Spaghetti brain this afternoon

Pourquoi est-ce que je n'aime pas blog maintenant?

I never thought I would learn French. In addition to English, I thought my only hope of becoming bi-lingual was Spanish. And yet now I'm more comfortable with French than I've ever been with Spanish! It's crazy! I've had moments of being so proud of myself when I effectively communicate with a parking attendant or our domestic worker.

Mark and I also have laughed over the assumptions we've made over the years about French and French speakers. In high school, they were the weird artsy people. It sounds so nasal! (yes)

During Seed orientation, my French ability took at least 19 steps back as I was entirely consumed with trying to make the orientation happen and keep our Seeders alive, fed, and in the country legally. Speaking of, we just got around to reading the evaluations from orientation - maybe I've been putting it off longer than was necessary - but they were so encouraging! I was blessed to read about what our Seeders learned, and there were a few specific suggestions that will definitely be simple to implement for the next Seed orientation.

I don't know if you saw this picture of me with the Walker family on Facebook, but these are the lovely kids I spent the week with in Zambia. One friend in Zambia asked how long my term is in Congo. Of course, the correct answer is three years. But it's a different state of mind to think "three years, unless things start to head south and we have to cancel the program..." One of our country reps advised me to take every day here as a gift.

The political situation here is not at all stable. We're home from the office this afternoon because there have been protests today since the Constitutional court ruled that the current president can remain in office even after his 5 year term is up if the presidential elections don't happen. Who knows how long that will be as elections that are supposed to happen in November 2016 will be delayed due to the electoral commission not being properly funded for the last 5 years and, many analysts agree, a lack of political will for the elections to actually take place. If you're interested in learning more just google it. There's lots of good reporting happening on the situation right now.

In other news, Mark and I have submitted our requests for absentee ballots. That's all I'll say about US elections because Lord knows everyone hears too much about them already. That's one great thing about being here; we don't have quite as much forced exposure to the drama. Our voting residence is still in Virginia, another fact that makes me feel like a vagabond.

Yesterday, I skyped with my sister and her kids. My niece said she's going to swim during summer break and something about goggles, then she asked if I'm coming home (to Roswell) this summer. Maybe my sister and I both got choked up when I couldn't say yes. Our summer break will consist of 6 weeks of French language study in Brussels, and a visit to Mark's sister in Romania. That's a pretty good consolation!

The Sun'll come out

Let's face it. Sometimes I feel pretty down over here. This is typically driven by the often-recurring idea "things are going to stay like they are; they're not getting better."

However, I just want to post in a time when I can say that things are getting better! All kinds of things, in fact! For example, Karen and I moved out of our place three weeks ago. Today we finally said goodbye (good riddance!) to that landlord. I just deleted several sentences telling you about her, but it's better form to just say that we are quite glad we moved. In our new place we have a nice landlord, and we're around Congolese people, and the rent is 1/2 what it was, and it's a 5 min walk to our office, and it's just better in so many ways.

Related to that, we just found out that we're having Chinese neighbors move into the newly finished apartments upstairs. This is a positive development in several respects. First, they're here to pave the road in front of our new place, which is currently really really bad (as opposed to the other roads, which are merely really bad). Second, we will be having electricity almost 24/7 with them here because they need a special wire for their work, and they have to connect the entire apartment to it to access it. Third, they've brought their own security guards, which will also increase our own security at this place. In fact, if we had moved in after them, the rent would have been significantly higher. But God sent us here at the right time, and we're very grateful.

The road is also a symbol for Bukavu in general. Even though sometimes I feel like it's the least developed city of a million people in the world, and it's infrastructure was better 60 years ago than it is today, things are going to get better. This road is proof, and it affects lots of people, not just us (unlike the other things I've mentioned in this post).

Karen and mine's language ability is about to get a lot better. Because we're going to official French language school in Brussels for 6 weeks! We leave on June 22nd and are very much looking forward to time to be truly immersed in French (in Bukavu people speak Swahili more than French, which makes it quite hard to actually acquire French). This is another area what once felt like "I'll never get it!" but where change is coming.

Also, Karen and I have both been consistently facing a certain difficulty with our work. In the space of 72 hours, and quite unexpectedly, it has evaporated. We're still frankly shocked this has happened so quickly. It has felt like it could never get better, but all of the sudden it is. We feel quite grateful for this turn of events.

With all of these things together, Karen and I are feeling the sense that we can now really focus on the work that we (especially Karen) came to DRC to do! We're feeling quite starry-eyed and excited about the possibilities now, and are looking forward to what God has in store.

Here's some pictures that are otherwise unrelated to this post!

Here's a view of the motorcycle ride I went on just before vacation. Outside of Bukavu it looks like this, and it's beautiful. Mostly between 5000-8000 ft. above sea level. 

This is me after the motorcycle ride. 

Sunset in Kinshasa

Another one

Zambia vs. Congo

I’m back in my old stomping grounds, where I earned the title “zambiakaren”…or was is “Uncle Kalen”? Okay, both. When I lived in Zambia 2007-2009, I worked with an American family, the Walkers, who lead a ministry for street kids, and most of those kids didn’t know English very well, so I was “uncle” at the beginning. In some parts of Africa (including this part of Zambia) “l”s and “r”s are switched around a lot, such as “racecourse”-->”Lescos” or “Karen”-->”Kalen”. I guess that’s not quite as big of a problem with French.

The Walkers had nine kids in 2009 and I was their one-room schoolhouse teacher for all the school-aged kids. Now they have 11 kids, but the oldest three are back in the US for college. So I’m here with the eight youngest kids. In the morning carpool, I have 14 kids in the big van for a 45 minute drive on a busy highway in fairly poor condition – although it’s better than roads in Congo.

The roads are a different kind of bad.

It’s interesting to me to compare these two countries, to try to describe to people who know Zambia what Congo is like.

Similarities include lots of smiling black faces, green foliage (at least right after rainy season, Zambia’s green), beautifully temperate weather, inconsistent power and water supply, and annoying dogs.

From the porch in Zambia. Such beautiful sky!

Many differences have struck me, such as:

- Being waved through police stops multiple times. In Congo, if a policeman notices me, I’m almost always stopped.

- Transitions of power. When I lived in Zambia, the president died in office and everyone stayed calm. Congo has not had a peaceful transition of power since independence in 1960.

- Development! Zambia has improved since I left in 2009. Lots of new roads, lots of new stores and restaurants. (Pizza Hut!) Eastern Congo doesn’t have any chain stores, although thankfully there are some Lebanese and other Middle Eastern people who are willing to take the risk of operating businesses in the climate of instability.

- Zambia is mostly flat other than mine tailings. Congo has incredible mountains, and I miss them.

- And, of course, the most obvious – English vs. French! It’s nice to have the impulse to greet someone in French, even if it’s wrong.

Zambia was a great introduction to Africa for me, and I’m again thankful for the current opportunity to live and work in the beautiful, broken country of Congo. 

As a friend recently wrote me in an email: “I’d say that living in Congo and trying to do your ridiculously difficult and uncertain job is your penance right now (penance being what God is using to reveal and burn off my disordered attachments, selfishness, etc.)! Certainly not always fun, sometimes very painful and downright embarrassing.”

Pictures, as promised!

Since it's been ten days, I'll just put these pictures in a new post so you don't have to go back and check the other post. These are of the trip South to Baraka on Lake Tanganyika.

This is our new Seed Land Cruiser! We couldn't have made the trip without it.

I am sobered every time we pass through this community.

Beautiful countryside!

Poor road conditions...

The view from my hotel in Baraka. See Lake Tanganyika hiding?

The hill in the distance is a peninsula sticking into the lake. This is the land where our partner is growing maize for feeding their dairy cows.

Serge hard at work at the pump...until you look closely. ;)

Source of water for the dairy farm in case the rain supply runs out

Lake Tanganyika, looking out to the same peninsula

Same place as the previous picture; I just turned around 180 degrees

The group on the trip! L to R: Tresor (partner), Serge, Moses (Seeder), Safari (chauffer), Mariam (Seeder), and in front is the agronomist for the partner organization.

We've been busy!

A week ago right now, I was in our new MCC Seed Land Cruiser, heading six hours south of Bukavu to visit a new partner in Baraka with two of our Seed participants and Serge. It’s a beautiful drive, a lot of it right along the shore of Lake Tanganyika. I got a really good feeling about the partner’s work there in Baraka, and I was especially encouraged because the Seeder we’re planning to place there also felt good about the place and the people she’ll be working with.

(pictures to come when we have better internet access. At the moment, we've run out of credit, and the store is closed Saturday through Monday for International Worker's Day!)

To me, this is an answer to prayer, as we have now placed all 8 of our Seeders with their host organizations for the initial organizational orientation, and everyone seems to be happy with their placements! I know there will be bumps along the way, but it’s really encouraging that after a lot of re-arranging and trying different options like a puzzle before coming to our decision, God has guided us to a good place.

We still have a whole lot of work ahead of us and still have many challenges, especially finding a balance between uber-formality with partners (invitations, stamped documents, approval by the big boss, etc.) and relationships of trust. Also finding a balance with our Seeders of being a family who trust and support each other and being employer/employee. Personally, I’m really struggling to find a balance between loving people who are difficult and requiring changes in professional behavior.

But for the past two days (Friday and Saturday), I have not even thought about the Seed program! We have moved from the big house and parcel of land (in our equivalent of the suburbs) where MCC has been since the first MCCer came back to Eastern Congo around 2010. We’ve been wanting to live in a Congolese neighborhood where friends from church could easily come visit, and we wanted to live closer to Serge, my co-facilitator, as well. It turned out he was looking to move too, so he found us two lovely apartments in the same small building, less than five minutes’ walk from the office! The place is clean, simple and we feel a good sense of ownership. AND we’ve got two spare bedrooms, so come on over!