The Big Mess
First, some good news. Our arrival in the States was due to the pending birth of yet another Ostrander baby, a phenomenon that happens pretty much every other spring.
So… allow me the pleasure of introducing you to Ruth Kristiina Ostrander. Ruth, born on March 30, was immediately adored by her sisters Bella, Sophia, and Aimee.
Unless things change due to the COVID-19 issue, Ruth, along with the rest of us, will be flying back to the Democratic Republic of Congo on June 24.
Hopefully we’ll get to introduce Ruth to the people of our village on June 27, but life there is quite desperate at the moment. Just before I (Michael) left the DRC to come to the States to attend Ruth’s birth, some days were filled with the sounds of conflict/war (mortar shelling and gunfire) and some days we heard nothing but the moos of the cows that had yet to be stolen or killed. The loss of life amongst the locals weighs heavily upon everyone as their family and friends are either being killed in the outlying villages, or as they herd their cows, or as they fight off the Mai Mai rebels.
Lack of food has become a crisis unto itself due to the conflict as our area has been overflowing for months with a huge number of refugees from the outlying areas. Fields planted by those who had to flee were not harvested, though some people tried to sneak back home to harvest and this resulted in a few kidnappings or deaths at the hands of the Mai-Mai. Many of the refugees who fled to our area months ago didn’t plant during the recent planting season, thinking that they’d be returning home soon to plant, further impacting the serious lack of food at the moment—starvation is a reality for the community.
For months now, as the funds have come in, we’ve been working alongside of the university staff to purchase food in bulk to then distribute to those in need. When we got down to the last of our beans a couple weeks ago, we had to make the hard choice to have the remaining beans planted rather than consumed.
Most people are now surviving on cassava flour cooked into a porridge or into ugali (a “bread”) and eaten with whatever vegetables are still left in their gardens. We were trying to arrange for two plane loads of beans to be flown in from a city below the mountain, but the prices of beans and other food supplies have skyrocketed due to the COVID-19 prevention causing border closures.
It is now potato planting season, so we are currently trying to raise funds to purchase sweet potato starts to get them into at least a hundred local gardens so that in a few months there will be a more nutritious food source available. Please let us know if you would be able to help us with this vital need. We also have an ongoing program for the planting of nurseries of various vegetables; these “starts” are then distributed to the refugees to plant in their own temporary gardens.
Somehow… Michael