest of the needy, and if we can’t help directly can we please make their case known in The Land of Plenty?

It wasn’t like that.  It wasn’t like that at all.  Godefroid’s project is all about truth and reconciliation. He and his small group of 15 are attempting to drive a truth and reconciliation project in Burundi.

The first step of the project is to use a GPS to try to locate as many as possible of the mass graves.  Then they want to disinter the bodies and give them a decent burial.  They want to build a memorial center where they record how many, what location, what year.  They won’t be able to ever identify who exactly was killed when and buried where, but where people have an idea such as, my father was killed in 72 near Cibitoke, they can get some peace from knowing that his body may have been found and given a decent burial.

It goes beyond that, the ultimate goal is to get the murderers as well as the victims to tell their stories, not for retribution but because they believe that as long as the murderers are sitting alone in their guilt that no one can be at rest.

Powerful stuff.

Bob started asking around the group, as though it were a GCJ delegation, “so, tell me about your work, your life.  What’s it like to do your job in Burundi?”  We had a university teacher of anthropology, a government statistician, a lawyer in the justice department, as well as Godefroid, who gave up his career as an agronomist to pursue this project.

The lawyer had been a student of the anthropologist in Burundi.  They met again in Tanzania where they had both fled the violence and became friends.  They seemed to be very good friends, and their friendship deepened when they returned to Burundi.  The fact that one is a Hutu and the other a Tutsi had no impact, they are just friends.

The anthropologist was the only one who said he is unhappy with his work.  He just doesn’t have the resources to do a good job.  He has no textbooks, no computer, nothing to do for a class of 50 to 200 kids but talk and write on the chalkboard.

The lawyer was especially passionate, his words tumbling out rapid fire, sometimes piling up in a near stutter.  He talked about how the judicial system is completely controlled by the executive branch.  The anti-corruption group is the highest paid group in the justice department, and they are forbidden from challenging anyone in the government (i.e, the corrupt ones).  I worried a bit, if it’s permitted to speak so freely in this country.  He said that when he took his post he was the ONLY Hutu in the judicial branch.

A smaller, younger man joined us part way through.  He seemed quite young, perhaps early twenties.  He said he understood English but didn’t speak it well, so he told his story in French.  He didn’t want to talk much about his job, he’s recently started a job as a lecturer in anthropology at the university.  The other anthropologist is one of his PhD advisors.

He has a bit of a baby face, with a spare moustache and soft brown eyes.  His mouth pulls up often into something like a smile, but the story he told was not one of smiling.

He was born in 1972 (easily 10 years older than I’d have guessed).  1972 was the first year of Hutu/Tutsi violence.  In 1972 his father and his brother were killed and his mother was stabbed while he was in utero.  All of their possessions were taken.  Someone picked up a bottle cap from a Fanta bottle and said, “They didn’t have THIS much to live on.”  Somehow (details mercifully skipped) by the grace of god, he was able to get his education all the way through university.  He got a job in government as a foreign officer but left to go back to school because he has a deep thirst for intellectual and moral growth.

I stand in awe of such suffering.  I stand in awe of this quiet man’s half smile.  I stand in awe of this man, this man and his friends seeking truth not for punishment but so that all of Burundi can be freed from the horrors of the past.

Godefroid just wants to get the word out.  Here’s another African hero, we’ve met so many in the past few days.  Here’s another.  I’m a little hesitant to put much identifiable information here, although they said they are no longer clandestine.  I told them, though, that I’d recommend any of them who are interested to be delegates or town hall members next year, and at the very least I would be sure they were invited to present to the delegation as they just presented to us.

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Brock’s Wednesday’s report: Batwa (Pygmy) and Sister Connection

 

We started with a meeting with the Pygmy Association. We got there at 9 AM. There was a sign on the outside of the building, facing the street, but we had to go into the dark open courtyard and parking lot of the building and thread our way through many people sitting in the walkway and on the stairs along the courtyard. There were the typical smells – sweat, smoke, and sewage – and the typical sights – poor people – all along the way. We made our way to a small, simple, tidy office on the second floor and met with Liberateni and Etienne, both members of parliament representing the Batwa people, the Twa pygmies. Liberateni is a gentle, soft spoken woman with hair more curly than wiry. She was very neatly dressed in what we would consider a business woman’s dress. She is the president and one of the creators of the association. Etienne seemed very precise and focused. He is a very good friend of Prosper’s.

(reference note: I think that the Hutus and Tutsi refer to themselves as Bahutu and Batutsi. Or, for women, Wahutu and Watutsi. So I think the American dance of the early 60s, the Watusi, may be named for the women of this country)

We learned about the plight of the Batwa. They are the most marginalized of the three major ethnic groups in this country. They are approximately 1% of the total population. So that compares to what? The Eskimo population in US? Probably smaller than the total native American population. Some say the Batwa are the oldest people here, that the Hutus pushed out the Batwa and that the Tutsi came along later and started pressuring the Hutu. Who knows what balance of peoples would have been found here if the colonialists had come 100 years later?

The Batwa are traditionally hunters, so I imagine that they are less tied to the land than the Hutu crop gatherers or the Tutsi cattle ranchers. Which leads to their further marginalization.

In the Hutu/Tutsi violence, the Batwa were mostly independent. That did not, of course, completely protect them from the violence. In some cases they were simply caught in the crossfire. In some cases, they were in a Hutu or Tutsi neighborhood and had to adopt that loyalty to survive – which of course made them vulnerable to the other side. In most cases, I think, as in any society under stress like war, the most marginal people get marginalized further.

In brief, any problem that you see in Burundi exists in the Batwa community, only amplified. Liberateni gave us an eloquent description of the plight of the Batwa, and a little of her life story. She, as most successful people in Burundi, struggled very hard to get to school, to get her education, to make her way. She is now using her success to help bring along her people. She targets getting resources, opportunities, and education for her people.

She told of how it’s typical for a Wutwa (I think that’s the term for Batwa woman) to be married at 14, and it’s not unusual for a woman to be a grandmother before she’s 30.She told how they’ve been able to get 3 graduates through university, and have 4 currently attending.

She didn’t directly ask for our support, but of course she needs it. She asked that we tell her story; that we try to find others who can support her.

Our next appointment was with Sister Connection. This is an outfit that Wes has heard of, one of his many pastor friends spoke about them at a conference. Wes had insisted that Prosper set up a meeting. When we got there, of course, the woman who runs it is a good friend of Prosper’s.

Sister Connection is housed at Hope Africa University, a private Methodist university. It’s the nicest collection of buildings we’ve seen in all of Bujumbura. Neatly dressed students of all ages are walking around, there are tidy classrooms and dormitories. On the way to our hostess’s office we even passed a well stocked library!

We went into a very nice ante-room, where we waited for our hostess. Justine had joined us (more on her later), she is the woman who manages Susan Bradbury’s microfinance project. We’d met her briefly before at Carama.

Justine joined us as we were ushered into meet our hostess. I don’t think we got her name, but from what I remember reading on the web her first name is “Joy”. From the web, the story of Sister Connection is that a woman in Indiana had lived in Bujumbura as a missionary’s daughter and become good friends with Joy. Some years ago (note to edit: check this) she realized what bad shape Burundi is in and started this connection with her “sister” Joy for helping Burundian people.

Joy is another soft spoken woman. There’s something very submissive about many of the adult women we meet here, they speak softly with their head tilted forward as though they are trying to hide their mouths. They may say forceful things, but their demeanor is often submissive.

They focus on helping widows and orphans. They have several programs, from direct support (like Save the Children you can sponsor a Burundian widow for $30/month) to building houses, to “special needs” support for people who have a specific crisis. Joy’s husband is president of the university. They got a donor to the university to make a deal where he’d build a music center (currently housing the library) as long as Sister Connection was given an office on campus in perpetuity. So their costs are extremely low.

They way they build houses for widows is quite different – Prosper has a whole operation dedicated to putting a cookie-cutter house completely built on a piece of land. Sister Connection provides a direct grant – here’s $600, here are some contractors we trust, you can go build your own place.

She shared with us some of the list of widows who are awaiting support. The stories were heartbreakingly tragic. One woman’s husband had been killed, she’d been beaten and raped, her children’s birthdates were all after the date of her husband’s death so they are probably children of rape. She’d spent a year in hospital and is now struggling to make her way.

Another woman, best I could tell from the notes, had had her husband and most of her ten children killed, and then later when living with a daughter, had many of the daughter’s children killed.

We returned to the hotel, where I had the chance to talk with Justine.I wanted to understand, how does the microfinance project work?

Justine is a very trim woman, short and slender. She seemed to be telling Wes at one point that she’s 50 years old but I wouldn’t guess her at more than 35. She is very business like, in a blouse and skirt. Her hair is trimmed fairly close and in a slightly angular style. She usually seems serious, even somber. When she rubs her eyes, you can see lines of deep sadness around them.

We talked about the microcredit operation, about the successes and the failures. It seems to really be giving people just a wee help up out of the worst poverty. The loans are only $50, and charge about 8% interest. As I understand from Susan B, she pays Justine about $150/month. I would expect that to be a pretty hefty salary for this region, but it’s apparently quite a struggle for Justine to make ends meet. She has to take her transportation costs out of that amount, and that can mount up. She takes bicycle taxis sometimes to Carama. Recently she fell from a bicycle taxi and had to spend some time recuperating. She struggles to send her children to school, she doesn’t have a proper house of her own (which I interpret to mean: she has a place with mud brick, thatched roof, no stucco, no doors and windows.)

I’m not doing justice to this story, and I think I need to stop now. Justine broke my heart, she’s not just a name or a tragedy on a piece of paper, here’s a bright woman who seems very successful and western and modern. The amount of work that it takes her to keep up is staggering, and her ability to get ahead is so slim.

I was ready to wrap up the meeting, but it was at loose ends – Prosper had dropped her off here, how would she get back? Would she have time for lunch? It became evident to me that she was on her own, she would have to find her way back to town on a bus or bicycle taxi or by foot. She would probably skip lunch. I asked her about that directly and she said, “Oh, yes! I forgot all about lunch!” and was totally unconvincing. She didn’t forget. How could she forget?

So I insisted, you must stay for lunch, I’ll buy you lunch, I’ll give you money for a taxi.The hotel was in the frenzy of setting up for the children’s lunch, so I said, we’ll try to eat before the children come storming in (for the art camp).

We had a nice lunch. The lunches here, with the locals and especially the kids, always surprises me. A little six year old kid can pack away a plate of food that would have me choking. I guess it has to last them longer. Justine, likewise, loaded up a large plate of food for such a small woman and patiently put it all away.

I had left the table for a minute, and when I got back Bob had joined Justine and Leduc for lunch.I guess Justine had asked something about Bob’s religion and he was drawing a diagram – Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed, all followers of one book.Justine didn’t like this, Bob, you must follow Jesus.How can you not follow Jesus?She asked me, where do I fit on this picture?I said, “I’m not on this picture, I’m on a whole different picture.”That made her very sad.How can you not follow Jesus?I tried a little version of a universalist god-spirit but she was having none of it.

“Well, you are both very good people so I know you will go to heaven,” she said. Then she said, mostly to me, “I am a very poor woman, I cannot give you a gift, but my gift to you is that I will pray for you to find Jesus.”

That’s the most precious gift I will take from this place. I don’t expect to find Jesus, but Justine’s prayers will be with me.

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Church on Sunday 7/6/08

I’ve been to religion before.I’ve been plenty of times.But before today, I’ve never been to Church.Today was Church.

We walked in to the service in progress. Apparently they’d been singing already for an hour or more when we got there and there was plenty more to go.

And sing they did.They sang a song that sounded like “alleluia”, they sang “Yes, Jesus loves me” in Kirundi.They sang and sang and sang.I realized as soon as I started writing how poor a tool words are to describe the beauty of the singing.Fortunately I got an audio recording of the whole time we were there.

The church is a simple building, probably mud brick covered in stucco/cement. The roof is made of metal sheets, the roof supports are raw timbers. We’re up in front, facing the congregation. We’re sitting with the pastor, the assistant pastor, and Prosper, looking out at the flock.

I wish I could say why or how this struck me so powerfully. I was near tears for most of the first half hour. The music just reached me in a way that was powerful beyond words. The people were all well dressed, as well as they were able, in their Sunday best. So it wasn’t like we were seeing the poverty that’s surrounded us all week up in our faces, but this music just got to me. I saw Wes with tears in his eyes too, and Bob said he’d teared up as well, so it wasn’t just me.

After awhile, there was a break in the singing. The pastor came up to speak – no, to exhort, to praise, to shout. He skipped back and forth across the stage, this little short man with a serious face, he got fired up and roared like a lion. I don’t know what he was saying, but it was inspiring just in the sound of it.

Then they started the SERIOUS music.We had the children’s choir, the youth choir, the men’s choir, the ladies choir, and then the special choir.Each in turn would start singing in their seats, then file up to the front and let loose.Wes spotted one older lady dancing and went down to dance with her for a bit.

The assistant pastor translated the meaning of each song. Each song said: God will support you in your suffering. The path to safety is through god. This is a church that is about providing a very real comfort to a very suffering people. This is a church that knows hunger and pain and insists on joy and on faith. We read Revelations 3:10-13 and it told about how god will protect his people through the end of time.

This was Church. Have you ever been to Church? If not, then you just don’t know. Ahh, listen to the music. I can’t tell you about it. Listen.

Prosper had told us we’d each be expected to speak a bit, and I was first up. I had been worried at first that I wouldn’t be able to speak without choking up in tears, and if I’d been asked to speak right after we’d arrived I would have failed. But a bit of equilibrium had returned, and although I was a tiny bit rocky at the start, I got on a roll, and said some things that seemed ok. I got some good response from the audience. I turned it over to Bob who said some very thoughtful things. We skipped over Wes, because he was supposed to preach, but Prosper spoke up about the 40×40 and the 10×10 and the good work of Wes’s little church, and how Wes had welcomed him into his home and church.

The pastor asked us our blood types, which seemed odd.But he was making the point, Prosper and I are both A+, we have the same blood, we are the same.

Then Wes got up to preach. He did an excellent job, talking about the great feeling of sharing with these wonderful people. He started to tell about his journey with god, through rebellion and reconciliation. …I’d thought Wes would be the warm up act; that the pastor would speak after Wes at some length, but when Wes was done the pastor made some few comments and wrapped us up with another song. We were invited to be in the receiving line, shaking hands with hundreds of people as they filed out.

It was of awesome beauty. But don’t take my word for it – listen to it yourself. Listen.

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Brock’s first report from Burundi

Burundi Independence Day:   There were 5 grandstands all together, maybe 150-200 people per grandstand.  The president was in the central one.  We were in the one to hizonner’s right, at the back.  There were big leather overstuffed chairs for the prez and entourage, the rest of us on plastic stacking chairs.  We were at the back of our grandstand, we couldn’t see himself except that when he spoke we could see the back of his head and the secret service crew.

To my surprise, Prosper didn’t seem to know anyone near us.  The parade went between astounding and wonderful and crashingly boring.  We watched thousands of military pass in review.  We watched civil service groups, corporate groups, and school groups march past.  It seemed hard to imagine that there was anyone in Bujumbura who WASN’T in the parade.

But the music was astonishingly good.  We got a good dose of the Royal Drummers.  I think Wes and Bob got a bit bored by the drummers, but it was this powerful deep pounding bass rhythm that just got me every time.   I didn’t bring my music recorder because I thought it would be in the way and/or rude to deploy the thing but I really wish I’d had it.

Bob got a lot of pictures, I got a few, Wes got quite a few and some video besides.  I was shy of camera-popping, we were among the few who took very many pictures (collectively).

After, we agreed to go meet at Carama today and Prosper expects us to be blown away by the poverty and lack of planning ability and poverty of education and realize that we need him as intermediary in everything. ..we’ll go out to Carama tomorrow (today, as I write this) and meet the people and we’ll understand all we need to understand and we can go from there with our planning.

So, then, dinner at Prosper’s.  We keep having little discussions on men’s and women’s roles in society here vs. there.  Prosper asked me, “If your wife says, ‘I want to go to Seattle’ and you say, ‘NO, I forbid you to go’ and she goes anyway, what would you do?  Here, she would not be welcome to come back.”  The man is clearly the boss of the household here, although there are some obvious imbalances that are starting to grow.  Elizabeth, Prosper’s office manager, for instance.  She’s a beautiful woman, very smart, very good communicator.  I really think she runs the office, coping and keeping up with Prosper’s whirlwind of activities and making sure everything works.  We met her husband Desiree and I asked what type of work he does.  He’s unemployed.

So Prosper says, “If a man can’t buy his wife the nice clothes she deserves, what kind of man is that?”  I didn’t ask Desiree his opinion on that.

Yet, the women did all the cooking, the serving, the clearing.  Wes and I joked about it, but we were NOT WELCOME to help.  It felt awkward to not at least make a token effort, but a little moral righteousness wouldn’t have done anyone any good, it would have just made everyone uncomfortable ESPECIALLY the women.  So we talked about the differences, but just talk.

In context of all this, we got on the subject of dowries.  Turns out that Desiree got Elizabeth on credit for 20 goats that he has not yet paid back.  I think he actually owes the cash equivalent of 20 goats, but it is not a debt of a million Burundi francs, it is a debt of 20 goats.

In Burundi, 2 cows is a pretty common price.  Which is also interesting since traditionally the Tutsi are cattle raisers while Hutu are traditionally crop growers.  Cain and Abel.

We had about 15 dishes altogether, we had fufu and tiny little fish in a spicy onion sauce, and fried pieces of a fish called mukeke.

Some little funny bits to close with.  Yesterday evening I left my windows open and fan on – and got a big ugly flying cock-a-roach in the room.  I took pictures.  Bastard was as big as my thumb and MEAN looking.  Then after I’d spent what seemed like forever trying to get Comcast to work correctly and losing probably 40 mins of typing all together, I went to sleep with the fan on 3 instead of 1.  That’s way too noisy and breezy – so I was up half the night wondering why I was so uncomfortable.

Today, we got back to the hotel at about 4 and I’ve been writing for much of the past 2 hrs.  And then I’m going to bed.

… So far behind on updates.  Hard to know where to begin.  I’ll start with today, since it’s freshest and older stuff isn’t going to get fresher but the fresh stuff could go stale.

We spent the day today in Carama (Cha-RA-ma) which is the community that Prosper has built up from total wartime/conflict devastation.  Today we were expecting to meet with a collection of local leaders to start understanding the community and our role in helping, our options.

Oh, let’s back up, shall we?  Prosper had got us a rental car and driver that we’ve been using much of the time.  He followed our directions and got something inexpensive.  I guess we hadn’t counted on the fact that we’d have the 3 of us, plus a driver, plus a person from Prosper’s office to serve as guide and translator.  It gets pretty cozy in the back of that little thing with 3 big guys shoved in, let me tell you.  The guys say, “Brock, go ahead, sit in front, you need the room” which makes me wonder – am I really that fat?  I’m dieting when I get home, fo’ sho.  Anyway, clearly this wasn’t cutting it, so today Prosper had upgraded us to a beat up old Toyota land cruiser which is much more comfortable.

Turns out, it’s a diesel.  Turns out, diesel is very very hard to come by in Bujumbura these days.  Turns out, I mean REALLY hard to come by.  So we were driven over to the compound of the guy who rents the cars.  Turns out he’s got a multi-faceted operation, we pulled into the compound to a huge sign for Eglise something-or-other, the church that is apparently the backbone of his operation.  Plus a flashy building with a nightclub sign.  Plus the car rental.  Plus, as it turns out, a cabinet of musty old electronic equipment – VCRs, car speakers, a multi-meter, various unidentifiable junk – that he repairs, sells, whatever, plus a whole shelf of home-recorded VCR tapes that he probably rents.   We had plenty of time to check all this out, because we had to wait while someone went to buy diesel.

While we waited, a lady came in who needed some attention to her car.  Somebody brought motor oil in an old beer bottle.  They didn’t want to spill any, so they made a funnel out of cardboard and poured out the oil like wine.

While we waited, we chatted with our driver du jour, Ledoc.  Ledo  is Prosper’s third oldest son (I think), a handsome and sharp young man who’s studying law in Nairobi.  Ledoc was to be our translator.

It seemed like it took an hour, it was half an hour at the very least, but finally the guy showed up with a tiny little can of diesel.  Prosper said it was 5 liters, and it cost something around $2 or $2.50 per liter.  That was our ration for the day, fortunately it was to be a low-driving day.

We got to the outskirts of Carama and saw the first water point.  I was shameless, snapping photos of people just trying to get on with life.  The water point had 2 taps, both in full use.  The runoff wasn’t well handled, and made a fairly swampy area.  People were grazing their cows, big lyre-horned beasts that I took at first for water buffalo.  Whenever I’ve read about Tutsi cattle, they always call them “distinctively lyre horned” and now I know what they mean.

Onusfor popped up out of the blue, and Dammas.  We hung out for a bit, snapping photos and asking questions, and Prosper said it was time to go.  Because of the time we’d spent waiting for gas, we went straight to the village meeting instead of touring about more.

We got to the center of the village and there was a collection of chairs set up in the shade of a big tree.  Several village leaders were there already, and we were ushered to the seats of honor.  There were probably ten or twenty people milling about or sitting and waiting for us when we got there, and I was thinking this would be pretty manageable.

I was hoping it would be manageable.  I was terrified, I was having real heart-in-the-throat panic.  It was so important, so important to me, to get this right.  There were so many ways it could go wrong, and I was terrified that I’d steer us all into one or more of them.  The biggest fear was that I’d leave them with an implicit commitment, “We’re going to come back and fix everything for you!”  The last thing these people need is more disappointment.

It turned out we were waiting for the head of the district to come.  Carama is in the district of Kinama which is in the commune of Bujumbura.  The head of Kinama had gotten his schedule crossed, but after ten minutes or so, ten minutes while my pulse raced and I tried to keep my breathing steady, after ten or so rocky minutes for me he arrived in style.  So this is what, maybe comparable to the mayor of Lynnwood?  He was brought in one of the ubiquitous police trucks, a pickup truck with a bench down the middle of the bed.  The bench is usually filled with armed police, guards, or soldiers.  I think it was police this time.  The whole time he was at the meeting, we were well protected by his two guards with Kalashnikovs.  I felt quite secure.  We were introduced, his name is “Emile”

So with the biggest man with us at the meeting, we could proceed.  Prosper spoke, then the chief of Carama spoke, then the head of Kinama spoke.  Unfortunately the head of Kinama had a pressing meeting and he had to leave immediately after speaking.  I was not in fact disappointed to see him go.

In fact, all this speechifying had me calming down, so after Emile departed it was my turn.  I think I did ok, I talked about global unity and GCJ does communication projects with a physical side, and we want to understand how they get things done here and hopefully come back in a year and I think it was ok.

 Then Wes got up and got a bit rambly.  Wes has the advantage of having the 40×40 project and the 10×10 projects on his balance sheet , so he gets to be a hero already.  (NOTE:  a friend of his from Coeur d’Alene raised $40K in 40 days to build 40 houses in 10 days!)   We talked a bit about the stuccoing and latrines (the Wes and Brock project) but it’s not such a big deal.  Wes of course playing to the crowd, he told how we’d ridden 44 hours on a plane to get here and he’s got the sore butt to prove it.

We got to Q&A, where the people got up in turn to ask us questions, or represent their needs, or just speak their piece.  Some distinctive points (not all entirely high points)

In his intro, Prosper had spoken about how important women and women’s involvement in the meeting and the process were.   There were several women represented (not to mention hordes of curious adorable children).  One man said, “look, here are our women, please take a picture of them to take home to show people how we live”.  So we did, then Prosper got Wes into the picture.  It was nice.

Someone started talking about farming and Wes started riffing on the value of hard work, “Do you want to work hard?  Do you want to work together?  Do you want to farm?”  Ledoc whispered to me “He’s going to be mayor of this place”.  This was a low point for me, actually, Bob and I were sharing panicked looks and even Ledoc was voicing his concerns.  A villager brought out 2 hoes and threw them on the ground and he and Wes picked them up and started to show how they can do hard work.

 This is a WAY WAY WAY fookin’ bigger problem than we can touch.  Only in the most peripheral ways can we even get close to this one.  Micro finance – that’s about it.  We can’t help them rent land, we can’t bring them fertilizer, we can’t, well, do much of anything about farming.  I jumped up and started throwing (metaphorical) cold water around, cooling down the crowd, mealy-mouthing Wes’s excitement, and I think no real damage was done.

I won’t go much further here, Bob took pretty extensive notes.  Some big items: Water, electricity, microfinance, farming, education.  (jumping ahead – the 3 of us debriefed a bit after and agreed that 1) there may be a good role for GCJ to use a community center as the heart of an investment that we commit to and then raise funds towards other pieces.  My biggest concern there is to start spec’ing these ideas out so we can really know if we can do any of them)

(Also – one thing they said was, “$600 would send 10 kids to driving school and then they could get jobs” to which both Wes and I thought, “Damn, I could do that right now” so we may do that also)

Then we started touring the community.  We looked in the house of a haggard old woman and I felt like a bastard, stomping around in my big fat American boots taking pictures of her devastation.  We looked at the “ditch water” that has been what people have been drinking since before the water came from Regideso and it actually looked more like a small stream than the putrid irrigation ditch I’d expected.  We crossed the stream on a rickety bridge (Prosper says, “Another small project is we need to replace this with a bigger, stronger bridge” and I’m thinking, Ka-ching, here’s another project I could just DO.)

We looked at a church construction that was awaiting funding for the next step.  It actually looked pretty grand compared to everything else around.

We saw houses, we saw goats.  We saw some houses that are being started and built right now (are these the 10×10?  I’m really just not sure.  I hope Wes knows, I hope Wes got what he needs from that.)

We saw another water tap.  It’s not functioning yet, and it turns out they just don’t have the taps for it yet,  just the taps, the faucets.  “WTF!?!?” thinks me, “how much can that cost!?!?!”  and I asked Prosper, can we just go to the local equivalent of a hardware store and BUY SOME DAMNED FAUCETS?” and he was ahead of me on it, giving the chief of Carama $30 to just do it.  There’s something quite broken communication-wise here – how long were they going to wait until Regideso got around to it?

More house building, more chatting.  I chatted with 2 pygmy (I think) brothers (they came up to my shoulder) who spoke surprisingly good English.

Oh have I neglected to talk about the kids?  How could I do that?  We were surrounded by kids at every step.  Every one of the little darlin’s a terrorist, the one universal kid greeting, the one that sends them into laughter and smiles is a good old fashioned terrorist fist bump.  Even better the thumbs up fist bump, or a fist bump where you say “Cha!”

And that kinda broke my heart a little bit, ok, more than a bit, thinking how many of these adorable little rugrats won’t see puberty.

Christ, I feel so overdone, so hyper compressed, so strung out.  This is hard work.  This is hard.

But nothing like a passel of kids to lift your heart, I almost got left behind fist bumping and poking bellies with my finger.  One bold little guy in a ragged red shirt had learned a few words of English “Hello, teacher!”  “Hello, Class!” and we even got “What’s your name?”  (He’s Claude, btw).  A surprising number of kids had a smattering of English, and lots of kids had French.

Ok, that’s all I got, really.  All that matters.  All that matters for now.

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Planning team off to Burundi!

GCJ Burundi Project Director Brock Blatter leaves next week along with delegates Bob Flax and Wes Herbert, for a two week sojourn to Burundi.  Joining with our Burundi Host, Prosper Ndbashuriye, they will spend their time in Carama helping to build homes and latrines, getting to know the community, getting the full update on the situation with water there, and learning about their needs.  They’ll return home with their first hand reports and understanding to help us plan an extraordinary Journey for next summer’s delegates.  Watch this blog for updates!

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Come hear Joel’s detention June 1 on Whidbey I

A Giraffe Hero returns from the Niger Delta:

A conversation with Giraffe Joel Bisina and an African celebration

 

Sunday evening, June 1

Whidbey Island – Langley United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall

7:00 – 9:30 pm

                                      

As you may know, the Sweet Crude documentary film crew was imprisoned for a week in mid-April by Nigerian authorities. Joel Bisina, my husband, was one of those detained. While the American detainees returned to the US right away, Joel has just returned to his home on Whidbey Island after this difficult and dangerous experience.

 

The Langley-based nonprofit Giraffe Heroes Project (www.giraffe.org) is hosting this event to give the community an opportunity to welcome Joel back and learn more about how he has been “sticking his neck out” for the common good.

 

Joel was commended as a Giraffe Hero in 2004 for his courageous and passionate commitment to improving the social, economic and environmental plight of the Niger Delta’s people, a plight caused by 50 years of drilling for oil and the government’s failure to include the resident community in the resulting profits. To learn more of Joel’s story, check out http://www.giraffe.org/hero_Joel.html.

 

The first half of the June 1 event will include a short cut of the documentary, a discussion about the recent events in the delta, and a dialogue between Joel and Giraffe President John Graham, who was previously a US diplomat for African Affairs during the Carter administration.

 

Then the celebration – we’ll enjoy social time, with African music played by local Island musicians (dancing optional!). Light refreshments will be served. Suggested donation is $5.

 

Please come join us for a fun and inspiring event.

 

Mary Ella

p.s – If you’re coming from Seattle, the event is just a 15 min drive after you take the Mukilteo-Clinton ferry, in downtown Langley at 301 Anthes.

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News flash: delegation moved to summer 2009

As we have investigated the challenges for bringing clean water to Carama, we have learned how much is called for to work wisely and carefully in partnership with community.  We have decided it best for a small ‘away team’ to go this summer of 2008 to help lay the ground work to develop a Water and Sanitation Plan with the community of Carama, as well as to initiate planning for Town Hall meetings.  Then, next summer, we will bring a full delegation over.  So for those of you who wanted to join us but couldn’t do so this year…  Join us!

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