Dukoral … I just took my first dose.  This is supposed to help prevent all kinds of intestinal parasitic problems, I hope so.  I leave for DRCongo in about 10 days.  This time I head to Uvira, up in the remote areas.  I have been at the back end of nowhere the last few times, but Uvira is supposed to be really, really out there – I am curious to see what people in Bukavu think of as really remote.

Last year we were in the middle of a large $2.5 million dollar food aid project in this region. This time I am going in to see what we can do to work with the population to stabilize food security. Hopefully we will be able to determine a project that will be of real and lasting benefit. Hopefully the rebels don’t take it all away.

My second and last dose of Dukarol is to be taken in a week – it should keep me safe from cholera, a water-borne disease for three months. Since contaminated water is a real problem we may also be looking at a well project in one of our project areas, it would be great to reduce illness without the need for a few thousand (expensive) Dukoral doses for the community

I will also be scouting for Mike and Amy Boomer who I am helping to the field this fall. This is a double-duty role for me – I will train and facilitate them through our Mid-Termer Process at STMN (check it out stmnetwork.ca) and I am also their project manager for ERDO.ca They are a great couple and are inspiring many others to support them, check out their blog at www.theboomers.org maybe they will inspire you to head overseas – let me know, I might be able to help …

Mark Crocker

Nov 09 marked the end of a highly successful food aid response to 21 000 of the most vulnerable people in the war-affected areas of eastern DR Congo.

If you have read any of my previous posts on the subject, you have already heard of my first of three visits to the region, during a visit into Nindja, we spent 8 hours on the road. That got us to and from a one-and-a-half hour meeting.  The total distance we travelled was probably about 269 kilometers - 130 km each way, and about 9 in climbing in and out of potholes.

During our drive to the community, at first we passed other four-by-fours, large transport trucks with crowds seated on top of the mass of products, and small Toyotas with the suspension about to burst.  Eventually the vehicles dwindled down to the occasional motorcycle, until finally we met no other car on the road, no one passed by, except on foot.  Later we discovered that we were the fourth vehicle into the region that year.

We passed some of the most beautiful country in the world, gentle mountains, lush and green, gave way to groves of banana, tea, pine and countless small farms.  The hillsides were alive with countless women, men and children, each hard at work with worn shovels and smoothed hoes.  The observable evidence of a return to normal cultivation is on the rise.

Still, the problems of DR Congo are significant; the security situation is in constant flux.  While Kimya II, the recent military campaign to rout out the rebel forces has struck a significant blow at the leadership, in many cases the rebels have now decentralized and moved into the communities. While this is a positive reduction in the overall force of the rebels, it has also created a destabilizing influence at the local community level. Over the summer, I was able to interview several beneficiaries in Kaniola (one of the distribution sites), after asking what war meant to each of them, one woman clarified that this was not a philosophical exercise as she had been forced from her home by rebel combatants in the last week.

Other significant problems include the high prices for many goods, while payment for labour remains very low.  Corruption is endemic – border officials, unofficial road crews, numerous check stops, and army protection – all demand payment.   Government resources are limited and are not trusted by the majority of the population.  Even in the regional capital Bukavu, I found that the electricity, internet connection and water supply were infrequent at best.

For outlying areas, the situation is even more difficult.  As a region, Sud Kivu has borne more than its share of pain.  Constant war, subsequent displacement and numerous acts of violence and aggression have continually forced the population out of the normal routines of planting and harvest.  Food security is tenuous for most, and for those on the edges; the ill, elderly, widowed and orphaned, the situation is even worse.  As people have returned home, they have had to start over with nothing, for some, this displacement has happened numerous times.

Against these challenging circumstances, and ably mobilized by the local project manager, Pastor Raha Muzibao has gathered a capable and honest team to accomplish some substantial goals. 7000 families in five remote areas were identified to receive a substantial monthly food package.  The food would prove a decrease in malnutrition, allow people the time and energy to cultivate their own plots, free people to engage in psychosocial support and re-engage children back to school.  Pastor Raha’s nondescript office wall reveals the important results; during an informal poll review, the village leadership revealed a 98% success rate of the project for the 21 000 beneficiaries.

The project leaders respect and appreciation of the principles of good practice was obvious and enthusiastic.  Even where we found occasional misunderstanding, Raha’s collaborative process of learning and improving was not short-circuited.  There was no abandonment of project principle for expediency or personal advantage, instead integrity was rigorously maintained and consistent and significant advances forward were made in terms of capacity development.

For the most vulnerable, exhausted by the continual terror of displacement and war, this ERDO/CFGB feeding program was initiated and proven very successful.  The consistency and quality of the food package was often a source of pride by the participants.   I observed that beneficiaries showed a marked improvement in health.  Standards of impartiality were maintained and all partners unanimously reported a very high degree of satisfaction.  The only requests that remain are for future projects to new, even-more remote and impoverished communities, as well as the desire  for supplementary food security projects to the communities that the project had served.

Mark Crocker

Short-Term Missions teams often get the benefit of preparation, Long-Term people have to go through a process, but our Mid-Term Missionaries (individuals who participate in international work for 2 months to 2 years) often fall through the gaps in the process.

I recently developed a new process to bring them to the field in the best possible way, as well as developed the new teaching material for the process.

The PAOC (Canada’s largest evangelical denomination) has recently picked it up as the way that they are sending all of their future mid-termers. My colleague Matt Janes and I are presently working with a number of people who have begun the process (close to 30 people at one stage or another – from initial interest to complete training).

If you are interested in Mid-Term Missions (Individuals, not teams, that plan to engage in international work for 2-24 months) … Check out the MTM link at the top of the page!

Mark Crocker

>Along the way, we passed some of the most beautiful country in the world, gentle mountains, lush and green, gave way to groves of banana, tea, pine and countless small farms.  Most clung to the hillside, at times on a double black diamond slope, women, men and children advancing slowly with worn shovels and smoothed hoes.

The road was appropriately abominable, barely wide enough for us in parts, and deeply rutted with constantly eroding gullies.  Our way forward was bound by other four-by-fours, large transport trucks with the appropriate African cliche of crowds seated on top to cover the mass of products, small Toyotas with the suspension about to burst, motorcycles of all kinds, and of course people. Thousands and tens of thousands of people.

Today was market day, so everyone was out in full force.  The merchants and craftsmen carried their finished products along the long roads.  A carpenter walked along with the carefully balanced wooden framework for the couch on his head.

African heads, protected by a twist of cloth, are used to carry almost anything you can imagine.  They balance the large plastic water cans to and from home, children are often the ones sent running down to the well, to slowly and carefully picking their way home along the roadside, yellow jerry cans balanced high.  For everyone else, the black plastic bag full of the days shopping, countless bundles of firewood, long long lengths of lumber and bamboo, an unopened umbrella ready for the rain, ruddy woven baskets, trays of tiny fish, each sway perfectly balanced, atop men and women as they walk the red dust.  Even briefcases, suitcases and backpacks are commonly found on top rather than on the back of a pedestrian. In town, the budding entrepreneur places the metal pailful of coke and orange fanta bottles on his head, using the rhythmically ringing of the glass with a bit of stone or metal to advertise, although not quite the same as an ice-cream truck, it is as musical.

The number of objects that can be carried on your head is exponentially higher in Africa than home.  In fact, after a lifetime, I can’t think of anything that we carry on our heads in Canada. I suppose earmuffs and toques do not really count as they are not something you are carrying but are rather wearing.  Other than that, I think that leaves only headphones – the old-school kind,  not the more prevalent ipod buds – that we might carry on our head. But, even here i hesitate, I think we would say we wear headphones rather than carry them, what do you think?

Mark Crocker

Most peoples first thoughts of Rwanda must be of the genocide, particularly for Canadians who have listened to General Dallaire’s memories of his time here during the 100 days.  I suppose this is why my first stop today was at the genocide museum.   Situated on the side of a hill (like all buildings in Rwanda), the museum walked us through the history of the divide created between Hutu’s and Tutsi’s.  People formally known for their integration, were actively reruited by foreign government policy and interference to discover that which divided them.  Measurements of noses, and the amount of cattle were the defining differences.  With that, the minority Tutsi were elevated and the remaining 82% Hutu and 1%Twa were relegated to secondary citizenship.

Eventually the majority revolted, a new system of discrimination was instituted to replace the old.  The radio called for the cockroaches to be exterminated – dehumanizing the Tutsi.  Militias were trained, they practiced on smaller groups, killing a few dozen here, a hundred or so there.  Eventually you get good at what you practice, you don’t even need to think about it anymore.  The new 10 commandments of the Hutu were developed and promoted in 1990.  1. No Hutu should marry a Tutsi.  Then nine more of the same. This document seems strange to me, it resonates much more strongly than similar lists.   If I had first seen this list of rules in Auschwitz, I wouldn’t of blinked – the Nazi atrocities are so well known that it is easy to simply consign them to evil in the abstract. I can’t do this as easily with this document, it feels to immediate, too modern – I can’t ignore it as ancient since it was written so recently,

The video showed men, women and so many children brutalized and burnt.  the trace of a bullet across a child’s face, the grainy swarming and hacking death of men by neighbors who carried the machetes.  Yesterday, they had fed one anothers children, today they cut off their fingers.

After walking past the images, we heard the voices of survivors, wondering why they are still here?  Guilty somehow, as only a victim can comprehend.

The footage of the Gacaca, the traditional community court, is so unpretentious.  A man in a pink shirt stands and faces the community.  He recounts his story, of who and where he cut his neighbors daughters with his knife, he tells the names and is asked to slow so the official record-keeper can write everything down.  He speaks so matter-of-factly, listing the others who were with him, the people he collected, what they did.  The community listens, it seems to me impassively, perhaps the horror has been so common, too common.  Perhaps the silence is simply the best response to the unasked questions why?  Maybe they have learned that you cannot ask why, there is no rational reason.  Is evil rational?

The wall of photographs only carries the images of  2000 people, of the more than 1 000 000 who died. It seems a pitiful percentage, and yet their faces fill four walls.  They are similar in their commonality, these are not the mugshots of bureaucracy, not the efficient record of a system recording the inputs of the machinery of death such as Cambodian memorial walls.  Instead these are photo plucked from the albums of everyday life.  Young men standing outside a shop, a crate of bottles in the foreground.  A woman, obviously cropped from her wedding photo, the dislocated arm of her husband encircling her waist.  People smiling, posed and unposed, unaware that they were all soon to be images on a memorial of murder.

I pass through the children’ memorial garden and read their bewildered questions, we head towards the car, and as I am about to walk away, a final small wooden sculpture is revealed, the simple caption, “I did not make myself an orphan”

Mark Crocker

Today I was on the CDC site to check out what vaccines I might need to catch up on.  If you are a traveler, you should know the CDC site is a great resource, in fact i am adding it to my site now.  check it out.

So … how many of the above acronyms were you able to translate?  Send me a reply with your answers, i would love to hear from you. Get them right, and I will send you a dozen more to translate … Get them wrong, and you get the same prize!

Mark Crocker

When last I wrote I was on my way to Calgary for Christmas, and a wonderful Christmassy time was had by all.  It was good to reconnect with family and friends, Supriya and I were grateful that the Delport’s invited us to stay at there place while they hung out at their BC cabin (IE country property).  Most of the O’Keefe clan was in Calgary, and we travelled back and forth between the ‘Ranch’ (or Pop’s place) and Supriya’s sisters home.

Soon after we were on our way for a vacation, we first flew to Amsterdam, then after a day or two in Den Haag (where we did not check out any war crimes tribunals) we found a good deal with a travel agent and flew over to North Africa.  We stayed on a beach, relaxing and also wandering around the communities, meeting people, bargaining in the souk, and eating great food.  On one day we rented a car and headed into the hills for a gorgeous drive, we stopped in a village and mimed that we were hungry and soon a kind older gentleman had us seated in a small dirty tea shop, where we were served one of the best meals of the trip.  All-in-all, it was a very low-key, completely relaxing time.

On my way home I dropped into Toronto for some meetings with Matt at the STM Network, I recently became the western coordinator of the Network, where we help people as they attempt short term missions to do it better!  The STM Network is a fantastic training resource if you want to do international work well. After a couple of days of strategic meetings, I was able to finally get home in Mid January.  

By the end of January, the flowers in the garden were just beginning to emerge when I drove over to Vancouver for a couple of days.  I met up with my sister and some friends and new colleagues at MissionFest Vancouver.  It was great to see Desi, Christie and Dan as they promoted Hands At Work (one of my favourite places to suggest everyone to go!)

A week later I was in Edmonton to teach at Vanguard.  I had two days to look at the issues of Partnership as well as how the kingdom is not an either-or proposition when it comes to our engagement and relationship with issues of Justice.  I had a great time, and according to the review I just received from student evaluations … the class also seemed to enjoy our time together.

Once I made it home again, Supriya had a surprise for me!  Our fourth year anniversary was February 20th, but she had us on a flight on Tuesday for a surprise destination.  It was only at the airport that I discovered that we were headed to Quebec, where that night we spent the evening in the Ice Hotel (Hotel de Glace)!  Incredible and beautiful, I should have some photos up on my facebook account soonish if you want to check them out (you should know I always say yes to ‘friend’ requests – it’s an ego thing).  The next day we did some dog-sledding, and snow-shoeing and then spent that night in a B&B in Quebec city.  

As Supriya headed home, I once more stopped into Toronto where I met Matt at the STM Network and we worked with a church as they prepared about 50 people for four trips that the group was taking this year.  The training was great fun, very interactive as always.

While I was in Toronto I also spent a couple of days this week finalizing a connection with Kelvin at ERDO.  i am stepping in to assist in some new international relief and development projects around the globe.  Kelvin suggested that ERDO is a well-kept secret, I am hoping to help change that!

Anyways if you don not know me all that well, you probably checked out already, who wants to read a list of reasons why I have not been blogging much?  But if you were wondering about my silence, hopefully I have filled you in a bit.

Perhaps I will get to this blog and post again before too long, it is about time I told you about some of the specifics regarding the team training I am doing with Andy at Glad Tidings right here at home, or my pending application for Native status, or my upcoming trip into the Congo next month … always something going on.

Mark Crocker

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