crossthreaded

The 30 June deadline for the repatriation of Burundians living in the Mtabila refugee camp in Tanzania is coming up soon. Sanitation, markets, schools and more are being shut down in the transition of the camp from housing refugees to the Tanzanian army.

Processing of refugees is slow, so it is unclear if the 30 June date will hold fast. The camp is the last of its kind in Tanzania, several others having closed in the last few years. Many of the refugees in Mtabila were from the 1993/1994 group that fled during those years’ violence.

It is reported that some fear returning to Burundi for fear of reprisal killings that would result from supposed support of the opposition groups operating in Tanzania. The country has been declared safe to return to and live in since 2002.

A horrific outbreak of violence in 1972 has resulted in a lot of refugees today that were born outside Burundi and raised in refugee camps. They wonder what they have to return to in a country to which they’ve never been. Potential property disputes are another concern to individuals and families that left Burundi.

UNHCR and other international organizations are offering aid and some help to those being returned. Here are a couple of examples:

http://www.theirc.org/where/african_great_lakes_tanzania_programs.html

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/echo/12451530803.htm

I haven’t been able to find too much information regarding Burundians applying for Tanzanian citizenship. I’ve read that some have applied and are being considered, and also that most are not being allowed to apply, but are being made to repatriate to Burundi.

Here are another few sites related to the Mtabila closure and life in the camp.

http://web.unfpa.org/focus/tanzania/rape.htm

http://allafrica.com/stories/200905220170.html

(credit: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/echo/12451530803.htm)

We found a great little, Victorian house in town to buy. It was within our price range, but all of the down payment and closing costs would have stretched us pretty thing financially. The backyard was beautiful, with fruit trees and flowering bushes. There were wood floors, too.

The owner counteroffered and wanted an answer from us by noon today. We were going to have to work with our banker and realtor to figure out some last minute changes to the offer they made. Between all of the back and forth negotiating and the stress this house would put on our finances, coupled with some health issues we’re working through at the moment, we decided last night to forego this beautiful little home. It’ll be good for someone else, Lord willing.

So, we keep looking and hope that God throws the perfect house and opportunity into our laps.

I am by no means technology super-savvy. I can generally work my way around computers and their various paraphrenalia after fighting with them all for a few hours. This has led me to trying out the latest modern marvel available for download at my public library.

I can download audio books, CDs, and movies from the library’s website. Wow! That’s awesome! I absolutely love the library, and now I can take my books with my after I download them to my mp3 player. I can walk to work and listen to a book. Amazing, in theory.

The trick behind all of this is that the files have to be in mp3 format, which the book that I downloaded wasn’t. I had even erased all of the songs on my mp3 player so that there would be room for the book. I had tried to see if the memory card in my digital camera would fit in the player, but it was too big. So, all my music is now gone.

I got the book to the mp3 player, only to discover I couldn’t listen to it because the files weren’t in mp3 format. I tried to download a file converter. That didn’t work either as I have to pay for the service to do that. I don’t want to do that. So, I am now trying to delete the book from my mp3 player and put my songs back on. The computer keeps telling me that there is an error for each song that I try to put on my mp3 player. It’s been sweetly repeating the same message for several days now. I am about at my wit’s end with technology. I think I will turn on the radio in my car and go to the library, sink into a big cushiony chair and read a tangible book this evening.

When businesses partner with local non-profits, they can see an increase in the amount of people purchasing their goods and services.

There is a real estate company in the town where I live that is always partnering with local organizations to increase awareness of the work the latter do and serving as a donation drop-off point for many of them. In the winter, they were where you could drop off scarves and hats for those who needed it, and now you can drop off canned dog and cat food for the humane society. My husband and I are in the process of buying a home, and I’d like to use them as our realty company just because of the work they do supporting local non-profits.

Another way for businesses to work with local non-profits is to donate a percentage of profits during a specified month to a non-profit and to advertise this through flyers, ads online (Craigslist, your local newspaper) and in print, and through your e-mail newsletter list, for example. Businesses can also round up the price(s) of a product(s) to the nearest $1, $5, or $10 and donate the difference between the cost of the item(s) and the amount to which the item(s) were rounded up.

There are lots of other ways for non-profits and businesses to help increase their public reach and influence by working with one another to raise money for a non-profit. A business may very well find that their reputation as a community-serving business will draw in a new set of customers. Be creative and work together to make your local community services stronger and more viable in these tough economic times!

I grew up in a household where dinner often came out of a box or bag. I loved Hamburger Helper and Shake n’ Bake with Ranch Style Beans. Those were pretty good, except when there wasn’t enough stroganoff to go around or the bottom of the pork chops were soggy from the breading. I was a picky, bottomless pit, and I still am.

So, we usually threw away our bananas when they got yucky. I was the only one that actually ate them, so if I didn’t finish them quick enough, they were wasted. Fast forward a few years, and that’s still been my general policy. I try to calculate how much my husband and I will eat per week in an effort not to over buy, but it seems that, inevitably, bananas will end up in the trash.

That is, until my husband discovered making banana bread. He’s a cooking fool, so he makes his own pizza (the dough, too), and all sorts of other homemade happiness. A couple of weeks ago, we had 4 rotting bananas, and he turned them into banana bread. It was so good!

Related to this new-found wonder, I found out another way about banana bread. At work, one of my responsibilities is to throw out old food in our refrigerator once a week. There were a couple halves of banana in a plastic bag, rotting away, cold and alone. I thought that was the most disgusting thing in the world and chunked it. I mean, who puts bananas in the refrigerator? Then my boss wasn’t happy with me when I told her, like I was supposed to know that rotting bananas are worth somethng, like this is common sense in the world of those who cook and those that don’t.

Now, I know, and I will now respect rotting bananas more, as long as there is someone in the immediate vicinity who likes to bake. If not, they’re getting chunked.

This building takes up a city block with the courtyards and fountain around it. This was my first time to Salt Lake City, and Mama and I spent quite a while driving around the Temple Square. I saw it from every angle about five or six times as we looked for  a parking spot. Unfortunately, there was a convention at the Mormon conference center across the street, and the area was packed with people and cars. Then there was a wedding going on somewhere nearby. A couple was having their picture taken in the Square.

There was an Administration building, a conference center, and Office building, and the Temple. A block or so away from all of that was the Zion bank. Downtown Salt Lake is like nothing I’ve ever seen.

My latest obsession is GoodSearch.com. It still baffles me that I can raise money for an organization simply by searching the internet using goodsearch.com as my search engine. It’s powered by Yahoo!, so I’m not getting weird results, or no results at all, and a penny or so for every search I do goes directly to the organization I want to support.

I’m so excited about Good Search that I sent out an reminder to my co-workers today reminding them to use Good Search when they surfed the net for work. In the last month or so, we’ve raised $2.68 or so. That certainly doesn’t seem like much, but that’s only with seven or so people actually using Good Search for us on any semblance of a consistent basis. Imagine what that total could be even if only a couple hundred of the nearly 700 current active supporters our modest-sized non-profit used Good Search when they used the internet! I can’t even imagine the possibilities of what Good Search could do for an organization that really capitalizes on its potential.

We headed to the mountains last weekend for a change of scenery in my 2002, front-wheel drive Chevy Cavlier. That’s a little scary in itself. We managed to find some incredibly small mountain town called Jamestown. It consisted of a cafe, pretty nice post office, and a little park. The houses on the outskirts of town looked like something out of east Texas or Louisiana. They were different colors, wood showed through the paint in several spots, they leaned a little to one side, and there were a lot of trucks that looked like they hadn’t moved in about fifteen years.

We continued on up the mountain, brave explorers that we are, and found out quickly that when you go up a mountain here, you definitely go up. The pavement ended pretty suddenly at the top of the mountain, and then it was time to go down. I got a cool new GPS toy for Christmas, and all of the roads in the area seemed to kind of just spider out from a main road and just end. There are some brave folks who live in places like that.

Down the mountain we went again, in second gear and foot on the brakes most of the time. We whizzed (as much as possible with the 5-10 mph speed bump they plopped down in the middle of town) through Jamestown, and ended up back in Boulder. It was a sudden exodus from the mountains back into Boulder, and everything changed to city life so quickly, it was hard to make the adjustment from mountain man to Boulder.

I just finished reading An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography by Paul Rusesabagina, the man who was the inspiration for the film “Hotel Rwanda.”

I’m still trying to get my head around what he wrote. There’s no way to imagine what he saw, felt, smelled, experienced. However, he writes so openly and simply that even the most complicated experience or thought is communicable, at least in essence.

Having worked with Burundians and a few Rwandans that have resettled as refugees in the United States, I still had little understanding of the specific stories the people I worked with had about the atrocities they witnessed from which they fled. When I read this account, I had a slightly better understanding of the politics at play in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, as well as the groupthink mentality that distorted so many so quickly. Also, just to read a personal account opened my eyes a small bit.

800,000 killed in 90 days, or so. 1,268 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were sheltered in the hotel Rusesabagina managed. Words were his weapon of choice to save those in his hotel. They are still his weapon through his book. He clearly and openly discusses the lack of responsibility and action on the parts of the UN, the U.S., Rwandans, and others.

One New Year’s evening a few years back, I was waiting for my friends to return home so that the festivities could begin. I was in New Waverly, Texas, which boasts the best pie in the area, served at the Waverly House restaurant.

It was about ten o’clock at night, and I wandered into St. Joseph’s church. A service was being held, and I just took my place, amazed at the beauty of the sanctuary and what was going on around me. I ended up taking communion, without realizing what a huge insult that was given that I am a Protestant.

I drove back through New Waverly a few weeks ago while I again waited for the same friend to come and have lunch at Waverly House restaurant with me. I drove by the white church, and read about its history on the state historical marker sign out front. The area has a large Polish population, and the church was built to reflect its European heritage. It was a place of familiarity for the new immigrants, with the same customs and rituals they were used to at home.

I didn’t go inside this time, but I stood outside awhile, enjoying the peace and beauty that only God could build.