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.