Launching the new academic year, Saturday, October 24, 2009

Saturday, October 24, was the official opening of the school year for UCBC. It was a community celebration. A welcome center had been under construction for several weeks--a covered, outdoor space for occasions such as this. During the past two weeks, workmen were diligent to complete the structure. They pounded the dirt floor with timbers to flatten it. They carried stones, hand-dug from the property, to lay as foundation for the floor. On Friday, the day before the opening ceremony, they poured and spread cement.

Saturday morning began with heavy rains that swept in from the south. By mid morning, the skies began to clear. Students had already been busy setting up chairs in the main room of the academic building. They set the welcome center as the main stage and seating area for faculty and guests, hung banners, and started preparing food for the expected crowd of 500.

By the time the ceremony began in the afternoon, we had blue sky and sun. The energy among the staff and students was electric. The Ebenezer Choir, the student-led choir, began our time together with praise and worship music primarily from their own tradition and language.

Students and community members gathered along with family and friends. There were a couple of folks with MONUC insignias, various local leaders and public officials, and local business people.

The day was important not just to mark the start of the academic year, but to live out two guiding values of CI-UCBC: Community and Service. CI-UCBC is committed to opening the doors of knowledge (what is referred to here as science) to the community. CI-UCBC is taking active steps to breach the walls that have kept knowledge and power in the hands of a few. Knowledge/Science in Congo, as David Kasali has reminded me on several occasions, has been locked away. It has been under control of the few and the powerful for personal gain, prestige, and destruction. CI-UCBC is working to redeem knowledge and science so that it is not only available to all, but is used for the common good, to improve life here, transform this country.

So to invite the community, including the neighbors who live along the edges of the property and the workmen who labor on the buildings, is to say, "We are here with you--not just for you. We are here as part of this community for the good of all."

That is one reason why, even though the academic building is not, in American terms, "complete," CI-UCBC has built the welcome center and begun construction of the Community Center. Until Saturday I had been confused and even unsettled at this decision. After all, why wouldn't we want to complete a building, finish, furnish, and outfit it completely before starting on yet another project? It didn't fit my American frame of mind.

On Saturday I understood. After the official ceremony, everyone was invited to look at the master building plans for the university and tour the Community Center, which is very much under construction. Following that was an opportunity to see a slide show of the architect's renderings of the entire CI-UCBC campus. It was clear from the questions and comments that community members were excited, appreciative, eager to see this work move forward. They could see that this place would provide services for them, for the community. It will be a place where community members can come for classes, groups can have meetings, outside organizations can host conferences, where services for women and children can be provided and literacy classes for the neighborhood will be housed.

Last week I heard David say, "The Congolese have said, 'We have heard. We want to see.' " By starting the Community Center, by inviting the community to the celebration, CI-UCBC was able to show in action, visibly, concretely, that CI-UCBC is living out a vision for its students, for the community, and for the nation.

David shared another powerful story recently. Two or three years ago, when CI-UCBC had only land and the whispers of construction activity, David met with a local businessman to tell him the vision of CI-UCBC and ask for his support. The man listened and indicated that perhaps he would do something. A year passed without David hearing anything more from this businessman. They met again sometime later at a meeting. The workshop was completed, the academic building was up and in use, and ground was being dug for the Community Center. The businessman admitted that after his first meeting with David, he laughed to himself, certain that nothing would come of the plans David had laid out. But now, at this meeting, the businessman was ready to admit he was wrong. That he was contributing 10 bags of cement that day (a significant contribution) and would be donating another 10 bags very soon after.

"Ten bags of cement?" you might query. "What's so great about that?" It's not only critical, material contributions to the work. It is a statement that affirms, "We have heard. We have also seen. We are part of this community and this service."