Mile 13.1

It is hard to believe but we have arrived at the halfway point of this particular marathon and the water stop up ahead looks like London. I will be spending ten days there reconnecting with my family before returning back to Rwanda on March 6 for the second half of the journey.

I leave here with a heightened awareness of the elements of privilege and good fortune that allow me to travel freely and at will. I am most grateful for all of that, and committed to using it well.

See you soon.

A Sign from God?

The other day a small child ran to the front of the room in one of my training sessions and threw his arms around my legs in the kind of two-year-old hug that is familiar to parents and grandparents everywhere.

But Rwanda is not everywhere, and neither is Nyabiheke Camp, and it is rare for anyone, even children, to engage in such an open display of trust and affection.

Theodore told me later that this was a very good sign.

“If small children and old people love you, then it means that god loves you. Small children know, because they have seen god more recently, and old people know because they will be seeing him soon.”

However this notion fits with your own particular belief system, I hope that you can appreciate, as I did, the symmetry of it. I only wish that as you are reading those words you could hear the wonderful French African accent with which they were spoken. Actually, I know that some of you can.

We do not have to look far to find small children and old people at Nyabiheke Camp. God seems to have many messengers there and we can only hope that they will put in a good word for us.

Slowly By Slowly.

This is one of my favorite sayings in Africa. It describes so many things here—the way of walking, the pace of change, the
mental framework that those of us from the so-called developed world do well to adopt if we are to be happy and effective in our work.

This expression conveys no value judgments, just the realities of a culture that keeps time by the progress of the sun and measures the distance between places by the time that it takes to go on foot.

So slowly by slowly, the Income Generation Program at Nyabiheke Camp has arrived at an important moment, when we begin distributing our small grants to the groups who have shown the initiative to organize and the willingness to work together to help themselves.

The women that you see in the photo had just received their grant, and you can see on their faces how proud and happy they are.

The groups are undertaking many different activities, including soap making, tailoring and trading. With your help, all of them will have a chance to try, and slowly by slowly, most of them will succeed.

Thank you.

Valentine's Day.

Yes, Virginia, they do celebrate Valentine's Day in Rwanda. Here is how:

Our housekeeper put a vase of fresh flowers in the living room.

Our driver sent a text message to his girl friend who was still on night duty in the Health Center.

And a full moon in a clear sky over Nyabiheke Camp relieved the darkness for at least one night.

My love to you all. Happy Valentine's Day.

The Africa Cup.

In celebration of the conclusion of the Africa Cup of Nations Soccer Tournament this week, I offer a photo of my own “Africa cup,” crafted by Sarah Dudgeon of Wisconsin and given to me by Ann Pifer, owner of The Grand Hand Gallery in St. Paul, Minnesota (see link).

This is one of my treasured coffee mugs at home in Minnesota, and I brought it to Africa with me for comfort and inspiration. It has provided both, surviving the trip from Afton to Gituza and all of the bumpy roads in between.

So thanks to Sarah and Ann and all who enhance our lives with truly beautiful gifts from the heart. That includes all of you, who have made it possible for us to be here making a difference for people who are more like ourselves than we may have any way of knowing.

A toast to you, from my Africa cup and from me.

Three Thousand Words.

With apologies for the greenish light that prevails inside our plastic sheeted classroom, here are three training session photos which I hope will explain a great deal about what we are doing with our Income Generation Program at Nyabiheke Camp.

The white board depicts the “Circle Training” concept that we are using to help our IGP participants to think about the whole cycle of acquiring materials, making a product (in this case, soap), allocating income and profit among many possible uses, and deciding how rapidly they can afford to expand their businesses.

In the next photo you see one of our IGP Refugee Assistants, Riziki, explaining the program to a group of elderly women while IGP Coordinator Louise Bodji looks on. Riziki is an amazingly strong woman—both emotionally and physically—who works all day each day with our program, then at 5:00 hoists a bucket of tomatoes to balance on top of her head (no hands, thank you) and goes off to the market to sell.

Finally, there is a photo of a group of women who attended one of the orientation sessions for vulnerable persons and decided to form a group together.

I wish that all of you could be here for just one of these training sessions to experience for yourself the energy, the excitement, and the appreciation that is so evident in everyone. Thank you, merci, murakoze from us all.

It Could Be Harder.

Today at lunch when I was telling our Camp Manager about my meeting with a group of refugees this morning I happened to mention that many of them had business experience from their lives in Congo, before they became refugees. This is very helpful for our program since they understand the concepts of buying, selling, manufacturing, keeping records, earning a profit, saving, reinvesting in the business and so forth.

Theo told me that when he worked with ARC in Sudan he had to explain to his groups there the reasons why they needed to take the soap that they had made to market in order to sell it. They seemed to think that if people needed soap they would find out where soap was being made and go there to buy it. Theo asked them what they would do if they had a cow that they wanted to sell and they replied that they would leave the cow at home, then go to market and describe the cow to the people they met there.

So, this work with all of its challenges could always be even more difficult. I cannot imagine that it could be more rewarding. My warmest greetings and deepest thanks to all of you for making this program possible.

Chimes of Freedom.

Far between the city sundown and midnight’s broken tones,
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder was crashing,
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sound,
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing.
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on their unarmed road of flight
And for each and every underdog soldier in the night,
We gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

--Bob Dylan


Thanks to the library of music on my laptop I’m able to listen now and then to some familiar songs, which often take on new meaning in this distant land.

This past weekend it was Bob Dylan, the album “No Direction Home,” which includes one of the best versions of “Chimes of Freedom” that I’ve heard. It keeps running through my head as I think about our refugees, the fighting that sent them here, and the hope that they have to return home soon to at least some sort of freedom.

One Day, One Life.

When I go to the camp in the morning I try to remind myself that all that I have ahead of me is this one day of my life, to do what I can to make some other lives a little bit better.

Today I met with a group of some of Nyabiheke Camp’s most vulnerable refugees—elderly widows, orphaned teenagers, old men, those with physical handicaps that include missing or misshapen limbs. I told them that although we call them vulnerable, they must be among the most courageous and resourceful of all of the refugees to have made it all the way to Nyabiheke from their far away homes in Congo.

The teenagers are to me the most heartbreaking. Small children can always find someone to care for them, but in this culture a 15 or 16 year old is viewed as an adult, even though we all know that deep inside they are still children and in need of love, guidance and support. I am hoping that through our program they can gain some skills and self confidence that might have a chance of keeping the boys from picking up a weapon to fight or the girls from giving birth to yet more children.

I have no photos to show you of this group, since I am very reluctant to point my camera at people who may feel exploited. But I want you to know that as they filed out of the room each and everyone took my hand and thanked me—and you—for our help.

So for this day of this life, we brought hope and encouragement. Thank you.