Night life in the camps and a new resouce - Medair Lives

I wonder what the title of this post evoked for you? Were you wondering about night clubs in the camps (there are none)? Were you thinking about violence that happens at night (unfortunately, that is part of the reality of refugees as drug gangs and the Rohingya rebel group sometimes make life difficult for people)? I often wonder how people deal with the rats at night (particularly securing the food commodities they get from the nutrition clinics from the rats)? Or have you heard reports of Christians being persecuted in the camp in the last month (this took place at night)?

Actually those realities had nothing to do with the title of this blog post. It has to do with a refugee who documents night life in the camps through his photography. Check it out here: https://asiatimes.com/2020/02/the-nightlife-of-rohingya-refugees/.

I think that this article gives a glimpse into the lives of the Rohingya. They are discouraged by the lack of a future. They continually retell the stories of horrors that they faced in Myanmar. They like to be social. In the absence of school, people like this young man seek to train themselves in other things (like photography) as a coping mechanism. The horror of their stories cannot erase the creative impulse that drives poets, musicians and photographers, like this young man. And the case brought against the government of Myanmar in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gave at least momentary hope to a people who seem to have so little.

If you are wondering how this young man gets gets his photos out to the Asia Times, your thoughts are going where mine went. There is no network for data in the camp (it was cut off a few months ago). But refugees are also nothing if not resourceful and resilient. They find a way to do the things they want (and need) to do!

The last two months have been super intense for Christine and I. The number of international staff has dwindled to between 4-5. This means that we are constantly covering for each other. It has become more and more difficult to get visas for international staff - for all international NGOs, not simply ours. The Covid-19 situation around the world will not make this any easier. But just when I was beginning to despair of us getting our visas renewed in May, today we had a Nepali consultant get a work permit! Thanks be to the conventional-wisdom-tables-turning God that we serve!

I find myself more at peace with life in Bangladesh and more drawn to this country and the people we work with (those people, for me, are all Bangladeshi). I think this is my heart giving itself to this place and these people. I don't know exactly what that means.

Something that might tell you about the rhythm of our life here is that yesterday I found the time to watch a video that I no longer remember how long ago I opened in my browser.... It was as if I found it anew (except that it was already open on my browser).... It is this video: youtube.com/watch?v=bAB1iyexxRo&feature=youtu.be. Check it out! For those of you who are interested in knowing more about the lives of people connected to Medair (local and international workers, refugees etc), you can write and email to florian.ecuyer@medair.org and ask more about this. My understanding is that you would get content specifically related to the different types of lives connected to Medair.

Thanks for your prayers -- they really are what keeps us going!

Praise for:

1. A new visa for one of our international staff members - woohoo!
2. God's grace in the midst of a reality that often seems to be spiraling out of control!
3. Amazing Medair staff - at the base, in the camps and at HQ
4. Christine & I finding our place here in Medair Bangladesh - God confirms His call over and over
5. Thanks that, in the face of dwindling supplies and rising prices, we were able to procure the personal protection equipment that we needed if we would need to face caring for people with Covid-19 in our clinics - this was no small feat!

Prayer for: 

1. Our visa application which will be made early in May (if the world as we know it doesn't cease to exist before that time....)
2. Covid-19 to NOT make it to the camps - this would be an unmitigated disaster (for which we are, nonetheless, preparing)
3. Covid-19 to be a reminder that we are not in control of our lives (that is a delusion), and that we need the One who created this world and who also will walk with us day-to-day through the suffering and the triumph!

Refugee boys caked in mud and other news!

Our communications person shared a link to this story a couple of weeks ago: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/24/i-want-to-tell-of-our-suffering-comms-crackdown-puts-rohingya-on-mute-bangladesh-coxs-bazar.

In our last blog we talked about how kids will be kids (interestingly enough someone mentioned this very line to me in church while in the US), in spite of difficult circumstances. Check out the wonderful picture of two young Rohingya refugees caked in mud in the article above!

The article also gives us the perspective of young people on the ban on internet in the camps - what this means practically for them. Here are some other challenges for us as an organization:

1. The only way we have to communicate between the office and staff in the camps is telephony. In the past we used WhatsApp and Skype for sending reports and other communication. Connecting even by phone is becoming more difficult.
2. Emergency services in the camps are handicapped by not being able to use location services.

Christine & I were in Minneapolis over Christmas. We were blessed to spend Christmas with our kids and Christine's extended family. It was also wonderful to be at our church twice during the short stay. 

For those of you who celebrate the advent season, we pray that it was meaningful for you. It was again incredibly meaningful for us to practice the discipline of Advent-keeping by reading the devotionals by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This quote really resonates with us:

We are, no doubt, among the sated and the satisfied. But we also find that we have carried for some time a restlessness in us for the least served, the forgotten and the vulnerable. So we are so gratified and privileged to have been able to walk alongside the Rohingya throughout 2019. We also pray that we can get our visas in May in order to fulfill our contractual agreement to continue to work with the Rohingya through the end of 2020. 

Praise: 

1. Those 45 nutrition recruitments happened - thanks for your prayers! However, a couple of key nutrition staff turned down our offer, so these positions remain unfilled. Please be in prayer about this. 
2. The 3 old nutrition sites were handed over and we started work in the 4 new sites on Jan 5.
3. Just deep gratitude for this opportunity to be with our kids and extended family. 

Prayer: 

1. Onboarding of new nutrition staff and a quick sense of unity and esprit du corps between new and old staff.
2. For acceptance by the refugees in these 4 new camps who have lost their former nutrition service provider(s) and are transitioning to our clinics.
3. For God's leading as we walk alongside the Rohingya
4. For visas for us (in May) and others currently in the process.

Medair Advent devotional and news of the week!

Greetings all,

Christine & I want to share with you an Advent devotional put out by Medair for this advent season. There is only one devotional per week. But you might find it significant as you prepare to receive anew this year the One who came as a refugee, only to become the Lord of all! Here is a link where you can find it: https://app.box.com/s/xxzbfxak3pkn9l0qa7xlfux514ezomj4.

Our international team here in BGD is again doing our Dietrich Bonhoeffer Advent devotional that we did last year as well. We are looking forward to preparing for Advent together.

The Rohingya  volunteers  role playing during training

We had a very productive work week this past week. Phil is so thankful for all the things that his team accomplished. The nutrition transition has presented a number of staffing and logistical challenges. But two logs staff created a spreadsheet yesterday to help us all think about some of these challenges in a new way. One of the nutrition officers, Saiful, brought his outreach supervisors from the 3 current nutrition sites to the project office to train them so they could in turn hold trainings with their Rohingya volunteers. That was a direct application of a training of trainers that he attended last week. It is always nice to see those applications.

More role playing

Praise:

1. A very productive work week!
2. Opportunity to talk with our kids on Thanksgiving morning!
3. Significant growth in our Bangladeshi staff all across field office and our programs.

Prayer:

1. Wisdom for negotiating with UN partners for health and nutrition programs
2. Wide open doors for continued ministry to the Rohingya through our programs. 

The complexities of refugee life

I have always been intrigued by the tendency of some media to paint things in broad strokes which tend to envision things in black or white. It is either total despair or absolute joy - there seems to be little in between these polarities. Obviously this is a broad generalization. But I sometimes wonder if remarks such as, "Wow, this trip made me realize just how blessed we are in the US," are born out of such a bipolar worldview that tends to only see the material realities of people's lives.

Saleem showing a picture of his
home in Myanmar

When Florian Ecuyer, a media employee from headquarters, was here in September, we talked some about this inability of media to nuance the realities of refugees' lives. And I think that Florian's photos from that trip do a great job of pointing to the nuances.

This first photo of Saleem is fairly neutral. He no doubt has remorse over not being able to live in his home, but rather has to live in the largest refugee camp in the world. But he is able to show people a picture of his home in Myanmar - maybe in some way this is healing for him. I don't know. But it also is probably part of his ardent desire to be able to return to his home country and the place of his origins.

The joy of Children

Children are often more resilient than adults. And one sees this in the camps. Kids will be kids.... There are kids playing everywhere in a camp of 1 million people. Florian did a great job of capturing that joy that children continue to feel - maybe wherever they are, in whatever circumstances they find themselves. And this is true of the Rohingya children!


This is not, however to deny that there is anguish and pain in the camps as well. Florian captured this well in this picture of a man carrying a woman on his back. Honestly, I don't know the story. It is hard to whitewash the fact that this woman has to be carried wherever she wants to go. But she was leaving a health clinic. And the fact is that she likely has access to better healthcare than she would back in Myanmar.

One of the ironies of life in this mega refugee camp is that life for the Rohingya here in the camps is, in some very existential ways, better than it is for their family members who have remained back in Myanmar. There are those in the host community here in Bangladesh who also contend that the Rohingya live better than they do. That is a difficult equation to work out. But the fact is that the life of the Rohingya here is not black and white. It is not simply a picture painted in the broad strokes of despair. And it isn't a portrait of people living an easy life either.

The sun setting over the rice paddies
surrounding our office/home

But isn't that life for all of us? It would seem, given the staggering number of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world right now, that none of us is all that far removed from a life of displacement. How would you respond if you were forced from your home? Would you be able to find joy? How would you combat creeping despair? What would be your strategies for resilience? These are questions to which the Rohingya work to find answers each day.

We are thankful to be able to walk alongside the Rohingya, in their delight and their jubilation, as well as in their desperation and their hopelessness. Isn't this what Jesus did when walked he on this earth? And we are asked to do no less.

Praise:

• For a good R&R
• For the Nutrition sector continuing to move forward in the plans to move partners to new camps
• For the Gambia opening a case against Myanmar for the systematic injustice against the Rohingya - a real source of rejoicing for them!

Prayer: 

• For ongoing work to be done for moving Nutrition clinics
• For project proposals for Shelter and Health sectors
• For the courage to continue to walk alongside the Rohingya in the complexity of their lives

Changes in the climate for refugees

There have been significant changes over the last couple of months in the climate in which the refugees live. Some of these changes are almost inherent in the lives of long-term refugees. This article summarizes the challenges well: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/nov/04/our-only-aim-is-to-go-home-removal-plans-raise-tensions-in-rohingya-camp

Praise:

• For renewal of our visas in August
• A time of refreshing as we are currently on R&R
• A really positive review of the nutrition (NUT) program by one of the funders - WFP

Prayer:

• The nutrition sector (which is made up of all UN agencies and NGOs) has decided to integrate nutrition programming by having one NGO responsible for all nutrition activities in a single camp. This means that we will be handing over our current 3 nutrition sites to other NGOs and taking on 4 new (to us) camps beginning next year. The transition process will be quite involved and we ask for prayers that it will have minimal impact on the children and PLWs (pregnant and lactating women) whom we serve. This is an exciting move but will mean a huge amount of work for the Nutrition team as well as support teams like logistics and HR. 
• We have had 3 US team members who have failed to get visas from the Bangladeshi embassy - pray for breakthrough!
• For a number of project proposals currently in the works for our Bangladesh program. 

LD family news

Thanks so much for praying about the rain! We heard from a few of you that you were taking this call to prayer very seriously. About the time that we wrote our last blog those heavy rains started diminishing. And the rest of the monsoon season has been much more moderate.

Our family (without Anna in this pic) after Commencement

Thanks for walking with the Rohingya in this way! The weather is, currently, the least of their problems. But that was not self-evident when we wrote that last post.

Since most of you know our family we want to update you on everyone. We have had two wonderful times together with our whole family this year. (Ironically, when we took a trip in 2004 we wondered if it would be our last big trip with all of us together)!

The 2019 Nursing class at pinning ceremony

At the end of April we were able to return to the States to celebrate Annika’s graduation from Goshen College’s nursing program. We found an AirBNB in the Goshen area so we could be together as family during the weekend we were in Goshen. We are so thankful to the Lord for how Annika thrived in her studies, socially and spiritually at Goshen College!

After commencement weekend we left Annika at Goshen (to prepare for the nursing exam) and had more time in Minnesota with extended family as well.

Annika passed her nursing exam in June and started working at Mayo Clinic in Rochester the end of August. She has a great roommate, and has started working 12 hours shifts as a nurse on a medical-surgical ward. Please pray for her in this adjustment.

Back to Minneapolis on mom Lindell's birthday to celebrate

In July (when we came to the end of our 1 year contract with Medair) we met all the kids in Vienna in order to bike along the Danube river. We have dreamed of this trip for some time! We spent basically a week on the bikes. We generally biked 5-6 hours per day and found campgrounds to stay in for the night. We biked from Vienna to Budapest (probably around 400 kms in total) and then spent a few days exploring Budapest (an incredibly alluring city!). Then we took the train back to Vienna with our bikes and dispersed to our various corners of 

the world.

Nathan and Anna are in Minnesota now. Anna is working with a study abroad program (with which she herself went to Ecuador a few years ago). Nathan will start working with a new immigration law firm the first of October. So they anticipate being in Minnesota for the time being.

Lydia and Annika had planned to graduate from college at the same time. But because Lydia struggled with Lyme disease during most of her college career she took a semester off last year and therefore was not ready to graduate at the same time as Annika. (One of the ironies of our life is that people would occasionally ask us how we could take our kids to Africa and expose them to terrible diseases – and then Lydia contracted Lyme disease when we were back on furlough in the US, was diagnosed immediately from the telltale bullseye rash and treated with antibiotics – yet she has continued to struggle with it). So she is finishing up her last semester doing independent study classes while volunteering on a Native American reservation in northeast Montana. She is on her way out there as we speak.

On the train from Budapest back to Vienna

As all of our kids move on from their undergraduate college careers, we are incredibly grateful to the Lord for how God has worked in their lives and sent professors and faculty into their lives who have been instrumental in their formation. We are also grateful for how each of them grew in their relationship with Jesus, the body of Christ and the larger community around them. Their experiences in college have varied greatly! And it is probably safe to say that each of our children has taken decisions that we would not have taken in their place and had adventures of their own which we could not have imagined possible. But that is normal. And we are so thankful that each of them continues in their desire to follow the One who has been the motivation for what Christine and I have done with our lives, as a couple.

Christine & I are back in Bangladesh and continuing to enjoy the work that we are doing with the Rohingya. Our extended contract goes through the middle of January at this point. Thanks for your love for our family over the years! This has helped to shape who we are.

Monsoon rains flooding the Rohingya Refugee Camp

I'm sending this link to a BBC article that just came out. We've been experiencing torrential rains for the past week. The flooding is really getting bad. Please just be praying for Rohingya -

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48905031

This article talks about Camp 6 where we have one of our nutrition sites. Beneficiaries were not able to come to the site today because flooding was so bad they couldn't reach the site. There is a photo in a market area which is a path we take to get to the nutrition site. For us to access this site we have a 30 minute walk - it is right in the middle of the huge refugee camp. It's ironic, over the past few months IOM and other organizations have been frantically trying to set up anti-erosion measures using sandbags, drainage, bamboo, etc to try and avoid flooding and landslides. However the volume of rain we've gotten over the last few days means there is just no where for the water to go.