Undercurrents

What started out to be another promising week with the delivery of the motorbikes and the installation of a new member to the team turned out to be disturbing. It all revolved around three separate incidents, the first involving subtle police extortion, the second involving a young man near death at the side of the road after a horrific bicycle accident, and the third involving an attempt to rob me complete with an angry mob and “justice.” I can recollect these incidents for you from my viewpoint, but there are too many details that can’t be talked about here and some viewpoints might differ. Suffice it to say, I hate, and hate is not too strong a word here, when power is used to intimidate people both on the micro and macro levels.

So in the midst of these power inequities we talk about transformational development and transformed lives. What does this look like in practice? I believe it looks very similar to liberation theology. Paul Farmer says in his book Pathologies of Power that for us to even get beneath the first level of “silence” with the poor and vulnerable, we must have compassion and solidarity. My journey brings me to this place where I must ask, “Who are the poor and vulnerable around me?” Certainly the mothers and children who are participants in the Child Survival Project are poor and vulnerable, but could the poor and vulnerable also be the young man dying on the side of the road who was traveling to the market to sell his crates of beer and the homeless man who tried to steal from me as he was looking for a place to lay his head by the lake?

My brother told me that I would just begin to understand the layers of what was actually happening in Burundi during my short time here. He was right, but there is also the challenge to look further to the layers of what is happening outside Burundi that directly affect it internally.

This intense week was balanced by the presence of Jean Baptiste’s family and niece with us at Kibuye. The tenderness and playfulness that I shared with the children made my heart happy.