Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Land of Contrasts

     We love our new home! We are pretty much settled as long as you don't go in the garage or the basement. I feel a bit Pharisaical having the places you can see clean but those hidden areas still filthy. Ha! Oh well, all in good time. 

     

      One of the things we greatly enjoy about our place is the outdoors. We live in the middle of town but it looks like country all around. This morning I woke up and heard baby birds nesting somewhere in the tree beside our window. We have enjoyed several nights of eating dinner outside. And even as I write, I am sitting on our deck surrounded by trees and lightning bugs. The silence is being broken by locusts, an owl in the distance, and occasional chirping birds that are flying by. Beautiful! Peaceful. Relaxing. 

      

      When I thought of going to Africa the words beautiful, peaceful and relaxing were not what made me sign up. After 27 hours of traveling our hosts simply wanted us to stay awake for a few more hours so we would get adjusted quickly to the 6 hour time difference. They took us to a beach restaurant. It was glorious. The view was breath taking. We were sitting at a table on the sand, shaded by a palm tree, breathing in the slight breeze that cooled things down, sipping on my first passion fruit juice, and relaxing to the sound of water. It was not at all what I had expected to experience in a third world country. For a brief moment I felt like I had stepped into someone else's life and was on an exotic vacation. 


     As we were driving the next day I was smitten by the beauty. The luscious forest with an array of greens, quilted valleys, 
clear blue water, mountain top views.  

There were trees I never knew existed like the fan tree. 


     I had never seen land of this magnitude. I could not help but just soak it all in. I was abruptly jolted out of my basking by the sight of a couple dilapidated structures. I shrugged that off and continued my admiring. A few minutes later came another interruption. Every few miles this would happen. Houses that were half built but abandoned by an owner who did not have the money to finish it. 

     Impromptu markets on the side of the road where people were trying to sell anything they could. Children playing next to the road in the dirt. A boy with a staff in hand tending to his family cows, goats, or sheep. 

Unspeakable beauty then the reality of poverty, unspeakable beauty then the reality of poverty. I looked at Jay and told him how odd it seemed. He simply said, "Ah, Africa. The land of contrasts." He was spot on. 

     

     The poorest of people living on the most lavish of lands. A people with nothing living where others with riches would give bountifully to live. Funny how all we can see is our circumstance. Two sides of the world, yet humans are all the same. Not rich because of what we have but poor because of what we don't.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

"Photo Photo Photo"

  

One of my goals while in Africa was to get some pictures of "authentic Africa" for a collage to put on my wall upon return.  I suppose what I really was thinking of was  making a collage of National Geographic on my wall.  You know, the women with stuff on their heads.  The children that look hungry and dirty.  The people out in the distance working the fields.  The poverty and run down market places.  It was sure funny to hear when people looked at my pictures after I got home.  I heard two comments over and over, "it looks like a Compassion International advertisement" and "it's like looking at the pages of National Geographic".  Yes!  Mission accomplished.



 


 









        Well, needless to say, not all of Africa looks that way.  However, it was on more than one occasion that Donna Gasset and I looked at each other and said, "This is the real deal!"  We were not in the tourist areas.  We were in the most remote areas of Africa.  We went to the places most eyes never see.  There were no lions, zebras or elephants but there were huts, dirt floors, older women whose faces carried the weight of the world, the beautiful garbs, beans and rice, babies with flies on them, and more things balanced on heads than I knew possible!



















The hardest part about getting pictures was as soon as your camera surfaced you were surrounded by little faces saying, "photo, photo, photo".  Getting my "authentic" pictures proved to be difficult.  I even tried hiding to get a shot, but they would find me!  I don't think they had any idea that those images would end up on paper.  They were just content to see it on the back of our cameras.


Their responses were precious.  The kids would form a mosh pit of sorts to try and see it.  I admit I am slow at times.  It took me a while to realize they had never seen an image of themselves.  They had no idea what they looked like.  Take a minute to wrap your brain around that.

      I decided to walk around while the children were contained at VBS and find the adults.  "Would you like a photo?"  One guy looked at me and rubbed his fingers together as to say, "how much money you got?"  Ha!  It was not for my benefit.  I just wanted to give them a chance to see God's incredible creation of themselves.  I decided to stick to women.

The women were excited at the chance to get a picture.  They would look at the image and laugh.  I figured out they were mostly looking at each other.  Almost as if they were a stranger in the background of your picture that you tend to ignore.  I began taking pictures of individual women so they would know it was them.  When I showed them I would say, "mwiza" which means "beautiful".



I have no idea if they were glad to know what they looked like.  I often look much better in my head than in real life.  In fact, I can feel pretty good about myself until I see a mirror or a picture.  It makes me wonder, do they deal with self image issues like us?  Not knowing what I look like would make it hard to compare myself to others .  If I never saw what I looked like, would I be more likely to believe that how God created me was perfect and beautiful?

Friday, July 26, 2013

Home


We have all been on trips.  Man, there is no place like home though.  It seems like coming home is fantastic for everyone but for all different reasons.  What is it for you?  Your own bed?  Your favorite chair?  Not living out of a suitcase?  I really like that everything is in its place.  Home.  We just moved into our new house.  I love it, but it still does not feel like home.  Probably because not everything has a place yet.

There are certain things that are very important to me.  The way my house smells is close to the top of my list.  I am quirky in many ways.  One of my quirks that most people don't know about is when we get home from a long trip, I want to be the first one to open the door so I can see what it really smells like.  I figure if the house has been sitting all week with no air flow, there is no better time to get a whiff of what the place smells like at its core.  Strange, I know.

As with many mission trips, we were able to build houses.  There is no question these houses are needed.  The Batwa are literally living in huts.  The huts are basically straw gathered into a big half ball shape.  Then, nine people go lay down in it.  Home.  It is hard for me to wrap my brain around the idea of what home would feel like for them.  The smell of dirt.  You have nothing to put in its own place.  No favorite chair.  No bed to call your own.  When they duck into the entry, what do they feel?  When it starts to rain and they run for shelter, their home does not provide it.  Home.



When we were building the houses it was super exciting.  We knew we were part of a life changing thing.  We laughed and joked as we passed mud down the line to smash in-between the bamboo stalks.  Joy filled the whole area.  This building brought hope.  We celebrated when it was done.  We took pictures and stood back and admired.





A few short days later I was in my home.  I woke up in my bed without a mosquito net.  Ahhh.  Home.  When I opened my eyes that morning it hit me.  The house we rejoiced over and considered life changing, the one that the Batwa were literally dancing and singing about, was no bigger than the size of my bedroom.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

A Hard Working White Woman


     
We were able to build two houses while we were in Bugenyuzi.  So fun!!!  Harvest for Christ is the group we were working with.  They work really hard to be sure there is not a mentality of "the white people are here to save us!"  I was taken back when we arrived to start the building.  If any of us had a mentality that we would come in and be the hero, our egos were quickly shriveled.  There were already posts in the ground.  The building had begun long before we got there.  The second day was the same.  I have no idea how early they were up, but they had been building for a while before we got there.  We were not there to build a house for them rather we were there to assist them while they built a house.  I love that!  So empowering for them and I am thankful knowing that after we left, they could continue to change their story.

The second day it was time to start putting up the tiles for the roof.    They were all in a big truck that had to be unloaded.  We started out with the tiles being handed off the truck to people who would then carry them down the hill to the house.  I was leery of doing this because I had hurt my ankle a few weeks before and I was pretty sure it was not going to withstand the journey up and down.  I offered to start a human chain.  A few of us would be given the tiles off the truck and pass them down the line.  As I began to look around, I noticed I was only being given three tiles at a time and those around me were given six or seven.  I certainly did not want to be shown up so the next time I was given the tiles I stayed there to be handed more.  They handed me another, then another and slowly but gently they handed me one more.  I said thanks and passed them along.  When I went to get more I was happy they were willing to trust me with six tiles at once.  I took all six and passed them along.  When I turned around this time I heard a bit of laughter.  I took the tiles and there was more laughter.  After a few rounds of this, I turned to my translator, who happened to be next in my line, and asked what they were laughing about.  He replied, "When you take the tiles they say, 'A hard working white woman!'  and they laugh."  This continued until the tiles were all unloaded. "A hard working white woman, bwahahahah!"  Grab tiles, "A hard working white woman!  Hahahahahaha"  My translator even turned to me at one point and said, "You really should tell your husband how hard you work."  Ha, I think after being home with the kids for 10 days in my place he is pretty aware that he married a hard working white woman.  :)

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

The Gas Station


  I really don't intend to go every other day with sad, happy, sad, happy.  It just seems to be going that way.  (That was your warning that this one is sad.)

One of the first places we stopped was an old gas station.  This was a stop that no words can convey, and not even a picture's thousand words are able to tell this story.   Bear with me as I try.  This gas station was in a place called Kibimba.

This stop was on Monday (our first real day there) and we were peacefully bouncing around in the bus.  Many conversations were going on as we were getting  to know our translators and each others stories.  We heard a voice call out over all the chatter.  Although I do not know Kirundi, it clearly meant to "stop".  Our driver Fabreese (or as we called him "Febreze") quickly pulled over and sat very quietly.  There was a building beside us.  As we looked out our windows the reality that we were in a country of pain was before us.  In Burundi there are two main ethnic groups, the Tutsi and the Hutu.  On October 21, 1993, rumor was spreading that the Tutsi army had assassinated the Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye.  Hutu civilians gathered over a hundred Tutsi children and teachers into this gas station.  The Hutu said that if the rumor were true, they would kill all these people.  It was true.  I was staring out my window at the very place that a short 20 years ago a hundred children were burned alive.

What do you do with that information?  Do you sit in silence?  Do you get out and pay your respects?  I got out.  I am not sure what my plan was.  I really did not want to be there in the first place.  I was perfectly content knowing and saying the word genocide.  I was not ready to look it in the face.  It was a moment that I was glad I had a camera.  I guess that sounds odd.  Somehow though, I was able to hide behind it.  Be a spectator of the situation I found myself in instead of a participant.   It is like a horror movie that keeps playing over and over in your mind.  I was standing on the same floor.  I could almost hear the cries. I will spare all the details, maybe for your benefit, maybe for mine.

There is a memorial built beside this gas station.  On the front are the words “Plus Jamais Ca” which means "Never Again".   In the center of this memorial is a cross with the date and inscribed in French, child victims of genocide.  The parents of the victims come every October 21 and lay a memento at the place their child is buried.



Hopscotch


 ​     It was not all sadness and heart break.  One of my favorite moments came when mother nature called (thankfully not for me!)  I am not sure what you would imagine the toilets to be like in a village that has nothing.  Multiply that by ten and you may come close.  I am not going to lie.  I strategically rationed my water consumption to only have to use the facilities in the evenings when we had an actual toilet, even if it had no seat.  Let me tell you, this is one area that my planning and organizational personality really came in handy.   Not once did I actually have to use the “bathroom” in the villages. TMI?  Trust me, you would brag about this too.

     Anyway, another person on my team had the unfortunate need to use the bathroom.  We had to go in groups.  One to use the hole in a box, one to guard the door because you could not close it completely without passing out, and one to distract the entourage of children that follow you.  This time I had the job of distraction.  I tried singing with them but they gave me the look of, “what are you doing?  Is that really how Americans sound?”  So, I moved on and decided to play a game.  I quick did a WWJD in my head.  Of course!  I bent down and wrote in the dirt, just like Jesus did, and drew a hopscotch!  It never says in the Bible what He wrote, but I have an inkling it was hopscotch.  It was a beautiful, unscripted moment that I was able to break language barriers and play.  They loved it!  As the dirt dusted over, they would scramble down to redraw it.  I loved hearing the children’s laughter.  I cherish the thought that even today, they may be drawing a hopscotch in the dirt and remembering a white girl who loves them and the God who sent her.

The One Story

     Right after I got back from Africa people would ask me, “How was your trip?”  I was at such a loss for words.  I can’t hardly say it was great… yet, how is something life changing not great?  My friend Gary who was on the trip asked what was the “one story”?  It took me about half a second to know what my one story was.  The one story that has forever changed me and brings tears to my eyes even as I write.

     I loved seeing all the babies!  Their precious faces were so innocent.  They had not asked for the life they were given.  They had no idea that flies resting on your face is not normal.  They had no idea that the next five years were going to be a battle of survival.  Many of the babies whose eyes I gazed into would not survive to age five.  I knew that, but sometimes knowing in your head and knowing in your heart are very different.








        There was a particular baby that caught my attention.  Whenever I saw him, he was alone and he was crying.  I felt so sad for him.  Most babies were being carried around by someone who loved them.  This little guy seemed to have no one.  At one point I tried to approach him to see if I could hold him for a moment.  Touch is so healing!  However, as I got closer, he started to cry harder.  My pale skin can be a bit startling in the summer but I guess to him it was down right frightful.  Next thing I know I am surrounded by people peering at me wondering what I did to make this baby so upset. I said, “he was already crying, I swear!”  It was a moment that I wondered why I had not learned Kirundi before I came!  The crowd faded and the baby was once again alone, still crying.  I knew it was not that he needed a diaper change since they did not wear diapers.  Yikes!  He was probably not hungry since the babies are the only ones that are fed very well since mom is nursing (very publicly and unhindered I might add).  I hunted down one of our translators and asked him why this baby was always alone and crying.

“He is probably very sick.”

     That was so heavy. In the village of Bugenyuzi, they burry a child a week.  In that moment I knew, if I were ever given the chance to return, those eyes were not ones I would see again.