on being with "family" at Christmas

We have some great friends and colleagues in Eastern Congo. But they've known us for 14 months, max. And we've traveled away from Congo a lot during that time. Also, we're colleagues with most of them, which gives the relationship a certain level of professionalism.

We just spent Christmas with Micah and Betsy Dekorne and their two boys.

We've known Micah for 14 years. Mark lived with him for a number of those years. We met Betsy about 9 years ago. All four of us celebrated both of our weddings, and we were part of a tight-knit house church community in Denver for a couple of years. En plus, Betsy studied the conflict in Congo as part of her masters in International Development. D'ailleurs, they have two sweet boys who are around the ages of our nieces and nephews. So those things together with how easy and quick it was to travel to their town in Uganda made for a HOLLY, JOLLY CHRISTMAS!

Christmas morning. This was one cool gift we brought: a motorcycle made out of banana leaves!
Photo credit: Awesome Photographer Micah DeKorne

Mark and I were so, so blessed and thankful to get to spend Christmas with these dear friends in Uganda. We got to eat really good food, live a very different pace of life, and hang out in their lovely house and yard. Some extra-special things we got to share were the Christmas party with women in a predominantly Congolese refugee camp where Betsy has been leading a Bible study; a bicycle safari with impalas, monkeys and zebras; a Christmas hymn sing at their church; and the yard-to-table process for turning "Franky" into Christmas dinner (best pork chops Mark has ever had). Micah and Betsy also inspired us with how they celebrated Advent with their three-year-old, and we had some meaningful and encouraging conversations about life and work in this part of Africa. It was so special to be a part of it all.

Betsy and I received gifts at the Christmas party with the women in the refugee camp. (They were Bibles in Swahili.)

I also got a mani/pedi for $7 and got to put my clothes in a dryer (which does amazing things to the size of tank tops!). Mark got to throw the Frisbee (even with his terribly swollen eye) almost every day! Unfortunately, most of the pictures we took are of Mark's eye.

There were the minor disappointments of: sickness going around and Mark's eye swelling weirdly (after three days, a sty finally developed and is on its way out now). And leaving.

changing seasons (Bukavu still has perfect weather)

Phew! Just finished my fall semester online course on Restorative Justice from EMU. I've got one more course, plus my practicum/internship (which will be based on my current work) than I'll have my MA in Conflict Transformation!

The class has continued to be a good distraction from work this fall, although the material was often about as heavy as the hard stories of people's lives in Congo. I'd say 40% of my evenings and weekends, my mind was just about to blow as I wrestled with culture questions, justice questions, economy of international aid questions, questions about gender roles, etc.

We're currently in a pretty tense situation, waiting to see what's going to happen with the political situation in Congo, as the current President's term is about to expire and there haven't been elections. It's also been really busy trying to get our office and programs systematized with our new team. Plus, one of our new team members is stuck in North America waiting for documents from Congo so she can get her visa. Yee-haw.

And we found out this morning that we may be without power at our house for a couple of months because of road construction. (Uncle John, remember how we were excited for the chinese neighbors? Well, they delayed for five months and then moved next door, so now they're probably not going to share their special line with us!) But I've evaluated our main electrical needs and possible solutions. I don't feel too distraught. For lights, we've got solar powered ones. For fridges, we've got one at the office a 5 minute walk away (and we just won't make a whole lot of food at a time). For charging electronics, we can do that at the office and have a mobile "power bank" to charge phones, so I think we'll survive. But I might as well move my little Christmas tree to the office, I guess.

Our pastor's wife had her baby last week, and we went to go visit her at the hospital. It was sweet. I've only gotten to visit one of my nieces and nephews in the hospital, so I felt very much like family.

We're heading out tomorrow for a Christmas dinner with children at an IDP camp, a project initiated by some of the participants in the Seed program I help supervise. I'm so proud to see them taking initiative like this. Hard to believe the program is coming up on half-way (Feb 15th)!

I'll leave it at that for now. Thanks for reading!

I’ve been looking for this waterfall since I got here. I found it on google Earth a few weeks before we came but have never gotten the opportunity to properly find it because DRC is so insecure. But, lo and behold, when I planned to do it, and took steps during the week to make it happen (instead of just waiting around for Saturday morning and trying to throw it all together) then it did happen! I went with James, a Congolese guy who works for another NGO here in Bukavu. We decided, actually, to go try to see this waterfall from the Rwanda side, because it falls into a canyon that runs the border between the two countries, and the Rwanda side will put us directly across from it, with likely a better view. More importantly, Rwanda is generally safe to travel in the countryside and off the main roads, and DRC is generally not safe to do that. Anyway, we found this waterfall I had found on Google earth, except that it wasn’t a waterfall. It was a place where this very white rock is exposed and runs down the length of the gorge. I would bet that it actually is a waterfall when there’s rain, but yesterday it was a narrow, very tall, stretch of cliff.

 

 

 

 

Despite that fact, the trip was AWESOME. This canyon (gorge? Valley? Ravine?) was absolutely breathtaking. Probably around 1,500 feet deep, super-sharp, and GREEN GREEN GREEN everywhere, except when there was just exposed rock. The river at the bottom was full of gigantic rapids, and you could easily hear the water churning even up where we were. It was really fantastic. James and I hope to go back some time and try to hike all the way down to the bottom of the gorge. It will take 1-2 hours to get down probably, and it will be amazing. It’s exactly the kind of thing that I know is kind of all over DRC but no one can take advantage of because of the insecurity here. It’s such a shame, because this place was so beautiful. It felt like we’d come upon some hidden treasure, like the entrance to the Garden of Eden or something. 

My supposed waterfall.