Community Meetings - Ituri Team Blog Post

We are really encouraged with the amount of work we have been able to accomplish in the last month since first arriving in Bunia. We have spent time in each of the three communities we are targeting (Vilo, Bogoro, and Kagaba) setting up committees with whom we aim to work closely as we continue to develop our project.

We started in each community by organizing a community meeting, which was attended by elders and representatives from various groups of the community. In Vilo and Kagaba this meeting was pretty much open to all who wanted to come as we had filled-to-capacity meetings with faces of curious kids peaking through windows to hear about what was going on. In Kagaba, we were welcomed by a traditional community clap greeting and were even given a limb full of bananas as we left! These meetings were translated in Swahili, French, and English and lasted about 3 hours. The communities nominated individuals to represent different groups from their community and to be their voice on our committee. These people generally included the local chief, community leaders, a women’s representative, adult representatives for youth, two teenagers, teachers, pastors, and a person with physical disabilities.

Scott capturing the attention of kids from Vilo

Our experience in Bogoro was a little different from that of Vilo and Kagaba. It seems to us that the community in Bogoro has different expectations for our project.  During our first community meeting there was not the same community wide participation that we experienced in the other two villages as only a smaller group attended this first meeting in Bogoro. Based on questions asked with this group it is clear that the dynamics in Bogoro are starkly different from that which we observed and experienced in Vilo and Kagaba. We have decided to slow down the development of our activities in Bogoro until we can come to agreement with community members on the vision of our project, which is to bring the youth together of three communities through a sport and peace education program.  

Selina with her friends from Vilo

In between community and committee meetings the Ituri Team has really enjoyed getting to know the youth in each community. Scott has been making friends by standing and walking on his hands…a site to see! Selina has been a real hit with the girls in the communities as she chats away in Swahili with her new friends and I have enjoyed sitting down with the kids and sharing with them some of the items we have brought along with us from the US such as our hammocks and books. The time that we have spent with the youth in each community reminds us of why we are here and gives us the energy and motivation required to get through our lengthy meetings. 

Stephen sitting down with kids from Bogoro

We have also been making some new friends in the Bunia area where we are living via an English-speaking church service Sunday evenings. We have been invited by the MedAir team to play volleyball on Saturdays and have also started to make friends with a group from Samaritan’s Purse.  Daily power outages have also called for us to be creative in our ability to find things to do without electricity. Stadtland (a German game similar to scattergories), Catch Phrase, our own made up games, teaching new card games to our host family, have all been ways we have managed to find ways to make the best of our time together.    

Adyeri, Amoty, Abooki - Ituri Team Blog Post

Karibu! Bienvenue! Welcome! This is the first of the Ituri Team’s blog posts, through which we hope to share our journey in Eastern Congo. Scott, Selina, and I (Stephen), “the Ituri Team,” have moved to Bunia, in the Ituri region of Eastern Congo where we are working on a project aimed at bringing together the youth of three divided communities through sports and peace education programs. This is Sports4HOPE’s first project and we are thrilled to be a part of this new experience.

We are writing to you from Bunia, so our journey has already achieved its first milestone: getting to Congo. This was not an easy task, taking us about four days from when we left Atlanta airport to arriving in Bunia and requiring of us to travel by plane, taxi, bus, motorbike, car, boat, and land cruiser! Needless to say, we are happy to be settling in Bunia and getting used to life in Eastern Congo. Daily medication, sleeping under mosquito nets, boiled water, daily power outages, early morning calls to prayer, dusty and seemingly impassable roads, awkward moments of not knowing how to respond correctly in Swahili, and being called ‘muzungu’ or white person by every child under the age of seven are just a few of the things that we will be getting used to as we adjust to life in Bunia.

A second milestone for us was organizing our first project committee in Vilo, one of the three communities targeted by our project. What an experience to sit down in front of a room full of people both young and old looking at you, waiting to hear what new idea you are bringing to their community; what a challenge! The meeting took several hours, was translated in three languages, and grew in numbers as time went on due to the news spreading throughout the community of our team’s presence. The results are encouraging as we have a community-elected committee to help direct the development of our activities in Vilo, something which we believe will be vital to the success of our project.     

The name of our blog may seem a bit strange, however, it has been chosen because these are the names given to us by our local host Kalongo and his wife Aiki. Kalongo is the coordinator of Synergie Simama, our partnering local non-profit organization, and has graciously opened up his home to the Ituri Team for the duration of our time in Bunia.  Adyeri is the name given to Selina, Amoty is the name given to Scott, and Abooki is the name given to me. These types of names are given to those who are part of a community and the use of which is traditionally restricted to within a community. We already feel very much apart of a community thanks to Kalongo and Synergie Simama.

In addition to the Ituri Team’s blog (all posts will be here, on the main Sports4HOPE blog), we invite you to follow our individual blogs as we would like to share with you our individual experiences here in Eastern Congo. You can follow Selina’s by clicking here, Scott’s by clicking here, and mine by clicking here. We look forward to sharing this journey with you.  

Stephen Reynard on behalf of the Ituri Team


VISIT OUR WEBSITE: www.sports4hope.org