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.
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