Greetings from Burundi!!
How are you all doing? I hope you are well and your families are great! It is so wonderful to finally be here in Burundi with Dieudonne and his family. There is so much I would like to update you on so I'll try my best to keep it all organized.
We are living with Dieudonne and his family in Bujumbura. The way it is set up here is their house is on the back part of the piece of land. Along the side are the offices, half built...and in the front is a tent where they host church and the children. This is the base and home of New Generation. It is all enclosed by some sort of wall to keep out intruders. They also have quite a few staff members that live in little cement rooms who help out with the children, the cooking, and maintenance. I believe these were street kids they took in years ago and are still trying to help them out with a job.
I'm not sure what stories you have heard already from him, so I'm sorry if any of this is redundant. What I understand is the past 10 or so years, New Generation was supported monthly from a man in England. It was last March that this man had to move and was unable to support them anymore. As a result of this huge loss of income, they entered into many struggles. He became behind in rent $3500 so the gov't took his car from him. He will not be able to get it back until he pays this amount. The man from England who supported them with his friends loaned them money for two buses to start an express route from here to the country. This I think was not planned or organized correctly from the beginning because if one bus broke down it messed up the whole route and people no longer wanted to ride them. It was supposed to be a quick ride and since they were not making any money from it, their only option was to sell the buses and pay back the loan they had for them. The other thing that this man did was buy a solar oven for them to use to bake bread. Brilliant idea I think. It seems that it cost about $10,000 from the states and he paid $4000 to have it shipped here. Well once it arrived, the govt wanted him to pay $5,000 in customs tax. He tried to talk to the gov't and tell them it was for the children and he did not have that money. They took off $2,000 but he still was not able to come up with the other $3,000. There is this hotel thing across the street that the Englishman built. So Dieudonne's only option was to have the hotel pay the $3000 and take the oven. My question is I think we should be able to talk to the hotel and get it back. I'm guessing they use it to bake bread for the little restaurant but even if we could still supply them with their bread and then also make our own for the children and to sell. This is something I am going to work on with him.
The lifestyle of this family and those working with them is extremely primitive and fair. They only eat one meal a day at lunchtime or 2pm because its too expensive to have 2 or 3. Their fridge has been broken and will cost $50 to fix although they do not have that as a priority or the money to fix it. Everything is cooked out back over a fire. They eat about the same thing every day...rice/beans/pasta/peas/bread. This is what they usually eat split up and sometimes add a sauce and bananas.
Dieudonne's two oldest kids go to school everyday while his wife goes around to houses preaching the gospel. His youngest daughter who is a year and a half stays at home with a nanny. Dieudonne is very busy each day as he has so many responsibilities with New Generation. Especially now as they are facing many struggles he is looking for means for food and rent at all ends.
A very intricate part of NG is the "clubs" or we would call bible studies that are started in different parts of the country. Dieudonne speaks with many students and adults in different villages and trains them on being leaders and what it means to follow Christ. Once this club is established, they continue to meet weekly and once a month he travels around and speaks at all of these...continuing to encourage them and portray a powerful message of God's love. Along with the clubs, there are three childrens homes outside the city. It is really important to Dieudonne to have "family" emulated within these homes. Even though the children are not with their immediate family, the staff that lives with them still cares for their daily needs. Out in the country where these homes are, there is no running water or electricity. The poverty is even worse than in the city. They have to walk for miles at times to find food or bring back water. We are going there on Tuesday for a few days so I'll send pictures from his orphanages up there when we return.
I believe whole-heartedly in the vision of NG. They absolutely have the potential to change Burundi...and even Africa. The organization was on a constant rise up until their funds stopped. I do believe the Africa mentality isn't as future oriented as I think they should be. I'm sure its because of all the devastation and war as led them to only think about their next meal and surviving today. I think the English man had great ideas for them, but it was maybe above their means too quickly and the money they still owed had not come in as quickly as they hoped, leaving them no option. I am excited because I think this is a great opportunity to train them on planning for long term stability and self support. He is 100% on board with knowing that they can not rely on American support. We have re-iterated that many times and he is asking us to help train his staff on our project ideas. It seems every person we run into around the city knows Dieudonne because he has already had such a large influence on so many lives.
I don't know if I have ever met someone so dedicated and passionate to helping others out and sharing Christ with them. He has time and time again given his last dollar to someone else for a meal instead of his own needs. After just one week of watching him and working alongside him, I have utmost respect for his heart and ministry.
The current immediate need is he is behind Jan and Feb rent for one of the childrens homes upcountry. It's $300 a month and the government is trying to make him close it down. As of yesterday they said they would give him until Monday to figure this out. I had a friend send me $150.00 to help out here. I didn't know if this is something Geotrac would match or no? I would love to give it all to him to help with the rent and thought if there was a chance of having it matched, it would take care of one month. He also is out of money for food for the children. He has had to turn away kids because the money isn't there. All day yesterday he went into the town and tried to meet with people and such to come up with $20.00 to feed them. As crazy as it sounds, its definitely the reality here and I see it firsthand.
As far as our ideas to help them become self sustainable...they have some areas around the house that I believe we could fertilize easily and plant many crops. He definitely agrees and has a project already started for this...just has not had the funds to begin it because of other urgent needs. He said to fertilize, buy the plants, pay the workers, etc it would cost an initial $1900. This would be the amount to grow food for all the children. He said it would be about $600-$800 each year to add to it and keep it going. So I told him that he needs to be able to grow extra to sell (which is another plan) and he said it would be about an initial $900 to add that much more. This way, after we can maybe help him with the initial set up, he can make enough to keep it running and feed the children. He also has this big blue like concession stand thing in his yard. He was hoping to use it at some point to sell things out of. We are going to work sometime in the next week to paint the outside brick wall of his land with paint and make a big new generation sign so it is recognized. He has a little land between the street and his brick entrance and so we are going to move that blue stand out there with some tables and chairs and open a little drink stand. It would be great if we could even get a little funding if someone wanted to support the initial start up of the drinks and snacks. Most of the stands here are very small with maybe 2 shelves of food. It would be nice to eventually sell the crops here along with water, soda, etc. Kim and I are going to work it at some points to try and draw in customers because we definitely are the outcast around here and people are interested. If we can start to bring them in then maybe after two months, they will continue to come.
Dieudonne feels that if we get a bus to do local transportation, that it will be very profitable for them. He has a good friend who drives for another company and they make $40 a day. This would transport people all around Bujumbura and is more reliable and busy over the longer express route. He said a new bus costs $14,000 and a used one costs $9,000. Another idea.
The third big project he has in mind is to eliminate paying $900 a month for rent for the three childrens homes. The government will give him a piece of land for free if he builds on it right away. His budget says to build a house for the 60+ kids would be $25,000. Our idea was instead of using durable material, if he could build the mud huts on the land until he was able to build a house for the kids. He said he would talk to the government about it but he wasnt sure if they would allow him to do that without durable materials.
Kim and I have a list of other small projects we are going to work daily on helping his staff with. We want to go into town and price out the cost of material and start teaching the women how to sew. Kim has a step by step instruction manual from the people in Uganda on how to make bamboo bikes. They sell them there for $10 and we want to teach the children and adults how to do this. He also has this little screen thing set up in his yard that could actually show movies on. He has a projector too from when he held different events and we were talking about playing movies there on the weekends and charging admission. You could also sell your drinks/snacks to make some extra money.
There is definitely a lot of potential and I'm really excited to start taking action and putting these things into business. The African mentality is just not really the same, but I know if we are able to work with and train these people on sustaining these businesses, that it could definitely be a success.
The last thing I just thought of is when he has his church services and worship nights, he has to rent a keyboard and a guitar. It's like $30 to rent them for the day. This is another actual item maybe someone would want to donate or send money to buy.
In Him,
jessica :)
one of the bible study/clubs of new generation that we spent time with yesterday.
one of the bible study/clubs of new generation that we spent time with yesterday.
these three pictures are from another club outside of our town. so many people meeting together to study about Jesus :) so wonderful!
