Going to Congo - Would you like to help?

On May 20, Dano and I will be traveling three hours west of Bukavo, Congo to facilitate a training for the careproviders of 30 orphan boys and girls ages 0-6, with the majority being under 3. We are seeking to raise $1100 to purchase weighted blankets and sensory toys for these children. A friend of mine from college, Holly Mulford, and her husband, Michael, have lived in Congo for almost five years working with Food for the Hungry. They are the parents of four beautiful children, two of whom are adopted from this orphanage. Holly and Michael are moving back to the States in June and working hard to secure sustainability for this small orphanage.

Background on the orphanage - It is a small orphanage that accepts infants whose mothers' died in birth and fathers' are unable to take care of them. When Holly first arrived there, most of the children were chronically malnourished and all are severely delayed for lack of being held or any attention paid to assisting them with motor skills. Because of lack of space, the orphans are returned to their families (willingly or not) once they reach around the age of five. Holly did a formula campaign and did a simple training to teach the care providers how to mix the formula and the results in the children's health have been incredible.

The director is a wonderful man who is committed to learning better ways of caring for the children and Holly trusts him. Holly asked me to do a training that incorporates elements of attachment therapy and play therapy. While I am not a child psychologist, I have learned a great deal since adopting my three children and have sought to incorporate what I learn into how I interact with orphans here in Rwanda. The theme of my training will be "The Good Shepherd" because my first goal is help the care providers feel loved and cared for and then help train them in some practical ways to encourage attachment and sensory stimulation for the children.


My Request - I am working with a women's coop here in Rwanda, AMANI, to make 30 weighted blankets that are 58x58 cm each. Our daughter, Lian, was first given a weighted blanket by Dr. Karyn Purvis as a way to apply deep pressure, thus stimulating serotonin which helps relax the child. For children who have experienced trauma and have been without physical touch in their first few months, sensory processing disorder is a common result of this lack of touch. These blankets are one way of providing them with physical pressure that doesn't require an adult (and in this case there is one adult for every eight babies). We still bring my daughter's blanket with her if I know we may be in a stressful environment. It immediately calms her. It is also one item that the children can have as their own.

In order to get the needed weight, I have to fill each blanket with 1 kg of polypellets. These are the best material to use, especially in a place where the blankets will need to be handwashed. We cannot get these polypellets here and they are $7 per blanket +tax (cheapest I could find for 1 kg). I have a few friends coming back to the States who are willing to put these in their suitcases, but I need to order them right away. Amani is still giving me an estimated cost of the blankets, but I anticipate the final cost to be close to $30. I will know by next Tuesday what the exact cost is. I want to make 30 blankets.

In addition, I am wanting to buy the following: Wilbarger Therapressure Brushes ($80 for 24 brushes), which again help to stimulate neurotransmitters that release calming chemicals in the children's brains. Again, I have personally seen the benefits of these. I am also wanting to buy a tactile massage ball ($35) for the orphanage and a set of sensory play toys ($80 for 11 toys). And I need to get these sent with friends who are traveling here as soon as possible.

My Total Request: $1100.

Children's Hope Chest has agreed to serve as the umbrella organization for this orphanage until a separate 501c3 is established. We are currently working with them to set up a giving page for this orphanage and it should be up and running early next week.

As I need to order these supplies by next week in order to ensure they arrive in time to Rwanda and in time to make the needed blankets, I am seeking to gauge interest in friends who might be interested in supporting this effort. If you would like to make a donation, please email me directly at jennifer@jukanovich.com or leave a comment saying you want to give. I will email the donation link as soon as the page is created.

Thank you for helping us love on these children in a way that makes a long-term distance to their spiritual and physical well-being.

Why I went to Swaziland

Why did I go to Swaziland? For the past six years, I have served on the board of Children’s Hope Chest, an orphan care organization that is doing amazing work in Russia, Swaziland, Uganda, and Ethiopia. In that six years, I have also become a mother to three incredible children – all through adoption. The issue of orphan care has become that much more important to me as I know first hand the effects of abandonment and neglect and it deeply affects my heart when I think that Lian or Anna or Nathanael could be one of these children waiting to be loved by someone.

And I want there to be faithful, honest, loving people who are that someone in an orphan’s life, rather than the sexual predators and vermon that literally wait outside the doors of an orphanage, vocational school or hut when these orphans are forced into the real world. So it encourages my heart when I meet more of these “someone’s” who are that safe and caring person in an orphan’s life. To meet a “gogo” (Grandmother) who appalled at the fact that Swazis who live next to a garbage dump were selling their children for sex so the family could have food on the table, chose to knock on every door and plead with the parents to find another solution. Turns out she was the solution. The need was a lack of money to send children to school. So she became their school. This gogo who has nothing herself in terms of financial means, started feeding and educating the children of the dump and now 250 children are at her carepoint every day. Children’s Hope Chest is now partnering with her and the carepoint has been matched to a church community in the States whose church members have now “adopted” all of these children by sponsoring them, visiting them annually and providing the resources needed to ensure these children are fed and educated above subsistence. This is why I wanted to go.

But I also left feeling conflicted inside because I have seen so much poverty and pain on trips just like the one I took last week. I witnessed it in my Seattle neighborhood and I witness it every day in Rwanda. I have been “over educated” when it comes to caring for the orphan and my heart and mind long to do more with that knowledge. I’m not sure what this year will bring, but I know my heart has not been broken for me to just feel good about myself for wanting to care for the orphan. My heart has been broken so it can bring forth healing.

We stopped at a homestead to learn more about what the Swazi people are experiencing on a daily basis. We were supposed to hear about the plight of the orphan. We were surprised to meet a 38 year old woman whose health has been affected by a stroke, that led to epilepsy. Ndomi. She and I are the same exact age. I noticed her foot was black and horribly deformed. As polite as possible, I asked the mom what had happened. Ndomi had been burned by oil years ago, leaving a gaping wound at least an inch deep and two inches wide on the side of her foot. Since access to a clinic is at least a day’s walk, the mother puts a salve of burnt ash as an old wives’ tale remedy. Without realizing it, the wound has become gangrene. Our team respectfully asked if we could take the woman to the clinic at our carepoint. She agreed and I found myself holding Ndomi’s hand for 45 minutes as the doctor poured hydrogen peroxide over a gangrene wound. Ndomi would look at me in fear as if to ask if she was really going to be okay and I would look straight in her eyes and tell her that I know it hurts, but she will be better. She squeezed my hand so tight. I sang “Be still and know that I am God” quietly to her.

I marveled at the inner strength and courage this woman had – a woman most of Swazi society deems unworthy – a courage to allow a group of strangers to put her in a car, take her to a clinic, pour painful medicine over her foot and allow people to poke and prod at the gangrene. A staff member then took her to the hospital so they could surgically remove the dead tissue and thus hopefully stop the gangrene from spreading. I don’t know if her body will make it.

What I do know is that she was seen, she was known and her courage spoke to me. Keep fighting. No matter how hard the pain. No matter how hard the wound. Keep fighting for those who cannot fight for themselves.

The Truth about the Mosque at Ground Zero

This week has been interesting living on the African continent and hearing word of the uproar over the alleged mosque being built at ground zero and the church burning the Quran. Just this morning all Americans in Rwanda received an alert from the State Department advising us to be on alert if we were traveling due to anger building over the controversies in the US. We received this at the same time as prayers could be heard around the city for the ending of Ramadan, an official national holiday here even though a very small percentage of the population are Muslims. Thus I found my friend, Charles Strohmer's, opinion piece helpful as I tried to sift through my own feelings of all these things as a Christian, as an American, and as a foreigner. I am embarrassed by the church that is burning the Quran and I appreciate Charles' factual piece on what is going on at Ground Zero.
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There is no mosque being built at ground zero in lower Manhattan. Nor are Imam Rauf and his Muslim colleagues planning to build a mosque at ground zero. Given all the media obfuscation, I thought I should make that fact immediately plain. And there are two or three other crucial facts you should know. But first, it’s location, location, location, the three most important words in real estate. And where is the real estate in question located? Any fourth grader with a street map of Lower Manhattan could point it out. Ground zero is located in the large area bordered by Vesey St. on the north, Church St. on the east, Liberty St. on the south, and West St. on the west.

http://www.charlesstrohmer.com/writings/on-international-relations/the-truth-about-the-mosque-at-ground-zero/

My grandmother - a family history

We lost Dano's mom this year and in May we lost my father's mom, my Nanny, the matriarch of the huge Wolff clan. This past week, my family celebrated her life in the U.S.. It was very hard for me to not be there in, but I also know I had wonderful closure with her. My uncle, the historian of the family, wrote this beautiful eulogy and family history that I wanted to share. Nanny will be missed.

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A Eulogy for a Great Lady

We are here today to celebrate the life of Florence Mary Renk Wolff--she who has touched and shaped the lives of all here in this room and oh so many more during her long and productive life.

One feature of her life that always fascinated me was the long string of names by which she has been called over the years—Florence, Florie, Flo, Miss Renk, Mrs. Wolff, Toots, Hans, Nicole, Mom, Nicki, Mum, and Nanny. She started out being christened Florence Mary Renk when she was born in Chicago on February 17, 1915. There was war in Europe and the days of the horse and buggy were coming to an end. The new technology that helped to change us from an agricultural nation into an industrial one benefitted her as well because her father took up the new trade of automechanic. Her mother was born in this country too when her father came here to work in the great anthracite coal beds of northeastern Pennsylvania. His name was Clement Platek, and he died there in 1897, gunned down in a confrontation of miners and the strike breakers. As a result of his death, her mother Magdalena nee Czaja remarried a man named Topolski, and settled in Blue Island, Illinois. It was there Marie Platek met young John Renk, a Chicago native.

To her mom and dad, Florence became Florie and Flo, the former was her mother’s diminutive, and the latter her father’s. Early in life she suffered a crushing blow when her two younger brothers, Bobby and Arthur, both perished from the rampant respiratory diseases that plagued the US at the end of the war. This double tragedy had a profound effect upon the lives of John and Marie Renk. They not only doted on their remaining child but they also lost themselves in their own interests, Marie in cooking and John in mechanics. They sent Florence off to St. Gall’s Catholic school at 55^th and Kedzie. There she became the darling of the good nuns, many of whom remained lifelong friends like Sr. Monica. She went off to Providence High School and there also was a top student and favorite of the faculty. To them she was forever Florence and Miss Renk.

Florie also had numerous cousins, many of whom looked up to her as a big sister. Margie Esser was the daughter of Mom’s Aunt Marie, an older sister of her dad, and Catherine Mackin, the daughter of Ottilia nee Renk and Harold Mackin. She was also close to her cousins Henrietta and Gertrude, daughters of Aunt Marie from a different marriage and on her mother’s side cousin Irene, the daughter of Aunt Stella. In recent conversations with Marge and Catherine, both remembered many happy hours with Florie playing paper dolls.

Music certainly ran on the Renk side of the family, and so it was not too surprising that young Florence took an interest in piano and singing. Her beautiful mezzo-soprano voice joined the Sunday chorus of Catholics at St. Gall’s church. The members of the choir became fast friends over the years. One of the baritones was a young man who lived on Albany Street. His origins were German, he having been born in Germany on April 18, 1909. He arrived here with his parents in 1910 as an uncle brought his dad here to be carpenter in his house-building company. This chorister was of course one Bruno B. Wolff, a 24 year old draftsman working for Bethlehem Steel. Their courtship was short and fruitful as they were married on August 19, 1933, at St. Gall’s, shortly after her graduation from Providence. She now had a new name Mrs. Wolff. The newlyweds went on their honeymoon in of all places, Chicago. Yes these were the dark days of the Great Depression. Bruno was lucky to have a job when so many stood in bread lines.

But they scrimped and saved first by living with Marie and John. Then all of a sudden not a year later on June 15, 1934, she got another new name, Mom. For unto her a child was born and they named him Bruno. Soon after followed Philip on August 29, 1935 and James on January 14, 1937. This was a lot of folks to cram into the Renk three-bedroom bungalow on Christiana Ave. With the help of a relative’s loan, Mom and Dad built a brand new house on the south side, which was then on the boundary of Chicago civilization, in Little Flower parish. We occupied it in December 1941 just after Pearl Harbor. I still remember our first meal there, baked beans with pork. These came not from a can but were home baked and wonderful to the extent I can still taste them in the hollows of my mind. The relationship between Florence and Bruno was highlighted by his calling her “Toots” and “Hans.”

Mom, as I still am wont to call her, while raising three young rapscallions, took up her singing career and pursued it in earnest with Madame and Maestro Bigali. But she still made sure that she had time for her kids. When we came home from Little Flower School for lunch, not only were we served a great meal, but like the lector in a monastery refectory, she would read to us some of the classics. Music was also a great part of our training as each Saturday morning we listened as Milton Cross introduced the Metropolitan Opera of the week.

On August 25, 1947, Mark Wolff was born in the midst of a thunder storm, and Maris came in 1950 on May 20 in milder weather. Mom realized at one point that raising all these kids, and spending time with her lessons and singing, she needed some help around the house. Thus, she came to hire a young lady in her teens, one Mary Anne Kane, who lived only two blocks away. She did a very nice job but wanted to move on to other things so she handed the baton to her younger sister Christine. Chris became like a sister to us boys and a daughter to Mom. She had the good sense at the end of high school to marry another neighborhood man, a naval reservist and budding scholar, Don Costello. After he got his PhD in English from the University of Chicago, he took a job at the University of our Lady of the Lake, otherwise called Notre Dame, where he stayed his entire career. They kept in touch with Mom and Dad even to hosting them in Europe where Don did some work as a visiting scholar in the 70’s.

Mom not only took voice but she taught voice as well and as was her personality she became fast friends with clients, especially Bernadette Ryan and Helen Lindenberg. Bernadette died an untimely death but Helen came out to New Jersey. Her husband, Bill, was part of Dad’s Jersey Crane Company before the Lindenbergs moved to Canada.

In 1952 Mom and Dad moved to NY, the hub for those who worked in classical music. Mom adopted another name at that time and made an appearance at Carnegie Hall under the name of Nicole Scott. Now in those days Nicole was not a common name for young ladies, but after she adopted it, we all know that in the ensuing years it became widely bestowed on infant girls around the country. Its diminutive, Nicki, became the cognomen of those involved in her professional life or those who first met her later in life.

On October 5, 1956, she got another name, “Nanny,” when Sandra Walters Wolff, wife of Philip, gave birth to Philip John the second. It was PJ, as he came to be called, that dubbed his paternal grandmother with the name Nanny. In my humble opinion, this was her favorite name as she soon became the grandmother of a large brood of 18 grandchildren. Three of those were Maureen’s kids prior to our marriage, but they were treated as graciously and lovingly as were her blood descendents. They remarked so to me in response to the sad news of May 19.

When Marc moved to Great Britain in the early 70’s, he became after a few years, quite British in his accent and so to Lin and their kids Mom became Mum.As she finished the days of her life she came to Vermont and under the loving watch of Philip, Ellen, Maris, and the caregivers of Copley Manor, she was able to enter her 96^th year.

Now perhaps as she mingles in Eternity, she has gained her greatest name as one of the Saints above. If you need anything, she would be the one to ask; for she will prevail on our behalf with the Lord above as she did for all of us when she supported us here on earth. Thanks, Mom, for everything. And if I didn’t do the pictures right, please don’t yell at me.

What we do in Rwanda

I hope this four-minute video (produced pro-bono by our friends at 4-minute Media) will give you a good sense of the work we are doing in Rwanda with Karisimbi Business Partners. If you're interested in financially partnering with us, please go to http://www.karisimbipartners.com/friends-family.html

An Artist You Should Know About

For Christmas this year, my husband bought me a beautiful peace of artwork by a local Rwandan artist. It is the only artwork hanging in our home and I love it. It is semi-abstract, which is different for me, but it depicts the beauty and grace of the people we came to work alongside. I hope you'll read more of Bosco's story and check out his work at www.bakunziart.com.


Jean Bosco Bakunzi (1985- ) Bosco, as the artist prefers to be known, was born at CHK Hospital in Kigali, Rwanda. He grew up in Kigali, attending two primary schools in the city. His father was Catholic and his mother Protestant, but he describes his father in a word as “modern”. This atmosphere undoubtedly allowed Bosco to develop freely as a child and laid the seeds for him later to become a self-trained artist.

When you first meet Bosco, he strikes you as an optimistic, carefree young man. However, his experiences in 1994, when both of his parents were killed, have sharpened his sense of justice and honed his desire to help others through his art. He lived in an orphanage for two years after the death of his parents. It was here that Bosco created craft projects with a volunteer from France as his first structured foray into the world of art. The Kigali native says that while at the orphanage he would use pen and pastels to make cartoons to express himself and his friends would follow his lead.

He continues to give art classes twice a week to the children who live at the same orphanage today. Bosco believes that creating art can heal one “emotionally, physically, and mentally”. He lives this every day as he uses art to help orphans deal with emotions and express themselves. Gisimba Memorial Center also gains from this young artist’s enthusiasm for children where he teaches arts and crafts to young people under a project called “Imena Art for Kids”. And one imagines that he also continues to experience healing through his own art.

After leaving the orphanage, Bosco attended two high schools in Butare, Rwanda. He was, however, drawn back to the city of his birth. In Kigali in 2004, Bosco started meeting professional artists. He began to talk to the artists around him about such things as mixing colors. He also began to absorb ideas and concepts from the world’s great artists such as Van Gogh and Picasso. After communing with Picasso’s great works both in books and on the Internet, he began to paint works in a palette similar to the Spanish artist’s blue period.

Bosco and some of his fellow artists founded “Uburanga” Arts Studio in Kimihurura, which takes its name from the Kinyarwanda word for “beauty”, and is a hotbed of fledgling young Rwandan artists. He also continues to develop his talents with his membership in Isoko Arts Rwanda, an association of Rwandan fine artists.

Bosco work takes a variety of forms: paint and mixed media. He describes his paintings as “realistic but abstract” as being about nature and people, “something with meaning”. Many of his paintings have a message about social justice for all, while others are about equality for women in particular.

One of his largest paintings, Women in the Market, shows women at the market with baskets and vegetables. He has beautifully abstracted their forms behind a grid of white lines he created by placing the canvas on the floor with strings stretched taught across it. Bosco also digs into his pigment with a comb, creating lyrical circles or even random scratches at times. The artist elevates the commonplace task of the women selling in the market to that of a noble act at the core of Rwandan society. The artist says “women are trying to be a noble” gender in Rwanda. He feels women and children still have not received the place that they deserve and he wants to communicate with them and inspire them.

His mixed media work can not help but make one think of the found objects of Duchamp or Man Ray. One of his most powerful works, Love and Hope, has two tires surrounded by swirls of different shades of green brushstrokes. The tires, utilitarian objects from every day life, here beautifully symbolize movement for the artist and for the viewer and the brushstrokes elegantly carry through with this idea. He said he was inspired to create this piece on a trip to Nairobi. He went with friends to talk about life and love.

Continuing in this Dada-esque style, Bosco creates amusing and whimsical portraits using pockets from pants for faces, and then cloth, bottle caps, nails, and wire for the details. Upon first glance, you notice the figure, and then with a second glance you notice the found objects used to make the form. When you realize you are looking at the pocket from someone’s old jeans in his work African Queen, (shown above) you almost laugh to yourself. They say the definition of humor is surprise or not finding what you expected.

That is true not only of Bosco’s work, but also of him as a person. If one simply read the details of his life, one might expect to find someone who is hardened against the world. Instead, one finds an artist who sees the good in the world and other people and wants to help amplify that through his art, his teaching, and his studio.

Valerie Ficklin, M.A.
Art Historian



Exhibitions:

Solo Exhibitions:

2009
The Feelings, Kigali International Airport
My Dream, Heaven Restaurant

Group Exhibitions:

2009
Saint Patrick’s Day Exhibition presented by the Irish Embassy of Uganda, Serena Hotel
Jazz Band for Peace: Celebrating Rwanda Commitment for Ending Violence Against Women and Children, Serena Hotel
East Africa Biennale (EASTFAB),Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

2010
Ivuka Arts Studio and Friends, United States Embassy, Kigali, Rwanda
Isoko Arts Rwanda Launching Exhibition, Laico Hotel Umubano



Bosco with Women in the Market, shot at his studio in Kimihurura in May 2010

Adoptions are in a 40% Decline

I often quote Augustine when he says, "Hope has two daughters - anger and courage; anger at the way things are, courage for the way things can be." I have had some things happen recently that push against my optimism for the future of orphan care - people's personal agendas, government bureaucracies and inefficiencies, and apathy to name a few. However, I am also still naive enough - even at 38 years old - to believe that we can do more to care for the orphan, that people really do desire what is best for children, that systemic change takes time, but it is worth it. This blog from my friend, Tom Davis, cites that adoptions are in a 40% decline. Considering the fact that adoptions account for less than a tenth of a percent of all orphans worldwide, this is discouraging. My heart gets angry, but then I feel the courage setting in.

My heart is for the children left behind - for the little girl I held yesterday during my weekly volunteer times at Home for Hope. Many of the children seemed a little under the weather, that happens in orphanages with 100 plus children. But her face was so despondent. She would not engage at all. She just stood in the corner, crying quietly, with food dripping out of her mouth. She is four years old. I tried to get her to eat some of her food, but it wouldn't stay. She never moved. But when I held her, she wouldn't let go. And so I held her, I prayed for her, I whispered in her ear, "Uri umwana mwiza - you are a good and beautiful child" - "Imana urukundo - God loves you." I do believe in evil. I do believe there is an Enemy to God the creator. And every week, when I hold and rock these children, I whisper words of truth into their ears, claiming that evil will have no say in the hearts and minds of these children. But I also know so much damage has been done already. So I want to be about helping find ways to nurture the hearts and minds of these orphans who will never be adopted. I'll wrote more on this later, but if you haven't read any of Dr. Karyn Purvis' work, I encourage you to do so. These children need more than whispered words and weekly hugs. They need courageous people to take a deep breath and pray for the courage to keep fighting on their behalf.

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Adoptions are in a 40% Decline

With 150 million orphans in the world, we should be seeing a dramatic increase in the number of orphans who are adopted every year in the United States. But sadly, the opposite is true. Adoptions have been decreasing every year since 2004.

A new article in the May edition of Christianity Today says this, "Since 2004, these and other restrictions have resulted in a 40 percent decline in overseas adoptions by Americans—from an all-time high of almost 23,000 in 2004 to fewer than 12,800 in 2009, according to the U.S. State Department."

Although there are some incredible people who understand God's heart for adoption, they are still the minority when it comes to this issue. If 7% of those claiming to be Christians adopted one child, all 150 million orphans would have homes.

Second, the battle continues to rage over the lives of orphans around the world. Make no mistake about it, "our enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour," I Peter 5:8. Orphans are easy targets.

My friend Jedd Medefind from The Christian Alliance for Orphans had this to say, "The drop in international adoptions since 2004 does not signal a stagnating willingness among American families to adopt overseas, and he argues that evangelicals in particular have increased interest."

I would say this is absolutely true. With almost 1,500 people at Summit VI in Minneapolis April 29 & 30, people are more passionate than every about adoption and orphan care.

The reality is that we still have a lot to do. Orphans are worth the fight. We have to press through government regulations, fear, and spiritual warfare to care for the least of these. This is God's heart and it should be the heart of every Christian.

"A Father to the Fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families." Psalm 68:5,6