Everything Has Changed

Hello dear friends at St. Anne and St. John. My last post included the exciting photos of preparing to open the clinic in Rugari and my wonderful new bed. Well, sad to say, everything has changed, my new bed is now coated in soot and ash from the fire that destroyed our house a week ago. I am hopeful that we will be able to clean it once again and return it to its beautiful state, hopefully free of the smell of smoke, but only time will tell if we are able to accomplish this. Please go to http://www.gomanews.blogspot.com/ to read more about the fire.

For this post I will write about the children of Rugari and Kibumba Refugee camp that I was able to visit with in the last two weeks.

Firewood is a daily need for cooking here and these two girls were out collecting firewood for their families while the kids in the next photo were coming home from school. This shows the huge disparity of education here in Congo. If you have just enough money to pay the teachers you will be able to attend school, but if not, you will be left behind as these two girls are.

Notice the difference in the photo between the child from school and the one carrying firewood.

I have titled this third photo

"Different Probabilities"

It will be helpful for you to discuss the difference in potential for these children as they grow into adulthood. Then if you have questions and want to know more you can post to the blog your questions. There are two major factors that greatly impact the probabilities for these two children, one is education, the other is gender.

When I was at Rugari last week, workmen were continuing the building project for the community center and at the end of the day the children not in school helped to clean the tools used for laying block and brick. They were having great fun to help.

Now I move to the tent village of Kibumba Refugee Camp and you can see the tent clinic where I help from time and the site for which we purchased the medicines.

In this tent clinic in a very small, very dirty room I helped to deliver a baby two weeks ago. Below is a picture of the grandmother (tate, pronounced tatay), the mother(only 18 years of age) and the infant daughter. The next photo is tate cooking UJI WA MTAMA (pronounced oojee wa mutama) for the new mother to drink. This is a porridge made from the flour of Sorghum seed. It is very nutritious and the traditional food prepared for mother's who have just given birth.

Then I worked in a consult room to diagnose problems of the sick people who come for help. There is much work to do in this clinic every day. I hope to return this week and spend some days just working, I need to feel as I am doing something and I love the work of this place. Last week I also sent a boy to the village clinic for a diagnosis of Tuberculosis. He was about 14 years of age and had been sick for two years. I am very worried about him, he was very sick. Please keep him in your prayers.

Perhaps if I am there at the clinic of Kibumba camp often enough I can begin to work independently, but for now I work side by side with another nurse who can speak some English (a little). My swahili comprehension is still the big problem and I must still study to learn more. When I speak of comprehension it is about understanding the meaning of the spoken word. I am able to translate in my mind the words I hear, but often don't understand the meaning that is being sent. The reason for this is the different way of putting words together to form thoughts and sentences. It is different than English and I am still trying to put them together as I would in English and don't understand the form of swahili sometimes, so my education continues. The photo above is of some of the children who accompanied me from the car to the clinic. I gathered quite a crowd as you can see. Well, I love children and so for me it is a great joy to have such companions. I just had to take this photo for all of them to see. You should have heard the shouts of joy when they saw these photos. I entitled the above photo, "JOY."

This photo of the chugudu parked in the road above reminds us of the manner in which so much work is accomplished here in the Rugari parish. Abbe Louis says it is possible to carry 1000 pounds using on of these vehicles. This particular chugudu loaded with bags of charcoal which people buy to use for cooking fires. Charcoal is the next step up from having to use wood for your cooking needs.

Abbe Louis loves to have fun and shares his joy with everyone. We had a good time visiting with these youths returning up the mountain after taking their loaded chugudus down the mountain to the market. Below is a loaded chugudu on the way to Goma to sell. Do you think it could be carrying 1000 pounds of cabbage. Keep in mind there is another basket in front of the one you can see from the back.

Try to calculate just how many cabbages are in this one basket and then take an average weight of a head of cabbage times the number of cabbages. When you have figured the approximate weight of this one basket send me the answer via the comment link. I would love to hear the estimates.

These last two chugudu photos were taken on a different day above the village of Kibumba which is not the same as the Kibumba Refugee Camp (left tent village). They are close to each other but not the same. The refugee camp sits out in the meadow, while the village is up the road a few kilometers and closer up into the mountain.

This is the face of hope for me. I hope we can help her and children like her to go to school so they won't have to depend on gathering firewood or on brothers to push chugudus to market. I hope that education can change the difficulties of survival into the advantages of life.

Her name is Mwangaza (pronounce just like it looks), Mwangaza means light and I see the light of trust and hope and joy in her eyes.

Nice way to end this story of change.

I send my greetings in the love of Christ,

Jackie