June 30, 2011
The Lost Safari Gets Off to a Slow Start

Carrying cash to Central Africa is a somewhat daunting task from both ends of the voyage. In Africa, US dollars still speak, but only if they are clean, crisp, and of recent printing date. A slight tear can render the bill worthless or of less than full value.

I thought it would be easy to pick up fresh new currency at my local branch bank in Ohio, but found it was not the case. “No sir, we only get new 100’s at Christmas time.” I went to at least six outlets to secure new 20’s, 50’s , and 100’s. Had a good money belt , actually three to stow them on my person. Credit cards and ATM’s do not exist in Burundi , and there are only a few in Rwanda. Once in Tanzania, they become quite common. But up until one gets to Tanzania or Kenya, they better hang onto their cash or have a good contact in country who can supply you with dollars if you lose yours or they get stolen. So loaded for trade, I headed from Dayton up to Detroit and crossed the border to Windsor to meet my daughter Dominique and granddaughter Marie Gabrielle (11 years) at 10:00PM at the train station. They leave near Montreal and would be joining me on this my 4th trip to Central and East Africa to train mediators. They were on time, and we headed to the tunnel under the river into Detroit and on to our hotel in Dearborn. Unfortunately we were waylaid by US immigration to be ‘randomly screened’ in the the immigration office. There we met head on with US officialdom along with a busload of tourists of varying third world origin. Each person was being individually interviewed (read interrogated in a not very polite way) before being accepted or rejected for entry. We were told to wait our turn and take a seat. Seats were not being offered to the people who were visibly ‘foreigners’ , ie. non whites or browns. If they wanted to use the restroom , they were told they should have used the one on the bus. Could they go back to the bus to relieve themselves? No. Just wait here by the restroom that you can’t use.

We spent forty five minutes watching this circus of the damned before being allowed to pass over into the combat zone of Detroit. We didn’t even get to put our hands in the electronic fingerprint machine like all the others. Later in our travels we would be fingerprinted in Tanzania before being allowed into their country after paying $100 for the visa. Border efficiency was much higher in Tanzania. You may find this shocking, but it is true. Common human courtesy was also of a much higher order in Tanzania. Fortunately I’m old enough to know that protests of injustice are futile in an immigration office. So we remained silent and finally crossed into the US bearing our US passports around midnight. Welcome to the USA. Next day we would fly to Africa.

The plan is that I will be doing mediation training in Kigali, then we will head to Bujumbura , Burundi where I will meet with a new group of mediators to do some advanced training. In the third week we will go back to Rwanda to a Catholic parish a bit off the beaten path, Muhondo, and introduce mediation in that area. Our contact in Muhondo is Fr. Pascal Tuyisenge who works with Project Congo and who has visited Dayton last year. He had accompanied me to Springfield, OH where I work in the court system as a mediator. Our last stop will be in a very interesting part of Tanzania, Pemba Island which is going to be new for me. Pemba is located about 30 miles north of the main island of Zanzibar. It is an almost completely Moslem community, and we will be working with magistrates and judges from the Sharia courts which exist on the island. Even the town Chake Chake where we will do the training has an exotic ring in its name.








July 1-2 The Lost Safari Shifts Gears But the Clutch is Slipping

In Dearborn, MI, we buy Gabrielle a pair of binoculars for game viewing and head to the airport. Immediately our flight to Chicago is delayed and then rerouted to go around a storm that is moving through Chicago. After going into Wisconsin north of Milwaukee we head back down to Chicago and arrive somewhat late but still able to make our connection on American Airlines to Brussels. Well not quite. The American flight is delayed several hours due to needed repairs. This makes it impossible to hit our connection to Kigali, Rwanda from Brussels. We’re told before leaving Chicago that they will take care of us when we get to Brussels.

In Brussels we are put up in the Sheraton Hotel at the airport , given food vouchers, and told that we will spend the night in Brussels, travel at 6:00AM to Amsterdam next day and leave Amsterdam at 9:00PM for Kigali. This will put us a day behind our planned arrival. Fortunately I’m able to get to an internet at the hotel and inform David Bucura , our Rwandan host to expect us later than planned. We spend the day in Brussels on a tour bus or walking around the old town, then get up at 4:30AM to make the 6:00AM plane to Amsterdam. We’re jet lagged and tired on the trip to Amsterdam. But the up side is we see some of Brussels and get the unexpected time in A’dam where we visit the Anne Frank house, jump on buses that we have no idea where to pay the fare, jump off without paying and get into the Van Gogh museum in the afternoon where we are in a state of near collapse, unable to appreciate the ‘Sunflowers’ and other great works of Vincent. We stagger outside and sleep on the lawn behind the museum until told by the police to move because they are doing and emergency evacuation exercise. By 7:00PM we are at the train station and headed to Schiphol Airport where our Kenya Airways plane leaves on time and arrives early. Most convincingly, Africa proves more efficient than the West..

July 3 George Celebrates a Sleepy 68th Birthday

Our flight to Nairobi arrives 45 minutes early, but then we have a 7 hour wait in the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. In that time two nearly empty flights to Kigali depart. We ask to be put on those flights but are told that we must travel with our checked baggage. Can’t our checked bags be put on one of those flights? “Oh no, Sir, impossible.” I have a feeling the response would be the same in most towns. I later learned that Chake Chake airport on the island of Pemba could have made the move and accomplished that mission. The last time I was in the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, there was a ground worker strike, and I ended up spending three days here with thousands of irate Westerners, so my recurring nightmares of that ordeal started to replay at fast forward. Nevertheless we managed to survive and took our flight to Kigali via Bujumbura, Burundi. We arrived at 1:00PM and David was there to meet us, and he informed me that I would start teaching in an hour at 2:00PM. Everyone was waiting. Dominique and Gabrielle went to bed and I droned through 3 hours of teaching. I don’t remember a thing I did. These folks had all been trained by me over the past four years, so I asked if they had any questions and I took it from there. They helped me to the guest cottage on the grounds and I plopped into bed for the night.




July 5

The class finishes up on Tuesday the 5th. Most people seem to have gained some useful experience and are competent mediators. They have no direct referral system through the courts in Rwanda. However church pastors are often the referral source for mediation in this country. Some mediators are also known in the community as peacemakers and cases show up unannounced at their door. There is no record keeping system in place to give me an accurate indication of how many cases are being done. This is always a bit frustrating when I come over here.

July 6 The Road to Bujumbura

We purchase our tickets on the Belvedere Lines , the best buses in the region. The Mercedes buses have been replaced by Japanese buses made for much smaller people than myself or for long legged Tutsi’s as well. Our bus leaves at 8:30AM. The trip through mountainous country much like West Virginia is uneventful. The price of a three-day visa has risen from $30 to $40. There is a new bus terminus in Bujumbura on the edge of town rather than downtown. This has been done I’m told, because of terrorist threats due to Burundi’s participation in peacekeeping in Somalia. The group al-Shabab is thought to be threatening any nation that puts troops on Somali soil. They’ve have already bombed a terminus in Kampala, Uganda with significant loss of life.

We get two rooms at the Pacific Hotel, $60 total per night and then head down to the Quaker office a few blocks from there to meet our counterparts and also to meet Leon Alenga and other members of OPOD, the women’s sewing co-op we founded two years ago to buy sewing machines for underprivileged women in Uvira in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They have been struggling of late due to losing a building they had been renting where they could work together and learn from the better couturiers. We present them with $1000.00 that I collected from friends and colleagues, and Dominique gives them another $500 that she has raised from the sale of her glass jewelry. We want this money to purchase three more sewing machines and also to help start some other small businesses for women in Uvira. We’ve also brought about $4,000 of medical equipment and medicines and a microscope to be carried by them back across the border to be used at two Quaker clinics, one in Abeka and one in Luvungi. Had we gone over to the Congo it would have cost us $200 each for visas, which we felt could be better used as cash to put into the co-op. After speeches, prayers, and songs, we exchange our gifts as they have brought Congolese dresses for Dominique, Gabrielle, Anne, her little sister, and Marie my wife. After our meeting we all have dinner at the Hotel Pacific, and we give them an extra $100 for the expense of coming over here to meet us.

We say our goodbye’s and prepare for the next two days of advanced mediation training with the Burundians.

Later we learn that on the way back across the border into the Congo, Leon was arrested on some trumped up charges to extort money from the group. Some of the medicine was outdated as well and this caused some problems as well. We all was said and done Leon was liberated the next day, but it cost a little over $400 dollars to get him out of the clink. Actually the term is ‘cachot’ which is a little private jail that some magistrates use in the Congo to extract money from innocents. They can hold a person up to 72 hours without charges until money changes hands. There is a retired lawyer from Peace and Justice up in Goma who is constantly pleading cases for these victims of justice.