Update from Jodi Mikalachki: Oct. 2009

Dear Family and Friends,
 
It's a foggy morning in the mountains, cool enough that I'm wearing a wool turtleneck and sweater, and baking rice pudding for Sunday breakfast. The rains have finally returned, almost a month late, and I've been planting parsnips, peppers, herbs, arugula, spinach, squash, and flowers. Still, unreasonably, I feel that it should be fall, that nights should be growing longer and mornings nippier. I wonder how many years it will take me to internalize the see-saw of wet and dry, rather than the wheel of four seasons that has shaped my inner life as much as my outer.
 
We've reached mid-term at the Hope School, where we now have an 8th Grade, with construction of the 9th going on beside it. Many of our new high school students have come from Cibitoke, a province in the west of Burundi where our NGO also has strong programs among Batwa. They're living in three brick rooms that most North American kids would hesitate to store their bicycles in -- eight boys and three girls, some of them orphans, all very poor, existing week-to-week on the beans and cassava flour their parents can manage to send them and collards and tomatoes from my garden. (I hope to have some potatoes for them soon.) They're all bright -- a couple remarkably so in any context -- and they manage to fit in some studying around the multitude of time-consuming tasks required to run a household here.
 
The big shock for me this year has been how few girls we have in the secondary school. Last year, ten of our twenty-six students were girls. This year, we have fifteen boys and only six girls in Grade 8. Grade 7 is even worse: two girls out of ten students. 52% of our pre-schoolers are girls. 48% of our primary school children are girls. Only 18% of our secondary students are girls. We've applied to MCC to increase our funding so that we can provide free tuition, school supplies, uniform, sanitary products and underwear to all high school girls. The cost per girl per year is about $55.00 USD.
 
I'm often uneasily aware as I write to you that I have so many more stories to tell about boys than girls. That's partly because there are more boys in the secondary school, the group I know best. But it's also because they're more outgoing, more individualized (by African standards), and more likely to ask for help. Most girls in this rural area are quiet around adults, even self-effacing. On public occasions, they tend to stand silently in groups. And until I took the initiative last year to invite the Grade 7 girls to my home to ask them about the obstacles they faced, not one had approached me for help.
 
Since that meeting, girls have come to me for a number of things: eye exams and glasses; money for healthcare and transportation; medication that is not available in Burundi. I've been touched by the way they respond to this help. One very shy girl came to my house alone on a Sunday afternoon with a bowl of seven beautiful eggs, all immaculately clean. Another brought a basket of newly harvested peanuts from her family's plot. One walked forty-five minutes with a basket of cooking bananas on her head, fresh from the tree, a clear juice from their stems collecting at the bottom of the basket. I'd been puzzled that many students didn't thank me after I'd given them money. A colleague explained that a young person could feel overwhelmed and incapable of thanking me right away. Often, it's weeks later that a girl comes with her gift. I find it much more moving, actually, that she would carry an intention of gratitude for that long.
 
At the beginning of the school year, one of these girls came to my house to say she couldn't study this year, because her family didn't have the money. They have a son in our primary school, and an older daughter in a state boarding school. They decided to keep the boy in school, saying that primary school tuition is cheaper (which is true). The elder daughter will graduate if she passes this year, so they decided to use their remaining money for her. Once she's done, there will be money for her younger sister, Alice Niyonkuru (God is Great), to go back to school. By that time, Alice's cohort, including two close girlfriends, will be a grade ahead of her. I told Alice to ask her father to come and meet with us at the school. We sat down with Béatrice Munezero, the school's founder, to found out why his bright daughter was not returning to school. As he laid out the family situation to us, we could both see how painful it was to him not to be able to send Alice to school. None of us could bear for her to lose a year, and perhaps worse, if the family's financial situation got worse rather than better. At the same time, our funds are very limited, and mostly tied up with supporting much needier Batwa children, whose families couldn't even hope to put one child through school. We asked the father if there was anything he could afford to give. He said his greatest difficulty was the timing -- that he thought he could manage to pay the second half of her tuition in the new year. I offered to find her work at my house so she could earn the first half. Béatrice offered to waive the registration fee and to give Alice free school supplies, putting her finger over her lips to emphasise that this information must not be shared with other school families. The father told us that from now on, every time he went to the market, he would set aside a few hundred francs (maybe 25¢), miming how he would put it in his shirt pocket.
 
Alice started school with her class, and is doing well. By the end of this month, she'll have earned over a third of her tuition from working for me. Recently, she told me her father had received some money unexpectedly. He brought it straight to the school. If Alice works through November as planned, nearly 80% of her tuition will be covered before the end of first term.
 
Alice participated with the other Grade 8 girls in a photography project set up by Don Baker, a wonderful visitor from Canada who works with youth who have been involved in violence to help them tell their stories in photos and writing (LOVE - Leave Out Violence). We divided the secondary students into groups and asked them to take pictures that would tell a meaningful story -- one that they'd like to be told to people in Canada after Don goes home. The girls said they wanted to take pictures of other girls who were not in school, because they were concerned how few girls in rural areas were able to go to secondary school. Their photo essay was fascinating and heart-wrenching. After a series of pictures of barefoot girls in old T-shirts and stained cotton wraps, doing hard work or standing wistfully alone instead of attending school, they took photos of themselves: in uniform, reading a book, reviewing notes, or looking confidently into the camera. The contrast is stunning. The power objects in the pictures of girls who study: notebook, pencil, book bag, watch, and above all, shoes -- in every photo, whether on their feet or beside them as they sit on the grass.
 
 
Some "snapshots" of my own of women and girls in our area:
 
- Elisabeth Muka Kadende, the wife of one of the local Batwa leaders, came with her husband recently to ask for money for medication. I'd paid for her care several months ago when her husband came to my door early one Sunday morning to say she was having a miscarriage. Apparently, she hasn't been quite right since, which is worrisome, since many women in Burundi die of complications following a miscarriage, even months later. I had never met her before, and was surprised at how old she looks. In North America, I would put her in her fifties. Here in Burundi, I would guess late thirties. They showed me her medical card and her ID. She's twenty-seven.
 
- Jeanne the policewoman who lives in the house next door, which is identical to mine, but in bad repair. Burundi seems to move its police around every six months, housing teams together away from their families. I've seen at least three teams since I moved upcountry, and this is the first to have a police woman among them. She's friendly and outgoing, and doesn't seem to mind living with a bunch of guys in what I can only imagine to be animal house. (I've never been inside, but one of the priests tells me it's a disaster.) In addition to her skills as a policewoman, Jeanne is also a gifted hairdresser. Our young women teachers now have weaves they'd have had to travel to the city for before, and Jeanne's own hair is her best advertisement. Recently, she dropped the weave for straightened hair set in a kind of 1940s "do" that is snapping necks in the market. Many members of Burundi's national police are ex-combatants from the various factions during the civil war. Jeanne is one of them. When I learned that, something clicked for me. There's an uncensored quality to her outgoingness that I've noticed before in young men who were child soldiers. I think it would be discernible even in North America, and in typically reserved Burundi, it's almost shocking. It's as though there's a filter missing -- something that would help you make distinctions between people you know well and people you're meeting for the first time -- people you can trust and people you should be wary of -- people who have invited you into their lives and people who are keeping their distance. I don't know Jeanne's age, but she seems young to me, too young to have been an adult for much of the war.
 
- Batwa girls surveyed this summer in an enquiry into the reasons they do not attend school. Over 25% cited pressure to marry as one of the main factors causing Batwa girls to drop out. (In two communes, it was over 40%.) We have already had one girl drop out of Grade 5 this year to marry at the age of 14. Poverty and the ignorance of parents regarding the importance of schooling girls are the other two main factors cited by Batwa girls themselves, their neighbors, school officials, and provincial governors interviewed.
 
- Cynthia and Jeanne D'Arc, two new teachers this year. They have just finished the honors program in a good Gitega boarding school, and qualified to enter the national university. Because of multiple strikes and the subsequent backlog of students, however, the university cannot accept any new students this year, so they're teaching for us while they wait for places. They're smart, cheerful, well-educated for their context, and committed to their work this year among needy rural children, whose lack of basic skills they find appalling and hard to deal with pedagogically. Most days after work, they play basketball with the priests and seminarians to unwind a bit. (The priests adore them.) They're both devout Roman Catholics, and have embraced the many prayer and worship opportunities at the seminary, as well as setting up their own time of prayer after basketball. Cynthia is teaching in the secondary school, where she is a fabulous example for the girls. Jeanne D'Arc is one of only two women teachers in the primary school, where she can also encourage girls in her Grade 5 to set their sights on passing the national exams at the end of Grade 6.
 
- Finally, a piece of general trivia from my Human Rights class, where we've been reviewing the distinction between a right and a privilege: 21 out of 21 Grade 8s at The Hope School of Nyangungu consider attending secondary school and eating three times a day to be privileges.
 
So that's the news from Nyangungu on what has become a cold and rainy day. I'm sorry to have been out of touch for so long. I continue to appreciate hearing from you via email and snail mail, and am grateful for all the support you offer to me and our struggling but hopeful school.
 
Love,   Jodi
 
PS  To those who have some intention of visiting while I'm here: I reached the mid-point of my three-year term on October 11th. Although we may renew my service agreement, the only thing that's certain is that the current one ends on 11 April 2011. Don Baker's photography visit has already had a tremendous impact on the secondary school. It's part of a much longer journey he's making in east and southern Africa. If you're planning a visit to East/Central Africa, please consider spending a few days with us at the Hope School. You all have so much to offer our students, from pre-school three-year-olds to nearly twenty-year-olds in the secondary school. The kindness and interest expressed by a visit affirms the human dignity of everyone involved. You will not go away unchanged.  J.
 
PPS I'm waiting for my copy of Tracy Kidder's new book about Burundi, Strength in What Remains, which I would heartily recommend to anyone who wants to know more about what Burundi is up against and the extraordinary capacity of Burundians to bring life out of death. Finally, a book on Burundi (rather than Rwanda) that people will read! J.