Snapshots of December 2013

A few photos from December in Bunia. This is a wood carving of the Nativity (it's hard to make it out in this photo, sorry) that we bought from a local artist. I had been decorating the house with Christmas cards we received from the U.S. in previous years, and I was struck at how, well, white all the figures were - the angels, Jesus, Mary. It made me appreciate all the more this depiction of Jesus in an African context, in African art.

Douglas has been teaching a course on Language Development to the second-year Bible Translation degree students at Shalom University. They have been learning and reflecting on what their teams will need to do -- besides translation -- to equip and encourage their communities to use their languages to the fullest.

This is the translation classroom at Shalom. It has been specially outfitted with computers so they can learn to use the software programs for Bible translation.

A few days before we left Congo for the holidays, our friends Rev Kegomoti (left) his wife Regine, and their son Blaise, came to visit us. Blaise is visiting from Kindu, where he is a medical student. He'll be leaving soon to do his internships in Kinshasa. Regine brought along snacks: small, round waffles (people make them in local shops) and hard-boiled eggs.

I took these on the way to the airport the day we left town for the holidays. You can see how dusty it is. A few months ago, the government sent in road graders to smooth out the roads and prepare some of them to be paved. We hope that once the main road is paved, the dust will be significantly less. For now, I put a handkerchief over my face when I have to walk through it.

Here you can see some of the worst of the dust. Many people have to work in it all day: motorcycle taxi drivers, money-changers, and those who have other road-side businesses, such as petrol stands. I wonder what it's doing to their lungs.

This one's a bit less dusty, so you can see some of the activity. In the road straight ahead of us, a man with a push-cart - one of the main ways of transporting goods, since using cars or motorcycles can get expensive. You can also see rebar sticking up on top of the buildings on the right, where new construction is going up.