Sunday, April 15, 2007

new vision

I won’t even apologize for the enormous gaps between my updates, it just hasn’t been possible! But unfortunately for you, that means I write novels when I do update. So here it comes:

I have been stretched and challenged in ways I couldn’t have imagined in Burundi, but I believe this is the reason that I am here. Just three weeks ago I was in Gitega hosting a team from BC Canada. It is always a joy to show the orphanage to fellow Westerners and watch how the kids transform these visitors over three or four short days. I hope people at home in Chicago will also get this chance in the not-too-distant future. But while the orphanage is being blessed with visitors, these kids and the YFC staff have been struggling to hold things together. Over the past three weeks, five of the thirteen kids have been in the hospital with serious malaria, and both moms were sick with malaria themselves. After the Canadian team left, I ended up staying 5 extra days to help be a mother of 8 African children. Wow, if only you could have seen me. I wore the same clothes everyday, was cooking over coals to feed the kids and staff, washing dishes and clothes by hand, and all the while trying to love on, discipline and raise these orphans. We made regular trips to the hospital to bring food and encouragement to the sick ones, and you honestly wouldn’t believe the conditions of this hospital. Earlier on in the week five year old Blaise fell and cut his head, and I was responsible to take him to the hospital for stitches. First of all, I want to say that God has GRACE with those who want to serve him because normally I can’t handle blood, and it was gushing from this boy’s head. It’s amazing what we’re capable of doing when we have no choice, I received some sort of supernatural motherly strength. Being in the hospital with Blaise, there was a crowd around to see the muzungu as usual, but it was far more irritating when I was worried about my little boy. Blaise received four stitches without any anesthesia, because it wasn’t available, and the way that Blaise looked at me as I held him down and they put the stitches in I will never forget. He must have thought I was letting these people torture him. Poor child! Thankfully, he is healing well now. As Blaise and I waited in the hospital I saw conditions that would be unacceptable even in the poorest hospitals in the States. I saw an old man being carried by four nurses because they don’t have a single wheelchair in the entire hospital. Can you even imagine it? And the lack of doctors on staff can be credited to a generation of educated people lost to war and disease…remembering my experiences at the hospital in Gitega has kept me up some nights. I have always taken for granted the necessities of medical care back home, and I have been made aware that the conditions aren’t good in poor countries, but it becomes an awfully inescapable reality when you live it, when you see it with your own eyes. What can we do to ensure that the people of Gitega have access to basic medical care? Let’s think about it together. There shouldn’t be such an enormous gap between the way people live in America and the way people struggle to survive in Africa. Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die. On the drive home from the hospital with Blaise that day I was thinking about the situation we were in. The orphanage is located about an hours walk from the town center and two hours walk from the hospital. All of the neighbors surrounding the orphanage don’t have access to a car, and only some have bikes. If any of their children had a serious accident like Blaise did, I don’t know that they would have been able to reach the hospital in time. After 2 hours walk Blaise would have lost so much blood…I wonder how many children, and adults for that matter, lose their lives because they simply live out of reach of any medical treatment? I am thankful that YFC is praying and planning to build a medical center on the orphanage campus. It will not only bless the children, but the entire community in immeasurable ways. It can be easy to be overwhelmed by the need I see around me in this country, but I find hope in the ministries and NGO’s that are accomplishing so much good. Seeing the potential of national leadership for development in Africa makes my heart beat faster. I think I have found my place in supporting these local initiatives.

One afternoon as I was helping to prepare yet another dinner of rice and beans and aubergine, I was reminded of cooking over a fire when I’ve been on backpacking or canoeing trips. It is the same kind of experience in many ways: everyone is wearing the same clothes day after day, you all haven’t showered for a week, and you eat the same food everyday because you don’t have access to anything different. The difference is, these people don’t have a choice, and this is certainly not a vacation for them. This is how they live, they can’t go back to enjoy the comforts of a shower and warm comfortable bed. I was even lucky because I had a mattress on the floor, most of our neighbors in Gitega sleep on straw mats. For those of you who have backpacked or done any sort of wilderness trip, try to imagine living like that for your whole life. I know, you can’t even imagine. But that is the best way for me to describe the experience I’ve had in Gitega. I have been privileged to live like a struggling Burundian for a short time, and I will never be the same.

I feel that the lens through which I viewed life and people has had a prescription change. When your vision improves, you can see everything more clearly, the good and bad. That means I see the vibrant green of the mountains, the rich redness in the soil and the bright rainbow of colors worn by Burundian women, the shining white smiles against midnight black skin of the kids as the laugh and play. But I also see the brown soiled clothes of the boy called Erique who takes care of the cows. He has only one shirt. One. I see the deep lines in the faces of young men hired to build the orphanage. These men live on less than a dollar a day, and are aging prematurely because of years of hunger and hardship. I see the scars of ringworm on my own skin, and compare it that of the kids at the orphanage. I am grateful to have these scars, because it means I won’t be able to forget. I have shared their infirmities, and that has bonded us. No longer will I be able to look away. I pray I won’t be able to look away. This is something I have noticed to be true of most Burundians. Even the family I stay with in Bujumbura, they have known the hard life in their past. So they don’t treat the street kids any different than they treat their own children. Because they understand hunger and they understand what it is to have nothing, they can’t turn their faces. What if we couldn’t look away from homeless guy begging on Michigan Avenue? What if we saw the same people with new eyes? I don’t mean to preach, but I just want to give you a little piece of what my heart and my brain have been mulling over in these past weeks.

There is more to tell! But perhaps this is enough for now, my next update can tell about my week in Rwanda, where I met the land and people over which I have studied and analyzed and mourned, and my excursion to meet the gorillas that live on the volcanoes of Rwanda…I don’t feel worthy to receive all the opportunities I have had in these past months, but I am definitely grateful for each and every experience.

I hope that life back home is good, and maybe the weather is starting to warm up. Bujumbura has been unseasonably hot, 34 degrees Celsius during the day. I can tell you from my experience, global warming effects equatorial regions like nowhere else in the world. If you knew how these people have suffered and died from drought and flooding ruining their crops and leaving them hungry, you would make a drastic change in the way you live. All my Burundian friends say they have never experienced extreme weather like this before, only in the last five years. Maybe when I come home I will commit to riding my bike everywhere. Dad, I’m sure that makes you smile.

Imana iguhezagire. God bless you all.