BURUNDI
Living Waters supports the Children’s Refuge in Burundi (CRIB)
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Specifically we support
Chrissie Chapman
Today, there are more than fifty children in the CRIB work (Children’s Refuge in Burundi), and a school where they are all being educated in English, along with other children from the city.
Background
Total population (millions) 7.3, Life expectancy at birth (years) 44, Adult literacy rate (% age 15 and above) 59.3, Combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio (%) 36
(Source http://www.wer-uk.org/site/pages/ui_country.asp?ItemID=4)
Burundi has been left vulnerable from years of civil war, in which an estimated 300,000 people, most of them civilians, were killed. Years of instability and war have had a detrimental effect on the country's economic infrastructure and human development.
Access to food and basic services has been hampered and there has been little opportunity for economic development. The country lacks basic social services and it is often the women and children who suffer disproportionately. People are subject to continuing disease, trauma and displacement. Burundi has some of the worst health indicators in the world.
In 1995, after the genocide, Chrissie Chapman, a trained nurse, who had already founded a maternity clinic in Burundi, suddenly was faced with the plight of the babies that were being abandoned as their parents had been killed in the genocide. One day David Ndarahutse was handed seven babies at a refugee camp and soon arrived a Chrissie’s house. She immediately took them in and began to care for them – the rest is history.
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Chrissie's Latest Newsletter:
June 2009
Here we are again, at the time of writing just two weeks away until we break for the summer holidays. It never ceases to amaze me just how the months seem to fly by so quickly and we are again getting the suitcases out and looking forward to having a break. As much as we are looking forward to a change of scenery for a few weeks, it is also quite a strange feeling as we come to pack this summer because Hannah will not be coming back to Burundi with us and so she is packing up for longer than a two-month summer break. She has just finished her IGCSE's and in August will be going to Canada to get settled before starting school in September. She is really looking forward to going and excited to make some new friends but obviously she will miss us and it sure will be strange around here with no Hannah! She is going to be living with a good friend of mine, Annabelle Campbell. Annabelle is a teacher at the King’s School in Winnipeg where Hannah will be a student. We met here in Burundi two years ago when Annabelle came for a year to teach in our school. It is wonderful how the Lord connects us to the right people at the right time. The plan at the moment is that we spend July together in the UK but right now Hannah's passport seems to be stuck in the Canadian embassy in Nairobi where it has been sitting since January waiting for a student visa. We are praying and pushing all the doors we can find to try and get some movement and get her passport back so Hannah can leave with Ben and me at the end of June - we don’t have a plan "B" so it has to come !!
Lydia has completed her course at college and has managed to get a job in a salon in Taunton, which she is delighted about as work is not easy to find at this time. Benjamin has done very well in his end of year exams and it has suddenly dawned on him that this time next year he will be in the same position as Hannah, doing his IGCSE's. We are delighted that from September 2010 we have permission to start A level subjects in our school here in Burundi, so at the moment Ben is hoping to stay in Burundi to take his A level course. Of course he could change his mind before next year so we will see!
Our CRIB kids all continue to do well. With so many young people around it is important for survival that we just take it all one day at a time and face the challenges as they come. This summer we will be making some changes, not just for the sake of changes but wherever there are people changes happen and changes usually come with a certain amount of challenges so we embrace them and keep moving forward. For the last two years we have had two couples and their families living in their own houses but in the grounds of the CRIB home. These couples, Rosa & Deo and Evariste & Annick work closely with me and the work here with CRIB.
At this time we are feeling that it is right for Evariste & Annick and their 4 children to move into a house off the CRIB compound. They will still be very much involved with our kids and Evariste will continue to work as my administrator, but it is the right time for them to have a little bit more space and a garden that doesn’t have 50 children playing in it every day!
Rosa & Deo are still very happy and settled in their home and Rosa does a wonderful job overseeing the house mothers and kids on a daily basis. Rosa is expecting a baby early September (that will be No. 4) and I have strict instructions to get back to Burundi in time to assist with the delivery. I can't miss this one; it’s a tradition as I helped catch her other 3!
It is not yet clear who are the right people to move into the house on the CRIB compound when it has been vacated but for a few months, from September to January, some very good friends of mine from Cheam, David & Sheena Pailthorpe, are coming to Burundi to help us out with some youth work with our kids and they will also be doing some teaching seminars and ministering in the Church here in Burundi and probably Rwanda, Congo and Kenya. So, the plan at the moment is that they will live in the house on the CRIB compound where they will help out with the kids when they are around and also be a support to Rosa & Deo. We will continue to pray that the Lord will show us who are the right people to live in the house on a more long term basis.
It is such a blessing that we have been able to continue to help many other people as well as the kids we have in our care. We have been able, through gifts that have come in, to build another 4 houses in the Batwa village. It is just amazing to see how that village is changing as the people are getting new homes and now growing their own crops. It is wonderful to see people who are so poor now so very encouraged and full of hope instead of despair.
There is also another village not too far away from the city centre where there are dozens of families who lost their houses and all their belongings in the heavy rains earlier this year. Again, because of donations we have been able to channel money through to buy food to feed these families and help them to start again.
We continue to be involved with the AIDS patients, especially the mothers with young children and babies. To give them something to eat and a word of encouragement is to give them hope - we can live without many things but it is hard to live without hope.
I take this opportunity to thank you again for all your love and support to me, my family and the work we are involved in with the lives of so many here in Burundi.
Wishing you God’s Richest Blessings
Chrissie.
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