Mine, O thou Lord of life, / Send my roots rain. –Gerard Manley Hopkins

*****

I have been pretty quiet in this space lately. This has been a particularly mad season. The end of the semester is always crazy, but this time has been harder than most. I am pushing as hard as possible to finish the last chapter of my dissertation and that seems to be all the writing I can do. Not that I’m writing as much as I’d want or that it’s going particularly well, but all of my energy is poured into each painful word as I try to bring this idiosyncratic work to some sort of close. Before I start over again and polish the whole thing up. For months, probably.

If I were a farmer, my dissertation would be a stubborn, cracked, hard-scrabble field that produces crops grudgingly after years of back-breaking labor.

For our adoption, the documents are coming in batches back to our house like homing pigeons. The authentications are done for one group and I’m finalizing everything to send them back to the Chinese consulate. Soon, soon, soon, all of these signed-and-stamped papers will be compiled to send off to China and then we really will be waiting, for a match, for travel approval, for the baby to come.

We are one turn of the road away from a hard season of motionless waiting.

And in the midst of all of this work and waiting is the odd little corner of my life.

Hill Country Hill Tribers  is about to grow like crazy. Again. Last year was epic, record-breaking. It was like nothing we could have imagined.

This is especially true when I emphasize, as I do in every conversation, that Caren and I are holding this social business as loosely as we can. This is a side project. We give it ten hours a week max (well, in theory). We are not doing this as a career. We have other jobs, other lives. We have given Hill Tribers all of these limits and still it leaps joyfully past every boundary.

(Running this social business is a little bit like letting Clifford the dog live in your house.)

Once, in a particularly busy season, I told God I didn’t have time for this social business and that if he wanted it to grow, he would have to do all the work. And he has. All of it.

We love watching what is happening. We are people of faith who work with other people of faith; one of our artisans who also goes to church with us told me last week that her grandfather had become a Christian and that her entire family had been Christians since then. She grew up in the church, as I did. She has trusted God in suffering beyond anything I can imagine.

The joy of the growth is infectious, especially when it means a new way of life for my friends. They call me on new cell phones. They send me pictures they snapped with their new iPad minis over their new email accounts. We’re facebook friends. The evidence of new-found wealth is small—they still live in the same apartment complex. This does not and probably will never provide full-time jobs for these women. But just to know that the groceries are bought, the rent is paid, the bills are covered and there’s still enough left over for some extras?

It makes me catch my breath in wonder.

The rest of my life feels often like drought and pain and difficulty and there is this tiny corner where a garden is growing against all odds, where rain and sunshine and gorgeous flowers are flourishing together.

Often I just come and sit in this corner and bask in the loveliness of it all.

But it’s not just my own drought that surrounds Hill Tribers. This group comes out of deep suffering. There is so much trauma and loss in the room at any meeting that it is sometimes hard not to be bowled over by it. I find myself rehearsing it in my mind when I look around the room that I love how many things have been lost—husbands and children and parents and homes and villages and languages and cultures and skills and entire ways of life.

All of them, wiped out, destroyed, annihilated.

I can barely breathe when I even try to imagine that kind of devastation. I truly have no idea how they function with it.

I’m the kind of Christian that is drawn to the desert places, who runs to suffering. I am always at the deep end of the pool. I write blog posts titled, “Entering the Grief.” I question and doubt and reason and criticize.

And in the midst of all of that pain, I almost don’t know what to do with the joy of this tiny patch of wild growth.

Over and over again, one of my favorite lines runs through my head: “Once more, a remnant of the house of Judah will take root below and bear fruit above.”

This remnant, this diaspora, this tiny almost-forgotten garden, is putting down roots and bearing fruit.

God is sending our roots rain.

I’ve loved reading the Transit Lounge posts over at Kelley Nikondeha’s this week. It’s one of those outrageously crazy weeks for me–all of our adoption paperwork is coming together and we’re sending our documents to the Chinese consulate to be authenticated tomorrow, the last step before our dossier is ready (!!!!!). Also, I’m within 20 pages of finishing a draft of my entire dissertation and it will not write itself. I’ve been sad because I couldn’t write a good response to Prophetic Imagination though I loved reading along with everyone. But I decided just to share my favorite paragraph of his in this space for Friday. I love that he gets practical at the end of a dense theological book: presented without commentary, here’s what Walter Brueggemann says we’re supposed to DO about a his call for a prophetic imagination in our communities.

***

“…prophetic ministry does not consist of spectacular acts of social crusading or of abrasive measures of indignation. Rather, prophetic ministry consists of offering an alternative perception of reality and in letting people see their own history in the light of God’s freedom and his will for justice. The issues of God’s freedom and his will for justice are not always and need not be expressed primarily in the big issues of the day. They can be discerned wherever people try to live together and worry about their future and their identity. so these urgings come from our study:

1) The task of prophetic ministry is to evoke an alternative community that knows it is about different things in different ways. And that alternative community has a variety of relationships with the dominant community.

2) The practice of prophetic ministry is not some special thing done two days a week. rather, it is done in, with, and under all the acts of ministry–as much in counseling as in preaching, as much in liturgy as in education. It concerns a stance and posture or a hermeneutic about the world of death and the word of life that can be brought to light in every context.

3) Prophetic ministry seeks to penetrate the numbness to face the body of death in which we are caught. Clearly, the numbness sometimes evokes from us rage and anger, but the numbness is more likely to be penetrated by grief and lament. Death, and that is our state, does not require indignation as much as it requires anguish and the sharing in the pain. The public sharing of pain is one way to let the reality sink in and let the death go.

4) Prophetic ministry seeks to penetrate despair so that new futures can be believed in and embraced by us.There is a yearning for energy in a world grown weary. And we do know that the only act that energizes is a word, a gesture, an act that believes in our future and affirms it to us disinterestedly.” (Walter Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination, 110-11)

*****

“avoid abrasive indignation”…”offer an alternative perception of reality”…”penetrate the numbness”…”the public sharing of pain”…”penetrate despair so that new futures can be believed in and embraced by us”–I love so many of these phrases. They’re changing the way I view my life and ministry as well. Thanks, Kelley, for this challenging and fantastic book!

I first encountered Ed Cyzewski through his Women in Ministry series last year, which brought together so many amazing voices in a life-changing narratives. He is a writer who does two of my favorite things: he consistently challenges his readers to think critically and he shares his space well with his online and real-life community. I’m so thrilled he agreed to share his story of loving his neighbors on my blog.

*****

Who are “the poor”?

I don’t think I know who “the poor” really are. I’ve often spoken of them imprecisely and, most importantly, impersonally. “The poor” become this problem that is out there. I’ve spent most of my life living with that disconnect.

If I’m truly honest, I think it’s fair to say that I’ve even used “the poor” as a trump card of sorts in theology debates without necessarily committing to help anyone. I didn’t really know who “the poor” were, but I knew that Jesus helped them and it made me look a lot more virtuous when I upstaged another perspective like this:

“Jesus didn’t have time to fight over [evolution/politics/marriage amendments] because he cared for the poor.”

Have you ever heard that kind of reasoning before?

I could upstage someone with my Bible knowledge, but I was a hypocrite in practice. I had no idea who the poor were, and I had no intention of imitating Jesus by caring for them.

Theoretical arguments about helping the poor is always a “fail” for Christianity.

I’ve been that theologian who uses rhetoric about poverty to justify my views, and I’ve had to repent. I don’t trust myself or anyone else who uses that line of reasoning without concrete action to back it up.

For me, the poor were just out there—the people Jesus cared about who I couldn’t identify.

Since those days, I’ve come far closer to being “the poor” than I would have preferred.

I haven’t experienced crippling poverty, but I have been in some pretty tight financial spots where our finances seemed in desperate trouble. On one occasion a friend wrote a significant check as a “back up” plan just in case things didn’t work out. We never had to use his check, but I got a glimpse into the need you experience when “poor” and the importance of someone caring enough to make a sacrifice to help out.

I needed to change how I thought about “the poor.” I needed to start caring for them the way I wanted someone cared about me.

The Gospels record several stories where Jesus helped the poor. He laid his hands on beggars and spoke with them when he could have surrounded himself with influential religious leaders. Taking that first step to talk to someone on the margins of society is never easy.

However, it’s been hard to make myself stop and think about the marvel that was Jesus stopping to help beggars. He was a leading religious teacher in his day. He could have spent all of his time wining and dining in the best homes. Instead he chose to rub his fingers in the mud and let crowds paw at him.

Instead of speaking about the theoretical poor, I started to get to know people who had needs.

Do you see the subtle shift in language?

“The poor” is an identity. “People with needs” helps me see them as neighbors and even friends.

Some of the most needy people I’ve met have been in prisons. These men didn’t plan on living a life of crime and poverty. They often were immersed in situations where violence and exploitation were just normal. As they stewed in the tension of prison, I saw men struggling to find the best parts of themselves and to surrender their worst parts to God.

God has given me new names for “the poor” in the prisons and in my neighborhood. The prison inmates became a small group of sorts who even prayed for me some nights. The poor at our local community center are my neighbors.

Some days it takes tremendous will to stop labeling my neighbors and the prison inmates I know. Seeing them as “the poor” just puts distance between us and makes it possible me to ignore them.

When I started to pray for these neighbors, I saw that we had so much in common. Our life experiences had, in most cases, sent us on vastly different paths.

Most days I have a long list of things to do and a crawling baby to wrangle. I could justify my self-absorption pretty easily.

However, the Spirit continues to pester me, nudging me to pray for someone walking into the neighborhood bar or a family storming down the street with frowning kids in tow. I start to notice people, I start to pray, and I start to have conversations. Soon enough, I become a neighbor who cares.

*****

Ed Cyzewski is the author of Hazardous: Committing to the Cost of Following Jesus and Creating Space: The Case for Everyday Creativity. He blogs about imperfectly following Jesus with a sarcastic edge at www.inamirrordimly.com.

She might not remember it, but I met Tara Livesay a few years ago at an adoption conference. She’s even more beautiful in real life than she is in her pictures, but what struck me the most about her was that she was so real. My co-founder of Hill Tribers, Caren, told me about the Livesays first and soon we were both addicted to reading blogs about the women who were giving birth at Heartline. Caren especially has prayed through a number of the women’s pregnancy; we were able to visit with Tara together at that conference and it was an important conversation for both of us. Since then, Tara has become one of my real life heroes. Adoption is a complicated, complex topic and Tara has seen it from every angle. Her ability to write so compellingly about the narrative of her own life and her journey to where she is now, actively serving to fight against the injustice that often keeps birth mothers from being able to raise their children in her adopted home of Haiti, is inspirational. It’s not easy–she’s the first to admit it–but her fight gives me strength and drives me on. This piece especially seems as authentic and as vulnerable a piece of writing as I’ve ever read–the questions about international adoption she voices are ones she is navigating with her own adopted children. I respect her enormously for living in the tension she does.

*****

“Real, true religion from God the Father’s perspective is about caring for the orphans and widows who suffer needlessly and resisting the evil influence of the world.” (James 1:27)

*****

We entered into the adoption arena in late 2001 as naive prospective adoptive parents. The lens with which we viewed the world was quite different back then.  We had spent most of our lives in Minnesota and had not considered life outside of our experiences very often. We did not frequent the space outside of our box. Since then, eleven years at the school of hard-knocks has bruised us up a bit and taught us a lot.  We have learned about our own tendency to fear what we don’t understand and have seen how our fear-based responses are not as loving or kind as we want to be.

Our son Isaac was born in a rented room in a small cement house in the slums, an area that sits along the water with houses stacked on top of each other.

 *****

or·phan

/ˈôrfən/

We live in a day and age where the word orphan means new things. This is the definition provided by U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services:

The Immigration and Nationality Act provides a definition of an orphan for the purposes of immigration to the United States. A child may be considered an orphan because of the death or disappearance of, abandonment or desertion by, or separation or loss from, both parents. The child of an unwed mother or surviving parent may be considered an orphan if that parent is unable to care for the child properly and has, in writing, irrevocably released the child for emigration and adoption. The child of an unwed mother may be considered an orphan, as long as the mother does not marry (which would result in the child’s having a stepfather) and as long as the child’s biological father has not legitimated the child. If the father legitimates the child or the mother marries, the mother is no longer considered a sole parent. The child of a surviving parent may also be an orphan if the surviving parent has not married since the death of the other parent (which would result in the child’s having a stepfather or stepmother).

(That definition was found here)

 *****

Jesus followers are frequently reminded that they are to defend the orphan and widow and bring justice to the fatherless. (Psalm 82:3 – Isaiah 1:17)

We all come to our own conclusions about what it means to defend or bring justice. In recent years many evangelical Christians have joined an adoption movement that has sought to bring justice through international and domestic adoption.

The commandment to bring justice is clear. The path to do so is much less clear.

Barnes’ commentary on Isaiah says,

“…Pronounce just judgment; see that right is done to them. This is required everywhere in the Scriptures. The meaning is not that judgment is to be pronounced in their favor because they are poor, or because they are orphans, for this would be to do what they had just been charged with as in itself wrong, accepting of persons; that is, showing favor on account of condition or rank, rather than on account of a just claim. The idea is, that the poor and the fatherless, having no natural protectors, were likely to be wronged or oppressed; that they had none to defend their claims; and that magistrates, therefore, as if they were their natural protectors, should see that their rights were maintained. Do justice to the afflicted and needy – See that justice is done them; that they are not wronged by persons of wealth, of power, and of rank. Such care does religion take of those who have no natural guardians. The poor and the needy – the widow and the fatherless – owe to the religion of the Bible a debt which no language can express.”

As I read that, the words that speak most to me are: See that right is done to them, See that their rights were maintained, and That they are not wronged by persons of wealth, of power, and of rank.  Most of us that have the financial ability to adopt are in fact the ones with the power and therefore we are the ones charged with seeing that right is done. I recognize myself as a person of wealth, of power, and of rank. With that recognition, I will now share part of the story of our own adoption in the hope that future adoptive parents and all of us in the adoption arena will all be more aware and educated. I hope that we will push for transparency in the process and for ‘orphan’ intake procedures that are above reproach.

*****

Isaac’s first father is two decades older than his first mother. Before Isaac was born they had five children together, none of whom they placed for adoption. They scrape by like many Haitian families, sometimes not knowing where or when the next meal might come. They live day to day and hour to hour. When health needs arise they don’t have the ability to seek care with their own limited resources.

Around the time Isaac’s first mother learned she was pregnant again, his father took off to look for work in the Dominican Republic. It is unclear how much work or money actually came of that time. His intention was to send money home to Haiti as he made it and return with some funds. When he did not return in time for Isaac’s birth, as you can imagine, Isaac’s mom felt overwhelmed at the idea of taking care of a newborn in addition to the other five children without their father. To be classified as an “orphan” (a misnomer really) a child must NOT have two living parents. In plain language, Isaac was never an orphan because his father and mother were both living and they were, in fact, together.

Isaac’s mother heard about an orphanage where people living near her had placed their children for care. In Haiti if you heard it by word of mouth or through the rumor mill it is called “Radyo Tran-n de”. Radyo 32 is in reference to the 32 teeth in your mouth and is a way of saying that you heard it from someone else. With that information, she went to ask the folks running the orphanage about leaving him there to be cared for.

Raised without the benefit of proper nutrition or a formal education, she does not read or write. This leaves her at a disadvantage and she must place trust in those around her that do. She was told that she would need to fill out paperwork without listing the father if she wanted to leave Isaac there.  She was told that when you place your child for adoption, he will grow up and be able to send you money and care for you. Desperate for a lighter load and hoping for a brighter future, she did as they suggested.

Not too long after she made that difficult decision, we arrived in Haiti for the first time. Our intention was not to “save” a child. Our intentions were to adopt a son because we had lost a son and we wanted to add to our family.  We had no education on orphanages or corruption in adoption. We knew very little about Haiti.

*****

I remember being somewhat fearful during our early trips to Haiti. I was uncomfortable and unable to communicate and that manifested itself in ways that I regret. We tend to fear things we don’t understand.

When I first met Isaac’s mother it was shortly before he was set to leave the country with me. I did not meet her with a heart of total love and empathy, but with one of trepidation. I remember feeling relieved when the lunch with her was over.  I was so focused on my hope of making him my son that I couldn’t and didn’t see her as a woman losing her child due to poverty and I couldn’t see that I was a person of wealth, power, and rank.  My fear and selfishness were more than ridiculous, it would have made so much more sense for her to fear me.

Fast forward four years, we moved to Haiti to work and live full-time. Our intention was not necessarily to reconnect with Isaac’s first family, although we realized we probably would reconnect at some point. We focused on learning what we needed to know to do our job in our new surroundings. Six month into our time in Haiti, Radyo 32 informed Isaac’s family we were in country. We carefully made plans to meet and talk.

That first meeting was awkward as we took photos and watched each other closely.

Since that time we’ve progressed to a point of sharing phone numbers and seeing one another at least once or twice monthly. Whatever fear or lack of understanding existed in the beginning is now gone. We love this family and hope to honor them in every way moving forward. Isaac chooses when he wishes to see them, while my husband and I see them often and we have built relationships of mutual trust.  Honestly, our vastly different economic situations keep our friendship off-balance, but we work to respect one another and carefully engage in this uncharted territory of a totally open international adoption.

In hindsight, any weirdness or fear in the beginning was on us. The orphanage misled Isaac’s family, but today they are not interested in anything other than knowing he is well and being able to see that with their own eyes. In many ways they still carry hope that Isaac might be rich and famous and take care of them someday.  It isn’t so much an expectation as it is a dream. They marvel at his height. They stand back and admire how handsome he is. They are genuinely pleased to see how kind and intelligent he is.

As Isaac processes all of this, we process too. Recently I stood with Isaac’s first father for a few moments and watched in fascination at the way his eyes smile and speak on their own while he talks, just like Isaac’s do.  His father is almost 60 now and struggling with high blood pressure. When I chat with him and his joy radiates in ways that remind me so much of Isaac, I feel the deep sadness of seeing the consequences of poverty and broken systems playing out in front of me.

We want to repair the places we messed up with them and we want them to feel honored and respected in tangible ways. As I look back on my early attitude toward this first family and the ways in which they were misled and manipulated it grieves me that I cannot say that their rights were maintained, or that they were not wronged by persons of wealth, of power, and of rank.

*****

Please don’t hear me regretting that Isaac is my son. He is one of the greatest joys of our life.  While that is true, we cannot deny that our great joy meant a great loss for his first family. I regret that my gain meant their loss. It doesn’t sit well with me. We cannot deny that there are systems in place that seek to serve the powerful at the expense of the marginalized. I regret that I did not ask more questions, do more research, or demand more information. While I believe that adoption is often beautiful and redemptive, there are a few things surrounding international adoption that I cannot reconcile in my heart or mind. More devastating yet, we know of many families that understood even less about what they were agreeing to or what adoption meant. We know families were bribed to place their children, they don’t receive updates, and they grieve the loss of their children without any ability to reach out to the adoptive American families.

As followers of Jesus, if we are to pronounce just judgment, we’re going to have to be willing to examine some uncomfortable things and be less fearful of things we don’t understand. As followers of Jesus if we are to be guardians of the poor and afflicted, we’re going to have to ask harder questions and do more research.  As followers of Jesus we should all want to complete adoptions where at the end we can say that the rights of the poor were maintained.

Justice doesn’t come easily, but we should be willing to work for it.

*****

Find out more about about Tara and Troy Livesay’s family, including their seven kids, and the work they do in Haiti on their blog and through the Heartline Haiti website.  

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(Because of the nature of this post, I’m going to be monitoring the comments a bit more closely and I’d like to ask that you keep the tone respectful or the comment won’t be approved. Sometimes discussions about adoption are about grand issues–this time, it’s about Tara and Troy’s son and I want to give them the space to share their story without facing harsh words or overly critical comments. Thanks for understanding.)

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Read all of the posts in this series on the Questions of Travel Series page.

I’m so excited about the second Hill Tribers giveaway of the week over at Micha Boyett’s blog. I’m a huge fan of Micha’s work and I’m thrilled she shared her space to help us advocate for the women we love. Head on over to Micha’s and enter to win one of Ra Noe’s scarves!

Growing up in my house, it was switching the laundry from the washing machine to the dryer. It was emptying the dishwasher. It was mowing the lawn. It was brushing our teeth. It was eating my mom’s spaghetti around the table. It was saying three things we were thankful for at dinner. It was breakfast together and a devo before school.

Every family has acts that are repeated every day. Over and over again, day after day, important or mundane, these acts define who they are and mark their family narrative. In my family, we worked hard, we chipped in, we shared and we believed.

What people do is different based on the cultural and family situation: When I lived in Brazil, I had friends who made coffee every morning with hot water and a piece of cloth (never a coffeemaker—that’s sacrilegious). They picked up fresh meat at the butcher’s for dinner. They got fresh vegetables in the outdoor market. They hung laundry on clotheslines set up on the back patio to catch the hot morning sun.

In a rural village in northern Thailand, I had friends who shooed the chickens out of their hut in the morning. They set the pot over the fire to cook the rice. They took dip baths near the outhouses using a barrel of water, a plastic dipper and a carefully wrapped sarong they shifted to stay covered. Every night they zipped themselves into the mosquito net surrounding their rice mat beds.

In Brazil and Thailand, the acts were repeated and routine, but they were exotic to me. It’s not what we did growing up. But to my friends, they were normal and every day.

It’s what they did; it’s who they were.

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When my daughter was ten months old, our little family went to a fall festival one afternoon and ran into a group of moms who would forever change our lives. They were Burmese refugees, hill tribers from the mountains in Burma who had fled persecution in their country. They had been resettled in Austin in a nearby apartment complex. In a matter of weeks, everything they had ever known had changed drastically.

In their home villages in Burma, they gardened and farmed. They made rice and gathered food in the fields, in the woods and at the markets. They walked to school or stayed home and cared for babies. They traveled to find work or farmed in the fields around their village. They visited neighbors. They dried mustard. They cleaned cookpots. They slept in homes on the land where their families had lived for generations.

And at nights and after meals, the women wove. They wove traditional cloth that became shirts for the men and women, long sarong skirts for the women, over-the-shoulder messenger bags, scarves for their hair. Their cloth told a traditional story of their tribe, the colors they loved, the skills of their weavers.

Weaving was routine. Weaving was every day. Those first hill tribers were Karen (pronounced ka-REN) and the name of their tribe literally meant “weaver.” The women and their mundane activity provided not just clothes but an identity for their people.

Read the rest and enter to win here.

This week’s Questions of Travel guest post is by one of my very favorite writers and thinkers who has become a real life friend. I love the way Kelley Nikondeha’s mind thinks–there’s never enough time when we talk to explore all the things we have in common. I will probably spend the next several years learning from her about adoption and development, two of our many favorite topics. She was one of the very first people I turned to when I wanted to write this series and this post did not disappoint–she’s brilliant.

*****

The heat slowly dials up, reminding me that summer’s coming. Soon we’ll be amid the high season hosting friends in our Burundian hometown of Bujumbura. Americans, Australians, Canadians, Kenyans and South Africans will come in and out of our home, sit round our dinner table and smash against each other in our car, they will meet and mingle with our local friends. They’re coming to see Burundi, to see the Batwa people, maybe to see what poverty looks like up close.

My husband and I spend time talking over plans for each visit, looking at days on calendars and penciling in locations. We look at the itineraries, secure hotel reservations and strategize the meals. Closer to arrival we’ll get plenty of bottled water and fill the car up with gas before our friends land. We want to be ready, as good hosts.

But more goes into our planning when we open the door of Burundi to our friends. We aren’t hosting a tourist group (I shudder at the thought of ‘poverty tourism’ or the accompanying pity), but creating a space where friends can meet, where communities interact and mutual goodness happens. We consider both our local and international friends as we weave our days together.

Here are some things we keep in mind as we plan to host friends:

(1) We want to expose friends to as many different stories as possible during their days in country. As Chimananda Adichie says, there is a danger in the single story. When we tell a single story about a person or place, we flatten it. When we only see the poverty of a place, the deprivation of a person, then we not only see an untrue picture, but an incomplete one.

So when we host, we resist the common practice of only visiting the poor places, showing the deep need represented by distended bellies and dirty streets. While that may garner more sympathy (and donor dollars), it’s not the fullness of the place or the people who call this land home. And only traveling to the low places creates an unhealthy dynamic between the locals and our guests. We start to believe that all Burundians are poor, all Burundian children are barefoot with tattered clothes, all Burundian women are uneducated and all of them deserve our pity.

On a recent trip we hosted in Uganda we took our friends to the slums that reeked of urine and spoiled food to see where the streets kids lived. We took them to homes where children with HIV/AIDS lived and went to school in crisp blue uniforms. We went to visit local business leaders to witness the great innovation and intelligence of our Ugandan friends who are driving a new economy. We even invited them to share dinner with our friend, the Speaker of House for the Ugandan government. Imagine the whiplash – in the morning walking the slums and by evening dining with one of the most powerful leaders in the land.

When our friends think of Uganda – the picture will have layers of images, texture from many memories. They’ll remember the smells of feted water in the slums and the aroma of coffee in the urban café, the taste of bland matoke and the luxurious meal cooked by the city’s best chef. This is Uganda… all of it. It’s not just a place filled with children at-risk, but a country brimming with life and complexity and promise.

It matters a great deal to us that friends who come to Burundi this summer will encounter many stories and many places so that they taste and see this country and it’s tribes truly.

(2) We want our friends to come and see how our local friends are making their community better, day by day. This includes working side by side within the community to appreciate the effort and care that goes
into communal transformation.

Most often our visitors will join the Batwa friends in the fields planting cabbage, carrots or potatoes – it all depends what season it is when they arrive. Our friends feel ready with their gardening gloves and kneepads (though the later are unnecessary in the soft soil of Matara), while the Batwa move their calloused hands deftly through the soil demonstrating technique for the task. There’s much laughter echoing throughout the valley as our friends experience their own lack of skill and witness the expertise of the African mamas. Dark hands move swiftly through soil, tilling seeds and swaying forward with babies often swaddled on their backs. They gently correct our work, showing us better ways to drop the seeds, how far apart the rows must be, how to properly carry a hoe from plot to plot. They cover less ground with us there, but they welcome our presence ad willingness to learn.

As our western friends sweat under the sun, they glisten with a new appreciation for the agility and knowledge the Africans display. They drive down the mountain telling us how strong the women are, how fast they move and how wonderfully they parent their young children amid the day’s work. What emerges is an awareness of the hard work required for food security. What becomes clear is that those who work the fields are skilled, dedicated and worthy of great respect.

We’ve done other things together – making clay pots, binding saplings with banana leaves for the on-site nursery, planting trees, building roads and constructing homes. But we never have western friends come in to do a job with their skill set, the idea is never for them to come and help the poor, backward African. The idea is to join in the work the community is already doing, to participate in their work under their guidance and kind mentoring. Our African friends enjoy having more hands – even white ones – as long as all work and are willing to learn along the way.

So when we create work teams, it is always a collaboration and always under the leadership of our African friends. In this context we honor the Africans as experts, those with deep knowledge of how to accomplish tasks in their community. We believe it’s healing for our African friends to lead and teach, and it’s a necessary corrective for our western friends to learn. It’s also great to see them look to the Batwa with awe and respect, not pity or distain.

(3) We want our visiting friends to taste celebration among our local friends. We believe that what you celebrate demonstrates what you value, highlighting what you’ve accomplished and what’s worthy of gratitude.

So we’ve celebrated weddings among the Batwa – because for years they didn’t marry since the governing authorities didn’t recognize them and refused to preside over their ceremonies. But when we came, ten couples stepped forward and the governor of the region, in full regalia, officiated. We all stood and cheered as their inked fingers were pressed in the book, making these marriages a matter of public record. “Now we are human,” Francois (community elder) announced. We saw the significance of this moment – not just about marriage but also about human dignity and communal belonging.

When we enter into these celebrations our visiting friends can see what matters on the ground in Africa. Some things are the same – the life of a child or a graduation. But some things are different – like dancing over an identity card that we get easily and without fanfare by completing paperwork at the local DMV.

How we celebrate also says something about who we are and how our culture breathes on this land. Drumming connects you to the Burundian heartbeat, dancing showcases the graceful beauty and cheering reveals the enthusiasm for life that resides within each Burundian. The speeches, so many long speeches, allow us to hear stories and honor voices too long overlooked. It’s in these long-winded speeches that we often are educated, as local elders make the connections apparent for us. Then we feast on roasted goat, use our hands to eat rice and beans, let the sweet pineapple juice drip down our cheeks as we smile together. These moments of shared abundance seem to be the most human ones – tasting, seeing God’s goodness to us all.

(4) We always want guest to see how lovely the land of Burundi is when they travel to be with us. We make time to drive the winding roads up country to take in the plethora of greens that cover the mountains, to peek at the red dirt and soak in blue skies and cotton candy cloudscapes. We take the scenic route along the shore of Lake Tanganyika because there’s something beautiful about passing through fishing communities and seeing their boats bobbing on the water. And then taking in the lake, the breeze blown over from the mountains of Congo, feeling the sand between your toes and listening to the exotic birdsong in the trees overhead.

You haven’t been to Burundi if you haven’t experienced its beauty. The dusty city streets and dirty slums don’t tell the whole story of the place. The needs of the people and insufficiency of the infrastructure don’t say it all, either. The majesty of Lake Tanganyika, the vibrancy of thousands of hills, the encounters with hippos is part of the truth of this place. Again, it is taking in more than one story, more than one landscape, when you visit a new place.

Burundians need you to see the beauty, too. They need you to honor the gift God’s given them and from that place of respect help them steward this land toward goodness. In my experience, when we tell them their land is beautiful they blush, and their eyes alight. For once, someone sees more than the broken bits, someone sees the good and blesses it.

When friends come to see us we think of other things too – communication, translation, comfort and engaging in less comfort sometimes. But I’ve already taken so much of your time, so I’ll leave that for another time.

Let me say this – when friends come to visit Burundi we want them to taste and see. For us this includes encountering various stories and places, making space for celebration and collaborative work. We want time to listen, learn and allow our African friends to lead us in understanding their lives, their landscape, their hopes. We hope the Burundian experience will change how people see Burundi, but also they see home upon their return.

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Kelley Nikondeha is a thinker, connector, advocate, avid reader, mother of two beautiful children, lover of God’s justice & jubilee.  She leads theological conversations at Amahoro Africa  and is chief storyteller for Communities of Hope in Burundi. Kelley lives her life in transit between Arizona and Burundi. She’s in transit between continents but also in terms of her own experience of motherhood, discipleship, theological engagement and living into God’s dream for the world. She savors handwritten letters, homemade pesto and anything written by Walter Brueggemann. She is fueled by space and snacks (and Diet Coke). Blog: kelleynikondeha.com// Twitter:@knikondeha

Kelley Nikondeha is hosting a Hill Tribers giveaway over at her blog! You should head on over there for a chance to win a teal flower necklace. She graciously let me write a post telling about a recent night with our Hill Triber community–I’ve excerpted it here.

When we pulled up at the apartment last Friday night, my kids couldn’t get out of the car fast enough. They raced upstairs, two at a time, and pulled off their shoes, tossing them by the door. There was a tumble of kids waiting to play. You’d think they’d been separated for weeks instead of days from the hugs and squeals that happened when they met. All the pictures we have are slightly fuzzy around the edges—they move a lot, this rambunctious bunch of lovebugs.

My little girls have grown up best friends with a group of Burmese refugee kids. Their moms are artisans for Hill Country Hill Tribers, a non-profit my friend Caren George and I started a few years ago. Caren’s kids and my own little girls have never known a life where we weren’t trekking to various apartment complexes all over Austin. Caren and I take supplies for the hand-tatted jewelry, woven scarves, sewn bags and baby dolls to women whose traditional artistry is breathtaking and beautiful.

Our kids don’t really care about any of that. What they care about are little friends who run around with them in the fading twilight while their mothers talk. They come home with dirty feet and orange soda stains around their mouth, happy as clams.

Read more and enter to win the giveaway here.

Stan and Dan are homeless men that have been holding up signs on the same street corner since we moved into our house five years ago. (I wrote about our friendship here and here; I’ve changed their names online.) They are out there every morning, regular as clockwork.

Two weeks ago, I dropped off a loaf of homemade bread on my way to preschool. Stan grabbed it before the light changed; we exchanged our regular banter. I waved good-bye.

We haven’t seen Stan or Dan since then.

We planned to invite them for Easter, but they were never out where we expected them. Finally today I decided to start asking some questions. The twins share a street corner with a man I’ll call Gus. The twins are out there in the morning, Gus is out there in the afternoon. I like Gus, but we’re not friends the way I am with Stan and Dan. He’s still new to these parts and he makes too many comments about me being a pretty lady. But we had our longest talk today when I asked about where Stan and Dan have been.

He told me that word on the street (literally) is that there was a brawl in the area and Stan and Dan were arrested with several others. He can’t confirm it and he doesn’t know details.

My girls were in the car when Gus told us what happened. We pulled away and drove around the block to go back home. My girls started crying immediately, the way only little children can do.

My 6-year-old asked: “Why were they arrested? Are they in jail forever? Can we go visit them? Can people go to jail but not get locked in? Can you just go to help your friends?”

My 4-year-old asked: “Are they with the grumpy government? Is that government a bad guy? Will the government let them go? Do you have the government’s phone number?”

They know weird social studies terms from our many discussions trying to explain refugees and their families, as well as adoption and abandonment issues, and other subjects that come up in our unusual life (what, you don’t discuss grumpy governments and the difference between church and state with your toddlers?).

The big one explained to the little one that our government is not grumpy, not like the refugees’, and that they aren’t the bad guys, they’re the good guys, but still, she doesn’t like it that she can’t find Stan and Dan and she thinks the government should give them back.

It took some time to sort out the tangle of questions over after school snacks. I did pull out the phone to call the “government” and find out what I could about Stan and Dan. No one by either of their names has been arrested in our county. Maybe I have their names wrong. Maybe they didn’t provide the right information. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places.

All I know is two little girls greeted their dad at the door with the news–”Stan and Dan are gone!” and it affected us all tonight. We love these men, though we really barely know them. But we have chosen to be friends with them over years of small, small interactions.

Driving home tonight from a quick errand, the street light shone on their abandoned corner and my heart hurts.

I’m going to do my best to find them. Pray for them if you’re of the praying persuasion, and pray for clarity for me as we try to discover where they’ve gone.

I just want my friends back.

Brenna is one of my favorite internet finds. She writes with wit and wisdom about her life; we’ve exchanged emails about how hard it is to raise our kids in diverse situations while always knowing we have the choice to live this way or not. I was hoping she’d talk about some of the things we’ve shared–this post hits home on a very personal level for me. The middle is a strange and difficult place sometimes.

If you asked me if I was poor growing up, I’d probably have said yes. There was always food on the table and a roof over our heads, but things were “tight.” Uncomfortably so. There were no second glasses of milk and a ridiculous amount of generic boxed pasta. Our clothing budget was based upon gifts from relatives and the kindness of strangers. And our car frequently ran on fumes. I didn’t get my license until out of college, because our cars could never pass the safety and emissions tests necessary to get my license.

In my early twenties, my church taught that it wasn’t okay to say you were poor. Broke? Yes. But poor? No. Poor was a state of mind, and as Christians we should be “positive,” or something like that. Jesus wanted us to have life and have it more abundantly, which obviously meant financially, especially if you tithed. Poverty became something akin to sin.

I knew that when I had kids, I would do whatever I had to in order to shield them from the pain that I went through as a result of our financial difficulties.

*****

My husband and I spent time in Cairo on two different occasions. We spent nights in an orphanage where my husband arm wrestled dozens of boys all lined up for the chance to take down the tall, muscle-bound American. We played ping-pong and brought them their favorite treat – Kentucky Fried Chicken. We painted their lunch room, something they only had due to the benevolence of others outside of their country. We left them knowing that they would never have the option of being adopted.

We walked the streets of Garbage City. I held hands with little girls. I watched little boys kick soccer balls in the dirt. I watched their parents sort through the trash that they had picked up from the other neighborhoods, which was their job. They were poor. This was poverty. And calling themselves broke wasn’t going to change the conditions they lived in.

*****

Four years ago we left our very middle class suburban New England home for Chicago. When people unfamiliar think of the city there seems to be two ways it goes. One is a vision very similar to You’ve Got Mail where everyone lives in cute little brownstones spending sunny days pushing darling baby strollers up and down the street while visiting farmers markets and parks. The other vision is something out of Boys ‘N the Hood where you hold your breath as you walk down the street, hoping you don’t get shot.

I live in the middle.

I don’t worry about gang violence on my block, although I have been awakened to shots at night.  But I certainly don’t live in that other world.

Our street is in this odd, no man’s land, between two distinct neighborhoods. To our immediate north is the Midwest’s largest Hasidic community. To our south you will find some of the city’s largest Pakistani and Indian neighborhoods, along with Russian, Assyrian, Bangladeshi, and a wonderful mix of other nationalities and ethnicities. We are surrounded by people who look different, speak different, and act different from each other. It is simply beautiful. But even though we placed ourselves here, desiring to live intentional lives, we are still insulated, still separate.

I live in the middle.

Chicago is full of every nationality and ethnicity you can imagine, but it is somehow one of the most segregated cities in the nation. I don’t live in gang territory or next to rat-infested buildings. But I certainly don‘t pass Oprah as I walk out of a million-plus dollar condo.

*****

This fall my oldest daughter enters Kindergarten. And our elementary school is large. The thought of sending my baby off to a school with almost 1,000 children makes me tremble. And at night, when everyone is asleep in their beds, I think about what is holding me back. What is my concern? Is it the size of the school? The class size?

Or is it the fact that our school, unlike the ones that the moms who push their pretty strollers to the farmers markets send their kids to, has over 96% of its children considered low-income and at the poverty level?

96%

I live here. In the middle.

*****

I take my girls to the park. Next to me on the swing is a mom wearing the Hijab. I see a dad chasing his kids across the playground wearing a Yarmulke and the Tziztzit. And on the park bench as boys and girls splash in the spray pool is a group of moms wearing Saris. This is our world. We smile and chat as we push our children on the swings, marveling at how high pitched their laughter can be. We give knowing looks to each other as our kids run wildly and race down the slides as we hold our breath, waiting for someone to shout, “I’m okay!”  The man who pushes the ice-cream cart through the winding paths of the park teaches the girls a new word in Spanish each time we pick a new treat.

When we walk up and down the street and stop in the local store for spices, the grocer comes by and gives my girls candy, always commenting on their golden curls and blue eyes. When we visit the Sari store my girls undoubtedly leave with bangles covering their arms. When we eat at one of our dozen local Indian restaurants, I smile when I see that even the families that are speaking Urdu and Hindi are giving their little ones chicken nuggets as they fill their own plates to overflowing at the buffet.

But at the end of the day, I go back to my building, with its six condos tucked inside, and all I see is white. And we are alone.

*****

I think it comes naturally to want to protect our children, to keep them from things that could harm them or bring them pain. In our zeal to move into an international community, to be able to connect with refugees, to be immersed in cultures that aren’t ours, we unintentionally found ourselves surrounded by poverty. And while our household is by no means poor, the longer we live here, the more we are affected by it. I can’t pretend that it isn’t completely around us, pressing in, forcing us to make decisions we never expected.

*****

I don’t know how to tie this up neatly with a pretty bow. When you talk about poverty, quick and easy solutions and answers are never an option. As I write this we are asking ourselves if we are going to stay, or if we are going to leave. I have a daughter who will benefit from a much smaller school with a much lower teacher to student ratio. I find myself pulled between wanting to give her everything she needs and staying in a neighborhood we have grown to call home. I have no answers. Here in the middle, all I have is love. Love for my daughter. Love for my community. Love will keep us seeking answers.

*****

Brenna is a city-living, tender-hearted wife and mama to three little girls who encourage her daily to seek out the beauty in life. She loves travel, Diet Coke, homemade bread, and Indian food. There is always something cooking in her oven so stop on by. You will most likely find her either shuffling her girls off to an activity or cuddling with her family at home. She blogs about brokenness and redemption at Beautiful Things  (http://chicagomama-brenna.blogspot.com) and you can find her on Twitter at @BrennaJD.

*****

Read all of the posts in this series on the Questions of Travel Series page.

I wrote this post yesterday for the Hill Tribers blog and planned on putting it up this morning on mine, but I’ve already had to update the post: Our goal was a $1000 to help the victims of a devastating fire in a refugee camp, but we blew that goal out of the water. I’ve been overwhelmed by the response from friends online and in real life. Thank you so much for supporting our friends’ friends.

(Image Source: Mizzima.com) 

On Friday at the Mae Surin refugee camp in Thailand, a fire killed at least 42 Burmese refugees. Apparently the fire started from someone cooking and it spread quickly to nearby huts. We have been calling our artisans all week with our hearts in our throats. Though it’s a Karenni camp, from what I hear that particular set of huts was predominantly Karen. Our artisans have calls in with friends and family members, but so far, it seems like no one we know lost a relative or loved one, but they know people affected. It’s a small community in many ways.

This hits so close to home for our little group.

Most of our artisans spent years in these camps–Koe, Meh, Bo and Oo, four of our weavers, lived at the next camp over in Mae Hong Son (they said they were in Camp 1 and the fire was in Camp 2). We know firsthand how much has been lost already by these refugees as they’ve fled persecution in Burma and now what little they have left has been destroyed.

(Image Source: CNN.)

One news report said it was predominantly elderly, women and children who were killed in the blaze.

A dear friend of ours who lives in Thailand, Robert Reagan, told us today he will be going on Friday to take much-needed food and supplies from Chiang Mai in his truck to the camp the mountains. We decided to act quickly to support him. So often when we hear of devastating news around the world, we can’t do anything, but this time, we can. Help us help these refugees. 

Any donations made to Hill Country Hill Tribers this week will go straight to help buy supplies for Mae Surin camp.

Our goal is $1000 in 48 hours.

Between now and midnight Thursday night can you help us spread the word and help our friends’ friends?

Donate HERE.

Thank you so much for your support.

*****

UPDATE: We raised well over $1000 within 4 yesterday. We’re blown away.

We’re setting a new goal–$3000 by Thursday night. Help us spread the word–we love being able to directly help the friends of our friends who are in dire need.

We will continue to take donations for the next couple of weeks. Any money that’s donated to Hill Tribers will go straight to our friend bringing relief directly to the camp. Robert is heading out Friday and we will keep you updated on what he is able to take and what conditions are on the ground there. Thank you so, so much for your support.