Trip to “the field” (part 1)

I recently returned from my first round of visits to the communities where our Seed participants will be working. Since I didn’t know where these places were prior to going, I doubt that you’re very interested in the name of each village or have a map that is detailed enough to show the names. So instead I’ll share some general observations, some of them very random. And I'll break up my reflections into a couple of posts.

Reaching each location requires a long time on a bumpy, muddy road – sometimes in a Land Cruiser, sometimes on a motorcycle. Erosion is a problem on these roads through the hills. – sometimes part of the road has fallen down the hillside, and sometimes the road has 10 foot walls of earth on either side. There is a lot of wear and tear on the vehicle each time it makes a trip into the field!

It rains on and off as we travel, and activity mostly stops when it’s raining. People put their pans out to catch water off the roofs so they have to carry less from the water source. Some find shelter under a piece of plastic or big banana leaf. Animals who are tied on a short rope look miserable. As we pass by one house, a small girl stands in the doorway and sticks her hand out to feel the rain. I’m encouraged to see someone delighting in the rain in a way that is familiar to me, someone who was not cold and miserable because of it.

We ascend through beautiful, green hills, in the process of being stripped of trees – stumps everywhere – and reach the highest hills, which are incredibly green, covered in fog, and full of cows that belong to the president, who lives 1000 miles away. He makes profit on all of the cheese and beef that is managed and sold from this remote region in Eastern Congo.

En route to one site, we are behind a convoy of five World Food Programme trucks bringing food to these communities that are in some of the greenest, most fertile parts of the world.

Women carry so many items and such huge bundles! Firewood and water, of course, but they also carry anything they are selling and sometimes are even hired as porters. All items are tied in colorful fabric and the weight is born with the head/neck/back. Often they also have a baby tied on just above the bundle. And sometimes the women who are a little better off carry only a purse but still carry it on their heads J. And on a related note, very small children (think 4-year-olds) often are carrying babies on their backs, too.

It smells like smoke from the cooking fires, specifically smoke like beef jerky smells.