Joe Weber is a CRS volunteer working in Zambia. The Kansas City native is teaching theology to rural catechists and assisting the diocesan development office in the establishment of a community radio station. His blog is part of a series of personal reflections our volunteers are sharing from their journey and experience overseas.

I’ve been in Solwezi, Zambia for six and one half weeks. I’ve found that, if I walk off the main road and go through a gate, wind my way through the gravel lot in front of an old office building, pass a warehouse, and enter a small room buzzing of bees, I can buy the world’s best honey and homemade peanut butter. Things in Zambia are not found in well-advertised storefront windows along busy streets. They are tucked away, seemingly hidden to the outsider. It takes time and patience to discover them.

CRS Volunteer Joe Weber outside his radio station office in Solwezi, Zambia. Photo by CRS staff

My first six months as a CRS volunteer were spent at the CRS national office, usually assisting with writing and editing for the wide variety of initiatives that CRS and its partners are undertaking here: food security initiatives for people in areas prone to floods and droughts; hospices and clinics for tens of thousands of people living with HIV and AIDS; advocacy on behalf of communities affected by Zambia’s booming copper industry. The breadth of programming here is impressive; the far-reaching effects of these programs in the communities is even more striking.

After six months in Lusaka, I carried my new knowledge Northwest to Solwezi, setting-up shop in the offices of the most vast and rural of the Catholic dioceses in the country. Again I find myself involved in a wide variety of programs and projects, including assisting the diocesan development office with setting up a radio station.

I never know what secrets await me, hidden just off of or even along the one main road. I never know what to expect from the day-to-day life in Solwezi. But I do know that for most everyone here, the day-to-day is very much a struggle for survival. Walking down the main road, something of this struggle is apparent. But in other ways the suffering, resilience, and hope of people, like the location of great peanut butter, is only discovered with patience. Read the rest of this entry »

Debbie DeVoe, CRS’ regional information officer for East Africa, shares the latest from West Darfur in Sudan.

Peering out the helicopter window, my stomach dropped again. This time it wasn’t from the twinge of fear I felt when the nose of the U.N. chopper dipped forward on liftoff. It was from what I was seeing on the ground.

Beyond the desire to return to her village, Mariam Abdalla Bakhit hopes that her children and all women will become educated. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS

We were dropping into Sileia on our way to Sirba – two large villages in West Darfur that suffered immensely during recent government efforts to drive out rebels. After flying for miles over the stark but beautiful desert landscape, golden glints of thatched huts and fences appeared in the distance. As we got closer, the view changed drastically.

Next to a cluster of picturesque family compounds was a sickening scar of scorched earth. Blackened circles clearly marked where huts had been burned to the ground. The helicopter banked left, and the scene repeated itself.

Five years in, the conflict in Darfur continues unabated. More than 2 million people are displaced from their homes, feeling too scared to return to their villages and risk another attack. Each week, the number grows. Yet, somehow, people still find hope.

Eleven-year-old Faiza Khalil Hamad is happy to be attending classes in the West Darfur capital of El Geneina: “I used to look after our sheep every day, but now I am in school. I have learned a lot so far. I like school.” Abdullah Assal is proud to be part of a Catholic Relief Services food relief committee that helps distribute emergency rations each month to thousands of people, pleased to be helping his neighbors.

Mariam Abdalla Bakhit, who has lived in an El Geneina camp since January 2007, misses her house and garden and farm and animals. Ask her how she’s doing, and she’ll say “well” — much better than when she first arrived with nothing. Her husband Abdul Karim Hassan describes their life a bit more stoically: “Sometimes it’s difficult, sometimes it’s normal.”

It can be disturbing to see just how normal life appears at times in Darfur. School girls play jump rope. Small boys drag along wooden cars tied to string. Men chat over tea and coffee in wooden shacks, while coworkers sit down for a midmorning breakfast of fried goat, beans and puffy bread. Cars zip along El Geneina’s recently paved roads, lined with shops that sell everything from soap to hookah pipes.

Sit down for a longer conversation though, and smiles disappear. Women fear for their personal safety when they have to go into the bush to collect firewood. Men can’t find enough work to support their families. An older woman shows me her paralyzed hand and the responsible bullet lodged in her upper arm.

When it comes time for me to leave — a luxury I’m well aware of — I ask my new friends Mariam and Abdul if they have any questions for me. “This is difficult to ask,” Abdul replies, “but when will the conflict end and peace come?”

Hemmed Lukonge, CRS Tanzania’s senior program officer for PEPFAR-funded projects for orphans and vulnerable children, shares his account of meeting First Lady Laura Bush and First Lady Salima Kikwete of Tanzania.

Dr. Aisha Kigoda, Tanzania Deputy Minister for Health and Social Welfare, introduces the National Plan of Action to the First Ladies. Photo by Dan Griffin/CRS

Last week I was honored to meet First Lady Laura Bush and First Lady Salima Kikwete of Tanzania. These two admirable women launched Tanzania’s National Plan of Action for Orphans and Vulnerable Children this past Sunday, February 17, in Dar es Salaam.

The event was a celebration of the significant support these children are receiving — help that is enabling them to stay in school, stay healthy and thrive even in the absence of one or both parents. Government officers, donor agencies and implementing partners joined children and their caregivers in launching the new plan, with gift-giving, singing and dancing adding to the excitement.

Funding from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, also known as PEPFAR, is playing a large role in Tanzania’s comprehensive strategy for protecting orphans and vulnerable children nationwide. Through PEPFAR programs, more than 200,000 children affected by HIV are receiving critical support services; as an implementing PEPFAR partner in Tanzania, Catholic Relief Services is supporting almost 52,000 of these children.

After the launch of the plan, the First Ladies toured informational booths showing the breadth of support offered to children in need. At the booth demonstrating household care, I welcomed them both and showed them how nutritional support, microfinance initiatives and income-generation activities, including food processing, handicraft making and small-scale farming, are helping families affected by HIV to make ends meet.

CRS’ Hemmed Lukonge shows the First Ladies of the U.S. and Tanzania crops grown by children and families affected by HIV. Photo by Amy Rumano/CRS

Mrs. Bush asked me about SILC, CRS’ innovative Savings and Internal Lending Communities, which she had learned of previously. I assured her that SILC is an important part of CRS’ programs in Tanzania, enabling poor families to improve their quality of life by saving small sums of money and accessing micro-loans for small business through pooled group savings.

I also shared with the First Ladies how PEPFAR-funded programs are improving the living environment of orphans in need through shelter enhancements and are increasing food supplies through home gardens. Both Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Kikwete were impressed by the pumpkins, cabbages, carrots and more grown by orphans and their caregivers.

“Through this partnership between Tanzania and the United States, we can restore lives and hope to orphans and their families,” Mrs. Bush said in a speech at the event. With the PEPFAR program now up for reauthorization by the U.S. Congress, we can only hope that this critical assistance and funding will continue for an additional five years and beyond.

Lane Hartill, CRS’ regional information officer for West Africa, recently visited eastern Congo, where he documented CRS’ response to the sexual violence that is an atrocity of the ongoing war.

The gynecologists at Panzi Hospital, a CRS partner, are some of the best in Congo at repairing reproductive systems that have been destroyed. But I wanted to find out how you fix a woman’s mind, how you heal her spirit.

So I turned to Cécile Mulolo Kamwanya, a psychologist at Panzi Hospital. She’s the head of the psychologist unit. It’s her and her team’s job to help heal women’s psyches, which are sometimes as damaged as their reproductive system.

Cécile told me a story that haunted me for days.

About a year ago, a little girl - I’ll call her Sylvie - was at home in Katama, a community very close to a forest where Hutu rebels, the same ones that committed the atrocities in Rwanda in 1994, are hiding.

The story unfurled like the others: the knock on the door; the demand for money; Sylvie’s father shot. In the confusion her mother fled. Sylvie was left in the house. The seven men took her to the forest, undressed her, and kicked her legs out from under her.

The last thing Sylvie remembered, Cécile said, before completely blacking out, was her legs being spread and men, as Sylvie put it, sleeping on her.

When she came to, she didn’t know what had happened or where she was. She tried to stand up but couldn’t. When she finally made it, she realized she was incontinent. She wandered for two days before an old man found her and led her by the hand back to her village.

She eventually made it to Panzi. But she was physically too small – only 10 years old – to be operated on. So for the next three or four years, she waits, no longer able to control the urine that seeps out of her.

“With a little girl like that, the first thing you must do is show affection,” says Cécile. “You must approach them even if they smell bad. If she came to your office, you’d open all the windows. The urine flows out of her. She smells very bad.

But Cécile loves her. They chat. Cécile puts her arm around Sylvie, as if she was her daughter. The whole time, Cécile is pretending she doesn’t smell anything. Cécile says a recent conversation went like this:

“I tell her to be patient, they’re going to take care of you, but you’re still too little. I ask her what she wants to do with her life.

‘I can’t get married. I’m going to be a nun.’

Why do you want to be a nun? Why don’t you want to marry?

‘Who’s going to want me? What man is going to love me?’

Be patient. And when they take care of you, you’ll be healed. You can then marry.

‘But I’m no longer a virgin. I’ve lost my virginity. Can someone who has lost her virginity, can a man love them?’

The value of a woman isn’t based on her virginity,” Cécile tells her.

Sylvie developed hatred toward men, says Cécile. But slowly she convinced her that all men aren’t bad.

“Only the ones that did this to you,” she says. “You’re papa was a good man. He loved your mama, didn’t he? He loved you. Was your papa bad?

No, Sylvie, said. Her papa wasn’t bad.

Bridget Chisenga. Photo by CRS

President Bush, in a speech this morning before leaving tomorrow for Africa with First Lady Laura Bush, made reference to a woman who made a profound impression on him: Bridget Chisenga, who works for CRS Zambia to promote adherence to antiretroviral therapy, the lifesaving medication for people living with HIV.

Bridget works for AIDSRelief, the CRS-led consortium that is funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Congress is currently considering legislation to reauthorize and expand PEPFAR for the next five years.

“Auntie Bridget,” as she is known to her co-workers and clients, spent several weeks in the fall here in the U.S. visiting schools and parishes and sharing her experiences of living with HIV and working with others with HIV. She joined President Bush for a World AIDS Day commemoration, and this morning, he recalled what she said that day:

Last November, I met a woman from Zambia named Bridget Chisenga. Bridget’s husband died of AIDS, and she expected to meet the same fate. Then she went to a clinic operated by Catholic Relief Services, funded by the American people. Today, Bridget is healthy. She has a job at the clinic, where she helps provide AIDS medicine to others. I want our fellow citizens to hear what she said: “This face is alive and vibrant because of your initiative. I would like to thank you.”

Lane Hartill, CRS’ regional information officer for West Africa, recently visited eastern Congo, where he documented CRS’ response to the sexual violence that is an atrocity of the ongoing war.

The stories of rape in eastern Congo are remarkably similar in their horror. Most of them start out the same way: A knock on the door. The armed men enter. The husband is beaten or killed. Then comes the gang rape.

But when you are actually sitting in front of a woman and she’s looking you in the eye, telling you in a monotone voice how they raped her, and you can see when she looks away, when her body language shifts, you know it’s hurting her again.

That’s when the rapes in Congo hit you.

It was like that when I talked with Birava. She recently moved into a new shack because she was taunted so badly in her previous neighborhood because she’d been raped. Her new place costs, $5 a month. But as a single mother with five children to feed, she has a hard time making rent.

We sat on vegetable oil tins and jerry cans in the front room, the one with the mud floor. She sat on a discarded engine block. She’d carefully folded some cloth for cushions. She told me her story. About the 12 soldiers who’d raped her. About the 6 miles she gingerly walked to Panzi with a prolapsed uterus. About the HIV she contracted from her now-deceased husband. And about her husband’s family who showed up recently wanting to take her kids away from her.

Birava didn’t hesitate to tell her story. I can’t imagine anyone going through something like this, then pouring her heart out to a complete stranger. Maybe it’s cathartic, I thought. Maybe she needs this.

A big part of her recovery is owed to Mama Jeanette, a counselor who volunteers for CRS’ partner, Foundation Femme Plus. She has turned into an older sister for Birava.
“She doesn’t do anything without telling me,” Jeanette says. Jeanette told me when the two are alone, Birava even has a sense of humor.

“Even though I have HIV,” she’ll sing, “I’m still living.”

Lane Hartill, CRS’ regional information officer for West Africa, describes his visit to a CRS-funded hospital in a rural area of Eastern Congo that is treating women who have been raped, an atrocity of the ongoing war.

I went on rounds with Dr. Freddy Mubuto, the head doctor at Nyamibungu Mother and Child Hospital, to see what he faces everyday. He and his fellow doctor, Faustin, are the only two doctors in an area with around 103,000 people.

Dr. Freddy Mubuto, head doctor at Nyamibungu Mother and Child Hospital in Eastern Congo. Photo by Lane Hartill/CRS

I knew seeing his patients wasn’t going to be easy. I steeled myself against the hot rush of emotion, but it came anyway. Reality, it seemed, was going to have its way with me.

One of the first women we saw had been taking her medicine religiously, said Mubuto, but she hadn’t eaten in days, causing complications. With a shake of his head, and in that calm, velvet voice, he explained to her why she had to eat, knowing all too well that she had no money for food.

A pretty woman, the wife of a gold miner, wearing clean red Puma slippers and silver earrings, had walked 25 miles to get to the hospital. She had the Congo’s flag painted on each toenail. She was having stomach pains, she said, could he help?

Mubuto suspected tuberculosis or a genital infection. She was only 25, but had already had three children. Only one was still alive. I didn’t have the stomach to ask her how the others had died.

The hospital has a sonogram machine and Mubuto spent much of the afternoon squirting gel on stomachs the size of beach balls and waving the wand over them. One lady had a scar running south from her bellybutton; it was as thick as a rope of licorice. Another physician had given her a C-section and done and awful job sewing her up. That wasn’t important, though: The baby inside looked just fine.

These were the easy cases. It’s when the rape cases come in – and the women who were forced to stay in the village to give birth – that things get complicated.

Mubuto sometimes finds himself facing complex emergencies he doesn’t know how to handle. He looks at reproductive systems so mutilated that he has to try something even if he’s never seen the problem. If he doesn’t, he says, they’ll surely die.

Like the time he worked on a woman - the surprise and disgust still registers in Mubuto’s voice – who had toxic leaves forced deep into her birth canal. So far, in fact, it punctured her uterus and the leaves entered her abdomen, causing her intestines to become infected.

Dr. Freddy Mubuto on his rounds. Photo by Lane Hartill/CRS

After surgery, piles of pills, and a three-month stay, “She didn’t pay a single cent,” he said. Instead, she went to the court and brought a suit against the feticheur, the traditional doctor who had prescribed the treatment. She accused him of premeditated murder. Many women, Mubuto said, sneak out of the hospital at night, avoiding payment. He has no recourse.

He says the women rely on feticheurs out of ignorance. It bothered him so much, he visited a few local villages to persuade women to come to the hospital. He also talked to village chiefs who agree with him and promise the village women will go to the hospital from now on. He says he’s seen a slight uptick in the number of women coming to him first, but the feticheur problem is still overwhelming.

You’d think all this would get to Mubuto, that he too would sneak out of a window at night and escape. But he doesn’t. He stays because it’s in his blood. His father was a well-known doctor and several of his siblings are also in the medical profession.

He politely asks me about how he can get additional training. He says a good anesthesiologist is needed at the hospital because many gynecological operations can’t be done with a local anesthetic. But if that’s not possible, maybe $75 a month to buy fuel for the generator is.

When I got home, I emailed my college roommate, now a respected anesthesiologist in Seattle. I told him how some men in the U.S. smirk and giggle at the mention of gynecology, how it’s a punch line, not a profession.

That’s not true. Definitely not in Congo.

Jerusha Ouma, CRS Kenya project officer for The Children Behind project, received the update below from partners working with CRS to assist 19,000 orphans affected by the HIV pandemic and other vulnerable children.

For the residents of Migori district in western Kenya, life has radically changed since the announcement of the disputed results from the presidential election held on Dec. 27, 2007. The violent reactions of people, especially the youth, led to substantial destruction of property and loss of life. The youths barricaded the roads and burned down property belonging to people from other ethnic groups. Almost everything came to a standstill in the community.

Those who bore the brunt of the crisis included people living with HIV as well as orphans and vulnerable children. Due to inaccessible roads and the ongoing violence, people living with HIV could not access health facilities to collect their antiretroviral medications. They also couldn’t travel safely to collect food supplements provided by CRS through The Children Behind (TCB) project, a privately funded CRS initiative that provides care and support to 19,000 orphans and vulnerable children as well as their caretakers in Nyanza province.

Partner staff on the ground had to quickly come up with ways to ensure that HIV-positive project participants wouldn’t miss any of their prescribed drug dosages. Using cell phones, partner staff quickly mobilized the project’s network of community volunteers. These dedicated volunteers were asked to head out to surrounding villages to collect treatment cards from clients on antiretroviral therapy, to use the cards to pick up the drugs from area health facilities and to then return to the village to deliver the drugs to respective clients.

Using bicycles as the only mode of transport, the volunteers rode up to 20 kilometers roundtrip along small village paths to avoid the main roads blocked by rowdy youth. Volunteers used the same means to also distribute food and provide other psychosocial services to project clients. This cadre of good Samaritans demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to service by risking their own lives to ensure that clients had the medications and food they needed for survival.

“I was so scared of the rioting group youths. I could not walk to hospital to get my drugs,” said one ART client named Mary. “Thanks to the TCB volunteers who worked hard to ensure I did not miss out on the drugs. I am praying that the political problems in our country will soon be solved so that we continue to live in harmony like before.”

Children were also not spared during the crisis. They missed school for three weeks due to insecurity reasons. In one village in the Karungu area, three orphans supported by the project were also beaten up when police broke into their house searching for rioters who had just escaped from the nearby shopping center. When project staff heard of the incident, they rushed to their rescue and took them to the nearby St. Camillus hospital. The children have since been discharged and are well.

Now the situation has improved and calm has returned in the villages. And thanks to dedicated staff and volunteers, project services continue.

Christophe Droeven, CRS’ country representative in Chad, was recently evacuated from the capital, N’Djamena. He spoke with CRS’ Lane Hartill from Belgium.

Last Wednesday, I was in Abéché with some staff. I received information after talking with different people that rebels were in the area, not far from our position.

Christophe Droeven. CRS photo.

I asked our staff in N’Djamena to prepare an evacuation plan. When I got back to N’Djamena, and realized that something could happen quickly, I backed up computer files and email. I removed the electrical fuse from the office to prevent a fire from starting, and, with the guard, removed fuel from the vehicles.

We were in the French school that was secured by the French military with snipers, armored cars, and tanks. There were 217 people there and a lot of them were children. Around 9 a.m., a heavy battle started. There was heavy tank and artillery fire. Tanks were shooting 30 meters from where we were. The walls were shaking. We opened the windows so they didn’t shatter on us. Everyone was down under tables. We were talking to the children, trying to keep them calm. We were under the tables for 7 hours.

We had two 20-minute breaks during those seven hours where we could go out and get some fresh air. At that point, we saw people in the streets looting, people running by with TVs on their heads.

I was not too worried. My wife and I had been in a similar situation in Burundi. So we were taking the lead in the school and giving people advice.

Fighting could resume quickly. The information I’m getting is that there are a lot of bodies in the street. Houses are being burned, and there is a lot of looting. The house of one of our staff has been looted. One of our national staff went to the CRS office yesterday, and, at that point, everything was OK.

Peter Kimeu, CRS’ regional technical advisor for partnership, global solidarity and justice, shares his condolences for the loss of Father Michael Kamau and his plea for peace.

This past Saturday, Father Michael Kamau of the Nakuru diocese lost his life to the downward spiraling violence in Kenya. A man of faith, kindness and inspiration, Father Michael will be deeply missed.

His death is the terrible result of terrifying ethnic divisions that are splitting Kenya in two. Father Michael was returning from the seminary where he taught, in Kakamega, to his home diocese. Like thousands of other Kenyans, he was stopped at a roadblock by a gang of vengeful youth. He was asked to show his ID, and when his name revealed that he was of the opposing Kikuyu ethnic group, the gang brutally killed him on the roadside. Read the rest of this entry »