Bonjour, Merçi

Ca va? Ça va bien.

In our schools back in Australia we have to learn a language. It mustn't have been compulsory when I was in primary school because I never learnt a language until Year 8 when I started learning French. I learnt French for three and a half years and when I stopped learning halfway through Year 11 (because 'surely biology has to be easier than French?') I didn't ever have any thought of ever using it again.

In Australia, French is a fairly useless language. But I have been surprised as I have been here in DRC how much of my high school language experience has stuck with me despite having to recall much of it from dim, dark recesses in my mind. Don't get me wrong, I can't hold a conversation but at least I can tell someone I don't know French.

How does French come to be the language used here? The same way that English came to be used in Uganda, and Australia for that matter. Colonisation. Although I see the many benefits that colonisation has brought to many countries, I cannot help but see it as an ugly word, a word that has mostly contributed to the devastation in Africa today.

However, here in Bunia in the north east of DRC (that's the Democratic Republic of Congo, not to be confused with the country next door, Congo) while colonisation has left it's mark and may even have played it's part in creating the world that these Congolese live in today, it's the conflicts of tribal or political origins since gaining independence that have left the country destabilised and debilitated.

Why am I talking about DRC? I am here in Bunia, a largish town of around 600 000 people, with Bill and my friend Suz. We are here visiting our HOPE school and our partners Mozart and Sephora who run the project. Bill and I visited earlier this year and although I'm sure I told the students that I would look forward to coming back one day, I did not expect it to be so soon.

This time we have been here longer and it has been good to not only spend time with Bill and Suz and to visit with Mozart and Sephora and their family but also to meet some of the children and hear their stories.

This is a town that in it's recent history has been devastated by war and is now trying to recover. How you recover though, from seeing your parents hacked to death with machetes, is beyond me. Or hearing that you are the sole survivor in your family after they've been bombed. Added to the devastation of war is the HIV epidemic and in the school if you are not an orphan through the war, more likely than not you will be an orphan through AIDS.

These are some beautiful kids, gracious, joyful, and born with an inbuilt ability to dance and sing. Short of people coming here to hear them, I would love for them to come to Australia for people to meet them. And for them to see a little of this great big world that we all live in.

Flying away, looking down at houses that look like they could be placed on Old Kent Road, Pall Mall, Regent Street or Mayfair, it struck me that I have the choice to fly away. I have the means to see the world. It grieves me that we cannot give that choice to all the kids we have sponsored. Forty dollars a month doesn't change the fact that a family lives in a mud hut, without electricity and still struggles to feed the kids. But I do rejoice that we are able to offer these kids education which gives them the choice to not become a prostitute, contract HIV and become a mother at fifteen, or to not sleep on the streets, becoming a drug addict and alcoholic, stealing to support your habits.

This world we live in is a real world with real people and to support a lifestyle that we in the western world are used to it takes real amounts of money. We forget that we are only around 12% or less, and that most people in the world are not living like us. For us at Australia HOPE International we are able to do a lot with a little. But at the same time, it does takes more than play money to build a school. And we do have hopes and dreams of building Secondary Schools, Vocational Education Centres and a University, to be able to give these kids the best chance in life we can possibly give them.

So if you are thinking or praying about giving money to HOPE for any of our projects, I pray that you would consider giving real money and not Monopoly money - in whatever way that means to you.

Many blessings

bron