Field visit for community dialogue

Since the Seed program has been up and running - and we're to the point of winding down! - I haven't been going on so many field visits. A couple of weeks ago, S and I returned to a town in North Kivu near the Uganda border that we had visited before the program started.

We had just a couple of days notice and required traveling through Rwanda and Uganda due to insecurity on the road in Congo. We travelled Saturday and Sunday for an event on Monday then all the way back Tuesday. I was happy because one of our female Seeders came along with us as a kind of exchange visit - and so I wouldn't be the only woman in our group. Travel was pretty exhausting but not as bad as I had feared. On our Tuesday return, I got six stamps in my passport!

Monday was kinda eventful. I understood about 15% of the community dialogue because it was conducted in Swahili and Kinyarwanda. But I knew my real goal of being there was to encourage the facilitators (including one of our Seeders) in their work, and I think my presence was what mattered. We ate really well during the trip...aside from not having any coffee. Even the meal prepared in bulk for the community dialogue had some of the best beans I've eaten!  

I get a lot more unwanted attention as a white person in the more rural places and where people aren’t familiar with you. We checked in with officials in town first thing on Monday morning, but that didn't prevent us (me) from getting hastled at road blocks along the way. I showed my passport and the guy wrote something in his book then let us go...

I enjoyed the BEAUTIFUL views of extinct volcanos and green countryside. My pictures do not to it justice at all.

I hope you enjoy these photos!

 

Living in a Conflict Zone

Hi All, I’ve written up some of my reflections about what it was like to be in Bukavu on November 5^th when there was exchange of light and heavy artillery fire for eight hours between Abbas, a recently suspended government official’s gang and the national army. You can read more about it here Since Mom already knows about it, I figured it might be helpful of interesting for you to hear some of the deeper thinking that it brought about for Mark and me.

It’s not the first time we’ve been awoken by a loud sound and thought it was gunfire. But this time it was beyond a doubt. Initially, I didn’t really consider that it could be in the expat neighborhood – it’s the “safest” neighborhood in town! I assumed it was coming from the governor’s residence, which is kinda in the same direction from our house. We have had a “go bag” packed for a few months, so I was starting to mentally go through what else I needed to throw in.

I didn’t really feel scared for myself, but I was aware of my responsibility in the situation and felt that heavily. It was hard that I couldn’t do anything, and we all just had to stay home and listen to the gunfire. 

I also was thinking how everyone was so surprised this was happening in the expat neighborhood. This is near where Mark and I first lived when we arrived. A lot of NGOs with high security protocol don’t allow their expat staff to walk around except in this neighborhood. It was ironic, and we felt kinda gratified in a sick way that we had chosen to not stay in that neighborhood and wondered how this will affect the NGOs who had thought it was “safer” there.

At the same time, I still was not freaking out because the center of action was literally out the back door of the main UN base, and we had an explanation of what was going on including a very specific objective that assured us that the general population was not at risk unless they got too close to the action. We couldn’t evacuate anyway because the road to the border was not safe, and I think the border was closed most of the day anyway.

I never felt personally in danger. We had stayed in bed until maybe 7:30, listening to the noise and checking our phones. Eventually we got up and made breakfast like normal, moving around the house as normal. We stayed busy receiving communication and sending it on to others, trying to determine what was truth and what was rumor. It was mentally engaging. There was definitely an element of joking lightheartedness that didn’t really fit the situation, but we both recognized as a normal coping mechanism and didn’t try to limit ourselves.

Mark and I walked out to the road to see if people were moving around as normal. There was less traffic than a normal Sunday morning, and there were police stationed along the road. We figured the biggest risk to us would be if thieves decided to take advantage of the distraction. We stayed inside until it was over.

Now, I’m feeling pretty normal. I half expected Monday morning to be handed an order to evacuate, but it seems like everyone is convinced that it really was a one-time thing (in that location), and just a reminder that no where is safe, so we’ve got to stay prepared. 

Another observation is how Congolese people ask us about it with a sort of twisted pride: “Weren’t you really scared? This was your first time to be really close to the shooting, wasn’t it? What did you think?”

In lighter news: The plethora or large, stationary umbrellas and retractable sideview mirrors have caught my attention recently as I walk around.

Walking down the street where we live. Notice the nice new sidewalks!
We just had to endure a year of mud and construction...

From my office window

Birthdayful

October has been fairly uneventful, as hoped, but it has definitely been birthdayful, especially this latter part! (It's a week into November now, but I'm just going to go ahead and post this!)

The first week saw the quick departure of a friend who was working for the UN and got a job in greener pastures. Another friend came for a weekend visit, and we drove to a tea plantation near the national park for a tour and picnic.

Mark got some good news professionally and will be teaching two different international law classes at a local university before the end of our term with MCC! I got to put some of my mediation training to work in a couple of situations.

One of these was a situation with our group of ultimate frisbee players. It was an opportunity to introduce some ideas about Restorative Justice. One of the players stole some money out of the group cash box (we ask people to contribute a very small amount each week so that if there’s a week when there are more players than fit in the vehicle, someone can pay to go by motorcycle out of this group fund). Anyways, we know who it was and he has admitted it to one of our congolese players and talked to Mark. We encouraged him for having been honest, gave him an opportunity to make amends, then we hope to welcome him back into the group as a model of a healthy response to wrongdoing (versus popular justice, which is all to common here, or just getting away without any consequences.) The initial conversation with him went pretty well! He admitted it was him and gave us his authorization to tell the others as we see fit. The team conversation went pretty well too, and they asked him to not participate for two weeks so he realizes how serious it was for him to break our trust. Hopefully he can pay back the money he took, and he then he can rejoin us for playing frisbee this week!

We both celebrate our birthdays at the end of October. Here are some photos from Mark's birthday, from our joint birtday party, and from my birthday which we celebrated while on renewal leave in Bujumbura, Burundi.

September is already over!

Seed team at retreat

September was a very busy month for the Seed program! Here are some of the things I've been up to:
- Some of our participants initiated getting school uniforms made for over 100 kids in the camp for displaced people where they work.
- We had a women's retreat with other ladies from our organization.
- There was an evaluation of the Seed program here in Eastern Congo, which meant welcoming two wonderful evaluators and them doing a lot of interviews.
- We had another three day work meeting "retreat" where Seeders exchanged experiences and gave presentations. It's always so fun and exciting (and intense and tiring for the introverts among us) to be all together!

Seeders with students at school uniform distribution

thankful students celebrate their uniforms while parents and other IDPs look on

Seeder dances with students as they celebrate their uniforms while parents and other IDPs look on

There have also been a handful of sizeable challenges related to security and interpersonal conflict. The security challenges are hard for me as I wrestle with "aren't we supposed to trust God?" and "I'm responsible for these people's well-being!" The conflicts are why I took this job - and got my MA! It's still uncomfortable, of course, but I am qualified to deal with this stuff (with God's help!).

I've been looking forward to October as a bit lower-key. So far, this has not been true. The past week has felt really, really long with lots of unknowns and inefficiencies. My co-facilitator is on vacation, so I'm at the helm. It looks like we'll get our house back to ourselves after hosting one of our very kind participants since late June.

I'm looking forward to being able to breathe a bit. Also rainy season is here, and I love watching the big storms roll in, all cozy in our house. The temperature drops a lot when it rains, and I can imagine it's fall!

Lots of children's laundry out drying in front of our house!

A Master in the Family

Hi All,

Here are some photos from my recent Capstone Presentation which was my final requirement toward my Master's degree in Conflict Transformation from Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and peacebuilding! I'm done!

It still feels a little unreal, but on Monday, Sept 4, I gave my final presentation via Zoom to a room of people in Virginia at EMU in the presence of a room of people in Bukavu and joined by family online! It was a fun way to share what I’ve learned and also to celebrate the end of this part of the journey!

 

Thanks so much for your support and let me know if you're interested in reading my research or seeing the Seed Framework and Curriculum I put together as part of my final Practicum!

Dawsons in JBU news

Hey, John Brown University, our undergraduate school, recently published an article about us! You can read it at https://www.jbu.edu/news/articles/?id=23838

Bujumbura Ultimate Tournament

 Last weekend I had the pleasure to lead a friendly, international sports tournament/clinic in Bujumbura. We played ultimate Frisbee, my favorite sport, and it was a wonderful event.

I started teaching Congolese people to play ultimate a bit over a year ago. We play every Saturday, and also on Wednesdays during the dry season. I learned about 5 months ago that there are Burundians playing ultimate in Bujumbura and thought of the international tournaments I’ve heard of being hosted in Rwanda, Kenya, and Uganda. I contacted a player in Bujumbura scene, a Canadian missionary who has been teaching Burundians to play for over ten years, and we worked out a date to try to have an informal tournament. We agreed it would be very informal, would have no tournament cost, would take place in one day, and that everyone participating would cover their own costs. 

I talked with the players on my team (that is, those who play in Bukavu) to try to find out if it would be realistic for them to travel to Bujumbura to play if they were each going to pay for themselves. With the help of our one our players who regularly goes to Buj, we decided that $35 was what people would need if they wanted to travel (including transport, lodging, and all food). The players were adamant that with 2 months of advance notice they would be able to get this amount together.

As the date got closer, several players in Rwanda heard about it and expressed interest in coming. Unfortunately, when it got really close (5 days) all the Rwandans said they weren’t able to come. More unfortunate, it turned out that only 4 other players from Bukavu would be able to go. I would attribute this to the fact that most of our players are students and not financially independent. We wrote letters for players to send home with to give to their parents, but I guess it wasn’t enough, or was too late. We also offered to go talk with parents in person, but only one player took us up on this. It turned out that his dad was actually in the hospital, so two nights before we left I drove down to the hospital with Frank, a Congolese guy in his early 30’s who plays with us and also happens to go to my church (Frank). The player himself couldn’t go because he had to stay home to take care of his younger siblings. It’s about a 20 minute drive to the hospital, which was completely on the other side of town. When we got there, the dad said his son had never mentioned ultimate Frisbee to him, or our planned trip. Undeterred, we read aloud the letter we had written (and given to this player a week earlier). When he heard the name of our pastor that seemed to peak his interest. He said he would think about it and contact us the next day. Well, it turns out that he was okay with it, thus giving us 5 total!

In the end, it was me, two Congolese students, and the Seeder from Colorado. Even though we were a small crew, we had a wonderful time. Frank did an absolutely superb job with the logistics of this trip. I can’t say enough about it. And also… Bujumbura is just so cheap in comparison to Bukavu!! The place we stayed in was amazing for the price ($5 per person per night); quite clean and with a little yard on the side and in a great neighborhood. 

The event itself came off quite well. The players in Bujumbura had negotiated a field for us to play on that was inside the parcel of a church. It had walls and was private, which helped us not have to fend people off of our water and bags and stuff while playing. It also allowed us to play for 5 hours, which would have been very difficult if we were using a public field, because other people want to use it. 

After introductions and a reminder to play fair and not hurt anyone, we split into two teams for a game to 13. Since we were only 5 from Bukavu, and the Buj players had brought like 25 players, they loaned us 6 or 7 for the game. (Ultimate is played 7v7 on the field, but substitutions are absolutely necessary to play a full game if the teams are anywhere close to equally matched). The game itself was intense and really fun. The Bukavu side started out ahead 4-2, but then Buj took half at 7-5. Out of half-time Bukavu scored 3 in a row to bring it to 8-7, and then Buj went on a run of their own, ending with the score at 12-10. Bukavu then scored 3 straight to win the very exciting game 13-12. No one got hurt. No one got really mad at anybody. And the game was very even. It went better than I could have hoped.

After the game (which lasted 2 hours) both teams gave awards to each other, like best defender, best thrower, etc… Then I taught some drills and ultimate strategy, which was followed by completely mixing up the teams and playing 2 games of 7v7 with no subs at all. We did that for 45 minutes, and then I taught another drill. At the end of this drill it was 2pm and everyone was spent. We enjoyed some cokes and chatter in the shade of a tree. Thirty minutes after the cokes, the sandwiches arrived, and we finished up by taking pictures and all saying we all wanted to play again in Bukavu and Bujumbura. 

I look forward to the next match!

Bloggin’ my blog, blog (in Strongbad voice).

Hey, faithful readers! (Hi Uncle John, Hi Moms!) It’s a chill Saturday night in Bukavu. We had power until that period that I just typed. I was going to say I was thankful for power. It will probably flicker on and off three or four more times tonight. They say that the person who runs the switchboard will take money if you want power in your neighborhood at a certain time. Really, it just seems like he’s spastic. 
 

Mark is in Bujumbura where they played a friendly Frisbee match today. I stayed home and chilled. It’s been great! I went to the informal coffee shop/hamburger joint in a residential neighborhood at noon-ish and enjoyed a coffee. I got my hamburger at 3:30. Thankfully, I wasn’t very hungry when I got there, and I had a paper to write, so I was pretty engaged with that. It was tasty, but I had planned to exercise this afternoon and it’s 6:30 and I still feel full.

It’s been almost a year since we got back from Brussels. That’s crazy! I know I still make all kinds of mistakes in French, but I don’t have to think quite so hard anymore. (Power’s back on now!) Mark said that I wrote an email in “beautiful French” earlier this week. That’s nice to hear. We share lunch a couple of times a week with staff from a Swedish church-based development organization whose office is near ours, and their domestic helper makes lunch for all of us. Kinda a lunch co-op. Last week, they had two visiting auditors who joined us. The first day, all of our conversation around the table was in French and the next day, the group was a little different, so all of our conversation was in English. I was proud to be among those who could fully participate in conversation both days!

What else? Mark and I borrowed paddle boards from our French friends (whose kids are the only white kids we know of in Bukavu), and went out on the lake for an hour or so. It was nice, challenging, and the lake had some oily stuff on the surface that was gross. I’ve been writing and thinking too much recently, most of which is kinda pessimistic. So I guess I just want to keep it light here for now.

I’m looking forward to a women’s retreat with MCC ladies in the region (and I’m not in charge!). Also to getting my diploma! And to rainy season so that we have regular water in the house. (plus our road is pretty much done, so it won’t be absurdly muddy!!!) I’m loving WhatsApp and how much easier it makes it to share life with family.