piccies

watch this space for more pictures from my time up north.... and if you've got any tips on how to control jumping photos, please comment!

Deborah's day

I've just got back from up north. I had a wonderful time there. The quietness of the place and simplicity of life was therapeutic after the noise and stress of Bunia. As well as working with the translators, I had the luxury of time to observe people's lives. Here's something I wrote while I was there.

Deborah (not her real name) is in her early twenties. She’s got a chubby two month old baby called Alice. She finished primary school, but didn’t go to secondary school. Deborah has been working for the O. language project for about a year as cook and cleaner. While I’ve been here for the last ten days, she’s been working full-time, from the crack of dawn at 5.30 a.m. till bedtime at 9 p.m., taking care of ‘hospitality’ for us. There is no running water here, no stove, no electricity, no water heater, no washing machine.

Deborah and Alice

Deborah’s day starts with lighting an open fire (three large rocks form the fireplace, with branches of firewood pushed in between) so that she can heat water. Then, with Alice tied securely to her back, she sweeps the ground all around the mud hut that I’m staying in, with a broom made of a bundle of sticks, leaving neat circles traced in the fine dust. She carries hot water in a metal pail to the outside bathroom and calls me to tell me it’s time to get washed. Meanwhile she takes water off the fire to make tea, and fries sweet potatoes for breakfast. She sets the tea and potatoes out carefully in my hut, brings water for me to wash my hands before eating (this is an essential ritual that can’t be skipped however recently I’ve washed), and prays for the food, as we say here.

fetching firewood

outside my house

Once breakfast is over and I’ve made my way to the translation office, Deborah does the washing up, leaving the plastic plates and cups to dry in the sun. Next it’s time to fetch water from the spring about 300m away. She carries the water in plastic jerry cans on her head, Alice still on her back. She has to fetch firewood, too, from further away, which is likewise balanced on her head. The morning’s activities also include scrubbing and wringing clothes and spreading them out to dry on the grass, going to market, preparing tea for our mid-morning break, and cooking lunch, which might be rice and beans, or soft cassava meal with beef cooked in palm oil, or, as a special treat, chicken. She feeds Alice as the need arises as she prepares vegetables or waits for water to boil. 

washing hands before lunch

Lunch is served at the office after hand-washing and grace. Deborah waits in the wings to clear things away, and bring anything extra that’s needed. I’m told that in the culture here the person serving must not eat with those she or he is serving; to do so would be embarrassing, out of place, unheard of. When I try to help clear away the plates they are quickly taken away from me, and I get the feeling that I might be suggesting that Deborah is not doing her job properly, or not coping.

bathing Alice

coffee on fire

Straight after lunch it’s time for Alice’s bath, in the sunshine in a plastic bowl. She revels in it, and howls when she’s hauled out. Then there’s more washing up, more water heating, feeding Alice when she’s hungry, and maybe time to sit and chat briefly with passing neighbours before she has to think about what to prepare for supper, and checks that the paraffin lanterns are clean ready for nightfall. At about 4.30p.m. she starts thinking about heating water for evening baths and calls me around 5.30p.m. to tell me the water’s ready. When I get back to my darkening hut I find a paraffin lamp lit ready to welcome me. By 6.30p.m. she’s brought me supper, accompanied, of course, by water for hand-washing. She brings more tea, too. After the day’s final washing up, she may find time to sit around a paraffin lamp, tell stories, and laugh with friends.

washing up

I can barely communicate with Deborah beyond a few basic phrases in her language. She does not speak French, Swahili or Lugbarati and I can’t speak Bangala, the regional language here. I would like to tell her how much I appreciate her hard work and her tireless, cheerful, unselfish service. I’d like to hear her hopes and dreams for the future. I want to understand better what it’s like to be an ordinary Congolese woman, for whom serving without complaint is an expectation, indeed, often a part of her identity. My life is so very different, but here in a village in north-eastern Congo our lives touch for a week, and her life has profoundly touched mine. She challenges me to think more deeply about what Jesus meant when he said that he didn’t come to be served, but to serve, and that we should follow his example.

off up north

Off up north tomorrow, just over the border from where I used to live in Uganda. I'm looking forward to nights with nothing to do but sit by the fire, look at the stars and try to decipher conversation in omiti. More when I get back...

Sunday encounters

Sunday mornings can bring unexpected visitors. In the quiet vacuum created by mass attendance at church, opportunists often try their hand. One Sunday I was reading in my bedroom when I caught a boy peering in at me through the mosquito netting, checking out who was at home. Another week as I was cooking Sunday lunch, I heard the front door open and found a young man in my sitting room. He wasn’t able to tell me why he was there or how he knew me, so I asked him to leave. Yesterday I confronted an enterprising boy who was lobbing stones at my avocado trees to help with the harvesting (remembering the apple scrumping my friends and I used to indulge in as kids, I couldn’t be too hard on him!).  

I was just settling down to some Sunday music making when a knock came at the door. It was a middle-aged man wearing a small, worn out shoulder bag and a weary expression. In a mixture of French and Swahili, he started explaining how he was a displaced person who’d fled Dungu, nearly 300km away, where he’d working, because of attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army. Apparently he’d walked many miles, hitched a lift from others and was now here in Bunia, but he was trying to get back to Goma hundreds of kilometres south, where his family was. He needed $20 for transport. He’d asked for help at various humanitarian organisations, and at my local church, which is where he saw me and followed me home. I was suspicious. I’ve had conmen pretending to be refugees asking me for money on Sunday mornings before now, and I don’t have much time for them. My colleagues have advised me never to give money to people I don’t know who turn up at my door. Somehow, though, this story had something genuine about it. I decided to stall. I asked him to come back on Monday morning, when I could talk to him with one of my colleagues who comes from Goma.

 I’m glad I did. He duly returned at the time we’d fixed. My colleague questioned him a bit about Goma, about what his name means in his language, which is very similar to my colleague’s, about his church community, and found that his story rang true. From his frayed shoulder bag he produced a precious piece of soap he’d been given by someone on the road. As for food, there wasn’t much opportunity for it. We realised that this was a case where help was needed. My colleague accompanied him to the bus park and helped him onto a lorry which would take him down south. It was a lesson to me that I need to be shrewd and vigilant on a Sunday morning, but open, too, to the good that God is wanting to do, whatever I might have experienced in the past. Blanket rules just don’t work.

wounds

The other day, one of my students came to see me during class break. He’s usually very punctual but this particular day he’d arrived late and distracted, and he wanted to explain why. His fifteen year old daughter had just given birth by Caesarean, so he’d been to visit her and his wife who is looking after her at the hospital. He explained further that his daughter had become pregnant after being raped by her school teacher. This is an all-too-common occurrence here. According to statistics, since the end of the war in 2003, rape committed by civilians has increased seventeen fold in DRC. A culture of impunity has developed: during the war traditional social structures and sanctions broke down in many communities, and people became accustomed to violence.

 Later that day, I rode with my student on the back of his motorbike to visit his daughter in hospital. She looked so small and fragile, withdrawn, subdued, just a child herself. But the baby is healthy, and her Caesarean wound is healing well. We’re praying that God will heal the deeper emotional wounds she bears and set her free from any sense of shame because of what happened to her. And we’re praying, too, that she’ll be able to continue with her schooling, and know hope and joy in the future.

bandits on the road

Bunia feels a less tense place than it did a couple of years ago when I first arrived. It's rare to hear gunshots at night nowadays. Sheltered as I am on the university campus, it can be easy to forget that insecurity is still an issue in and near Bunia. But on Friday at university staff prayers we got news that was a sharp reminder otherwise. The afternoon before, one of the university drivers, B., had dropped off the principal about 50km out of town for a church meeting. On his way back night was falling as he reached a spot on the main road about 15km from Bunia. He found the road ahead of him barred by sticks driven into the ground. As he tried to reverse the vehicle, he was attacked by a group of around ten armed bandits. The dragged him out of the minibus, and beat him severely with sticks. They were looking for money, and took his mobile phone and the $20 he had. They had expected to find the minibus full of traders flush with cash coming back from Beni, a trading centre south of Bunia. The bandits discussed whether they should kill B, but in the end left him in a ditch and disappeared into the night. They didn't touch the vehicle. B tried to get back into the minibus, but his ribs were broken and he didn't have the strength. Miraculously a few minutes later a motorbike came by. The motorbike driver was a mechanic who knew B. He was able to drive B. and the university vehicle into Bunia and take B. to the hospital. Thankfully he was not badly injured, although he was very shaken up. We're thankful too, that the principal wasn't attacked.

 

People are saying that this main road south is not safe before 8 in the morning, nor after 4 in the evening. It's a road that friends and colleagues need to use regularly. It's been announced just recently that there are plans for the Chinese to tarmac this road, which is very good news, since it is deeply rutted and potholed. We're praying that its security can be improved, as well as its surface. And we're praying for B., and others like him whose job as a driver can involve big risks.

visits

Visiting people is a very important part of life in DRC. It’s one of the prime ways you show you respect them, care about them and are in a good relationship with them. You can drop in on people at any time, unannounced, and they will welcome you warmly, because visitors are considered a blessing. And you need to be ready to receive visitors unexpectedly, too. I find this challenging sometimes, because I can be pretty work-orientated and my home is my office. (Cultural values clashing again!) Visitors announce their presence at the door with the expression ‘Hodi!’ It can be hard to leave my computer, lose my train of thought as it wends its way through academic French, and open the door with a smile and a ‘Karibu!’, (meaning ‘Welcome’). But I’m trying to learn to look at things the way Henri Nouwen did when he said, “My interruptions are my work.” And, of course, lots of the visitors I receive are an unexpected pleasure that help to warm my house up, as we say here. Being stuck at home under piles of lesson plans and academic assignments can be rather lonely at times and visitors bring laughter and connectedness.

Last year I realised that I didn’t take nearly enough time to visit the students who live on my doorstep. That was partly because I was in survival mode, and barely keeping my head above water as I struggled to prepare lessons in French at degree level for the first time, as well as adapting to Congolese life. But this academic year life seems a little less ‘on the edge’, so I’m trying to make a little bit of time every week to go visiting. It’s amazing what I find. A couple of days ago I visited one of my students, T. a young, bright guy who is excited about translating the Bible into his language, who regularly accosts me with difficult questions in class. He is living in one room with his wife, two small children, and his sister, a schoolgirl. This weekend his sister-in-law is arriving from their home in the Kivu region to help look after the children. That will make six people in one room, three of whom are studying. They make do by partitioning off parts of the room with curtains. His wife gave birth to their second daughter about a month ago, and is doing her second degree in development studies. She has to nip out of lectures to feed the baby. In the future she’s hoping to apply what she’s learning by encouraging literacy in their home community. T. asked me to pray for his sister-in-law’s journey from Goma, because security on the road is sometimes bad, and that they will find somewhere less cramped to live. In general there’s great pressure on student housing on the campus. Another student is waiting for his wife and six children to arrive to move into their tiny two-roomed house. My spacious two-bedroomed house is truly palatial here. One again I’m challenged by the contrasts between my own life and those I live and work with here.

 

it never rains but it pours

We’ve been having buckets of rain in Bunia recently. Rain is basically seen as a blessing, but it has its disadvantages, too!

Rain means...

food (as long as there’s not too much, otherwise the crops will rot)

 mud

slippery roads, longer journeys, larger potholes, deeper ruts

vehicles slipping down the hill into my hedge

road outside my house after rain

everything stops till the rain stops – classes, exams, meetings, visits, journeys can be delayed

deep sleep and slow starts

catching tasty termites

more mud

blankets on beds

bundling up in woolly jumpers and shawls

extended power cuts

thieves at night making the most of power cuts

rain-washed air and crystal clear views of the mountains

thick mud

damped down dust

rampant vegetation

cutting the grass once a week, using a ‘slasher’ (a long, thin scythe)

shouting loudly to make yourself heard over the din on a tin roof

cutting the grass

mosquitoes multiplying

soil erosion

treacherous mud

realities of life

It’s the beginning of the new academic year here. It’s fascinating meeting fresh faces but it takes some mental gymnastics to remember all the new names. Usually there are at least three per student. The continuing students have just returned from their placements in their home areas scattered all over eastern Congo. The realities of life in their home areas are sometimes beyond imagining.

One of the freshers comes from a remote area in the very north-east of the country and is pretty overwhelmed by the big city (Bunia). He speaks the L. language. At the moment a team of translators are translating the New Testament into this language, so when he dropped round the other day I asked him if he’d got a copy of Luke or Acts, two of the books that have already been published. He hadn’t, but immediately wanted one. When I told him the price was $1 for each, he looked crestfallen. He didn’t have that much, he said. He told me quite matter-of-factly that the person who had supported him financially in the past had been hacked to death by LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) rebels and since then he’d been in extreme financial difficulties. I gave him a copy of Luke. A couple of days later I bumped into him on the road. He’d managed to find 1000 Congolese francs (just over a dollar) as payment for the book. He told me that he had never read anything in L. before, but he and his family were engrossed in reading Luke each night. Then he added that he might have to leave the university because the church community he hoped would support him doesn’t seem able to do so.

fruit from our field

I'm reaping fruit that I didn't sow. This whooper came from one of the avocado trees in my garden. Now you can see why I don't buy avocados when I'm in England! The campus children are very fond of avocado scrumping here, and there are plenty to go round.  I'm also enjoying delicately perfumed papayas, and the finger bananas are hanging so heavily on their trees that we've had to prop the trees up! They'll be ripe in a month or two.

water worries

the wonderful water tank

Five o’clock in the morning and I’m awake with a start. It’s the burbling of water into a plastic jerry can that did it. I scramble out from under the mosquito net to investigate who’s using my outside tap. I squash my nose against the metal mossie grill of my window to get a good look. It’s Esperance, daughter of one of the students, who’s been earning a few francs weeding the peanuts in my field for the last few days. This water harvesting from our tank is becoming a bit of a habit, but maybe she sees it as her tap, too, now she’s done some work in the garden. Other girls on the campus have started following Esperance’s example, too. The students don’t have running water in their houses so they have to fetch it from one of the outside taps on the campus, but sometimes there are queues. It’s quicker to go and get it from a private supply if you have access to one. The trouble is, my impressive black plastic water tank is limited. It only gets replenished when the erratic town water supply arrives or when the university pump is in action. At the moment it’s decidedly out of action, awaiting fixing. And the organisation I work for tells me I must keep two weeks’ emergency water supply on hand at all times.

My Swahili is not at its best first thing in the morning, especially not before daybreak, but Esperance seems to get my point, reluctantly turns off the tap and beats a dejected retreat. I feel like a Swahili-speaking ogre. But there can’t be a queue at the public tap at five in the morning, surely?

Welcome to the world of community living and cultural clashes. Which set of values should I go with? The Congolese one, which says share the little you have with whoever’s in immediate need, especially if you have more than enough? Or the Western one, that says you should plan ahead, be prepared for a crisis, and learn to say no. I could reel out Bible passages to support either. The first dilemma of the day.

Out and about

firewood and cassava

At seven in the morning things are buzzing on the outskirts of Bunia: throngs of school children smartly dressed in white and navy, cyclists straining valiantly to push bikes uphill, overburdened with sacks of potatoes, charcoal and containers of petrol strapped high, women balancing long bundles of firewood on their heads, others with wares for market, huge banana stems, cabbages, beans. Hundreds are going about the morning’s activities on foot, many walking dozens of kilometres to make a meagre living, or to find what they need for the arduous business of survival. I’m in the privileged position of riding pillion behind my colleague, K, and we’re both wearing helmets, a curious sight here, which attracts the gaze of onlookers. Or maybe the stares are simply because I’m a mzungu, a white person, a major curiosity, especially on the back of a motorbike. We swing from side to side, dodging ruts and holes, and trying to beat the bus in front of us which is waking the dust in clouds which cover us and set us coughing. In the distance, hazy blue hills, and in the wide valley between, lush grasses and fields of cassava. As so often, my heart hurts at the contrast between the serene morning landscape and the grinding poverty of the people I pass, hardship etched on their faces. When will the lavish natural riches of this country become prosperity for its people?

double birthday

10.10.10 My forty first birthday, and just the kind of stimulus I need for my first blog entry.

Twickenham birthday

Moving between continents has its advantages, especially when there’s a birthday in the offing. First I celebrated in Twickenham, London in autumnal style with aunts, uncles, brothers and cousins the day before my return to Africa. The climax of the party was a rowdy rendition of ‘We plough the fields and scatter’ and a heavenly chocolate Guinness cake rustled up my by brothers, plus a foray out into the dampness of the garden where the ash leaves were already falling. I pushed away the familiar sense of sadness at impending goodbyes and leaving the place where I have my roots.

A week later, a second celebration, this time in ‘les monts bleus’ which encircle Bunia, DRC. Many’s the time I’ve gazed at these hills in the clear air after a rain and longed to scramble up them. I once told myself I would finally feel fully at home in Bunia when I was able to hike in the blue mountains. And that’s what a diverse crowd of thirteen of us did on 10.10.10. The views of Bunia on the plain below were breath-taking, first in intense sunshine, then targeted with precision by torrential, tangential rain which gave the hills a wide berth. Sometimes you can feel hemmed in living in Bunia where there are not many possibilities for easy travel outside the town, nor for outdoor sports! The sense of freedom was glorious. We sang from the hilltop and prayed for God’s blessing of peace and justice for this town that has known horror in its recent past. Our expedition was crowned with a cuppa and pressies on a big boulder before we squashed back into the vehicle that had brought us, unfettered by traffic regulations. A truly beautiful birthday in Bunia, my home.

Bunia from les monts bleus

Bunia birthday hikers

rain on Bunia