On the Ground in Burundi: Jodi Mikalachki

A Letter from Jodi (May 22 2013)

2013-05-22T17:30:56Z

Dear Family and Friends,

I've just posted to my blog about trying to teach an American literature course at the University of Burundi. I want to teach it, the students want to take it, and we've even figured out a way to make readings available to them in the general absence of books. And still . . .

To find out more, please go to www.onthegroundinburundi.org, where you'll see me engaging with students in a University of Burundi classroom and outside under a tree on their beautiful and impoverished campus.

Much love,

Jodi

A Letter from Jodi (May 2 2013)

2013-05-22T17:30:12Z

Dear Family and Friends,

I've just posted to my blog (www.onthegroundinburundi.org) about a reconciliation we've been able to help facilitate in the family of one of the students we're sponsoring. She's a bright, talented girl I taught upcountry, and for the last couple of years, her father has been beating her severely enough to rouse the concern of his rural neighbors and extended family. Bringing her to Bujumbura for senior high school was partly in response to this home situation. You'll see in the post how things worked out during a long meeting we held yesterday between father and daughter, supported by other community members. I am deeply grateful for what I think this meeting accomplished, and the possibilities it opens for transforming a whole family dynamic.

In my own news, my State Department English Language Fellowship has been renewed for a second year, which allows me to keep supporting myself by working in education here as we develop our vision and network for On the Ground in Burundi. I now have several Burundians advising me, and you'll read in my blog post about the help we got yesterday from a senior pastor in the Quaker church, who mediated the father-daughter meeting with tremendous skill and warmth. I hope that you're well and finally getting some good weather in the U.S. and Canada. I'm holding Boston in my heart as I follow the sad developments of the marathon bombing. At the same time, it's great to see how generously people have contributed to helping the victims. We can do terrible things, and we can do wonderful things as human beings. Let's keep choosing wonderful.

Much love,

Jodi

Jodi Mikalachki's blog

2012-05-21T14:04:01Z

http://www.onthegroundinburundi.org/

A Letter from Jodi (November 2011)

2011-10-31T16:24:25Z

I'd like to tell you a bit about the main road that links Gitega, Burundi's second largest city and center for some branches of national government, and Ngozi, the country's third largest city and my provincial town, a bumpy forty-five minute drive from where I live at Burasira. This is the road whose widening and paving will soon be underway. Much as I long for a good paved road between me and any other destination in Burundi, I'm conscious that something will be lost when the old dirt road lies under asphalt. Old roads carry stories. Some of this road's stories have been told to me. Others I intuit as I walk along it, glimpsing signs of what this region went through before I came here, and the changes it's undergoing now.

A Letter from Jodi (October 2011)

2011-10-06T17:09:47Z

I recently visited Bishop Sixbert Macumi of the Anglican Diocese of Buye in northern Burundi. We had a wonderful meeting, during which Bishop Sixbert shared with me his understanding about partnership. He said it's about learning to know one another, learning about the world, learning about how we can pray for one another. He illustrated this with a Burundian proverb: Umwana atagenda yibaza ko nyina wiwe ariwe azi guteka. (The child who has not traveled thinks that only its own mother knows how to cook.)

A Letter from Jodi (September 2011)

2011-09-13T14:44:08Z

During my time in the US and Canada, I founded a charitable organization called ON THE GROUND IN BURUNDI to support education and grassroots community development in rural Burundi. Its purpose is to raise awareness in North America about the struggles and great potential of rural Burundi, and to engage North Americans and Burundians alike in developing a rural community finding its feet after decades of war, injustice, and extreme poverty. ON THE GROUND IN BURUNDI is incorporated in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and has applied for status as a 501(c)3 charitable organization. We have five excellent board members, and the support of St. James's Episcopal Church in Cambridge, MA, and St. Anne's Anglican Church in London, Ontario.

Update from Jodi, April 2011

2011-04-27T16:18:37Z

The News from Nyangungu: Final Report

Dear Family and Friends,

I've been looking over the letters I've written to you over the last three years, and thought I'd give you some updates on those I've written about before I fly out of Bujumbura tomorrow evening

Update from Jodi, late October 2009

2009-10-30T15:54:21Z

Dear Family and Friends,

I've had several responses to my recent letter from people who would like to know how to offer some financial support to our students. Others among you have written before, wanting to know how you might make a contribution to the Hope School. Thank you to all who have written, and to all who hold us in their hearts.

Update from Jodi Mikalachki: Oct. 2009

2009-10-19T00:18:32Z

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.

Update from Jodi - June 2009

2009-06-12T02:57:55Z

Dear Family and Friends,

It's been great to hear from many of you over the last few weeks. We're about to start exams at the Hope Secondary School. Please do hold our students in your hearts. They've worked so hard and sacrificed so much this year, and for some of them, it's going to be a very close shave if they pass their year. I have another story I'd like to share with you. I love the stories you send me, too, whether it's an exceptional period such as a sabbatical, or the hopes, concerns, longings, and joys of everyday life. It helps me feel connected to you, and to the part of the world that has shaped me.