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.
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.
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