June 19, 2008 Dayton, Ohio

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Right now I’m trying to tie down loose ends here in Springfield and Kettering before leaving on this second mediation training project in Central Africa.   Seems like everybody needs a mediator here in Springfield in the next two weeks.   My ticket says I’ll leave Dayton on July 7, 2008.

In April I was able to meet Judy Friesen and Kim Bush who had preceded me and done the first mediation trainings in Rwanda, Kenya, the Congo and Burundi in November-December of 2006.  I followed six months behind them.   We all met in Seattle where they live, and Judy and I did a presentation on the project at the American Bar Association  conference.  I also got to do a presentation at the International Mediation Education Conference in Cleveland in the past year.

Family

Our daughter Dominique and her two little ones Gabrielle and Anne-Frederique will be here the last week in June, and we want to spend some intense time together.  Marie is doing French and English lessons via email for them,  and Jacques’ girls Isabelle and Kyielle, so that someday they might all be able to communicate in both languages.  Right now the Montrealers are heavily French and the Kettering kids are 99% English speaking. 

The rains this year have made for a lush garden, the high grass and bamboo are providing the privacy Marie demanded of nature.   Our region has been spared the flooding of the Midwest, but it reminds me of the trip West that Jacques and I made in 1993 during the last major flooding in that area.  Marie however did get into some quickly rising water near our house that inundated her car and necessitated a major cleanup.

Friends keep amazing me with their generosity and support for this trip just as they did last year. . Several are also donating children’s clothing as a couple of contacts of mine in Kigali have asked if I could support some of their work.   There’s also a little street child I hope to find in Gisenyi on the Congo border.  She is blind and mentally challenged and guided around by two older boys who are probably exploiting her in ways we can only imagine.  I’ll talk more about this if I can find her.