A few thousand more

 

Once again my pictures are better than my words, so I think I'll let them speak for themselves.

www.ahi.org.au

Be blessed

bron

a few thousand words

www.ahi.org.au

blessings

bron

Smashed but in a good way

They arrived!
Slightly delayed but safely.
They've now been here six days and I'm feeling like it's going to be a long trip. But everyone is doing well considering how much we seem to be packing into our program.
If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, to get you up to speed, I am referring to our Australia HOPE International Congolese visitors, who are here in Australia for three and a half weeks, talking in local schools and churches.
If you are in South Australia and did want to catch them they will be at Balhannah Uniting Church this Sunday morning and Coast and Vines Church at Willunga in the evening.
Because it's 12:30am and I have to be up before 6am I'm going to keep the words to a minimum and let some photos do the talking.

Many blessings
bron

Look to the right, look to the left, look to the right again.

Culture is a funny thing. For someone outside of it, it looks a little different than those who are living in it. I'm thinking right now about all the 'African artefacts' that people in the west collect and display. Wooden bowls with unique carvings, woven mats, colourful jewellery. And yet if you live in a place like Uganda, these things are just every day items, to be used and thrown away when they are past use. Culture is the norm. The things you don't notice but that are apparently different to the way others do things.

Now my experience of American culture is limited to a city of around a hundred thousand people in northern California but I have been continually surprised by how different the culture is from my Aussie worldview. It starts of course with the driving on the 'wrong' side of the road thing. My natural inclination is to look to the right to check for oncoming traffic. In a culture where traffic comes from the left this is a potentially disastrous faux pas. Fortunately for me Americans also stop for pedestrians, something that I'm also not used to.

This week we have a team of six people flying in to Adelaide from the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2011, the United Nations Human Development Index, which ranks countries on a number of development indicators, ranked the Democratic Republic of Congo at 187th, the last on their list. Australia was ranked as 2nd.

Regardless of your thoughts about the quality or authenticity of these rankings, they do give us the idea that Australia and DRC are a world away from each other. So imagine with me for a minute that you are a Congolese child who has lost his parents to war. Then imagine that you are so fortunate, more fortunate than others you know, to be able to go to a school that is run by an organisation that cares about kids and provides an education that is of such a quality that it is winning awards in it's region. Then imagine that one day some people from this organisation that is run from Australia want to come and visit you at your home, where you live with the schools principal, who is so kind as give you somewhere to live. Then imagine the day that you are told that because of your story and your ability to speak well and confidently and your performance at school that you will go with a group to Australia, a place you mostly know of as one of the places where whites with money live, to speak on behalf of yourself and your friends about your life experience.

Can you? Imagine?

Or does that, like it does to me, blow your mind?

Talk about a clash of cultures.

I am so privileged as, while the team is here, I will be living with them, helping them understand a bit about Aussie culture, trying to explain all those things that we don't notice but that seem just a little bit odd to outsiders.

Possibly the differences might seem more noticeable to the Congolese than just crossing the road differently.

If you are in South Australia and would like to see the team check the Australia HOPE International website and contact the office for more information.

Blessings

Oh! And sorry there was no blog last week, somewhere in the jetlag haze after getting back from the States, I decided that it could wait for a week.

bron