Changing Times Blog

A Soul-Stirring Account of the Uvira Conference

A war close at hand, difficult financial straits, the need to travel long distances under unsafe conditions, and blazingly hot weather did not stop 776 people from attending the Regional Conference in Uvira, a city on the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the heart of Africa.

Nasim Parsa shares her heart-warming, enticing account of the conference, with wonderful descriptions of the circumstances at and around the conference:

(NP) Burundi is really a beautiful country. Roads are paved and the place looks very green and clean! When we arrived to the border [to the DRC], and got our visas done, suddenly the other side was a complete change. Roads were made of mainly dust and rocks and the place looked drier.

When the car finally stopped, we were facing two very big cloths attached to different trees that were welcoming the Baha’is to this Regional Conference. As we were coming out of the car, people started coming to us and hugging us with lots of joy and love, saying “Allah’u'Abha!”. We followed them between houses made of mud and the huge mango trees, walking on dust, underneath a burning sun and they took us inside this sort of tent made of wood and orange plastic sheets. The venue was a school belonging to the Baha’i community. The tent was built in the “outside” of the school, while some of the classes were used by the friends as dorms for those few nights during the conference. The venue was also decorated mainly with pink toilet papers! On the last day, they also added some balloons!

While both my parents were in a meeting with the different institutions and the ITC member, I started walking around and looking at the place. There was a continuous flow of people arriving with their luggage and their mats on which they would be sleeping. Suddenly, the women in one of the dorms started singing. They were all coming from different places and they did not know each others songs, but this did not stop them from clapping their hands and dancing with their sisters. As a song would finish, another mama would start singing a new song, the other women would listen for some time, and after they would get the main words of the song, they would join her and stand up to dance. After just few seconds, the dorm was full of people!

The rest of the night went through like this. People kept on arriving, greeting and singing, although some of them had not eaten anything all day long!

Saturday morning started with songs and dancing as well… Some of the people had slept outside as there was no space in the classes for all of them and because it was so hot! The program started on time. Prayers were recited and Counselor Ndegwa was presented to the community. She gave a beautiful talk on how amazing this community has been doing in the advancement of the Five Year Plan. She encouraged friends to continue their work as people of this country are desperate and need a solution, answers and hope. She made the community understand that if more people are introduced to the Faith, if more children and junior youth are given spiritual education, this long lasting war would come to an end, as people won’t accept any more to fight!

Every time there was a break between the talks, a person or a group of people would stand up, come in the middle of the venue and start singing, and as they would start, all the friends would stand up and sing and dance with them. Different instruments would always be there to accompany the songs.

As the conference would go on, the youth of the area would walk between people with big jags of water and 4 to 5 cups and would poor water for them.

The songs were the way people from the different clusters would express their understanding of the objectives of the Five Year Plan. Each cluster had prepared different songs that they could perform during the conference. A group of mamas was explaining in their song the role of the institutions, of the community and of the individual in the Plan while an enthusiastic group of children was singing “The time has come to rise and serve!”

As the talks would go on, some individuals would come to the front and put some money in a basket covered by a cloth. It was their contribution to the conference. At one point, there were so many of them coming up, that they had to make an announcement and ask the friends to make the contributions during the breaks and the songs.

They were expecting around 500 participants for this conference. On the second day, there were almost 800 friends coming from the different regions.

Some of them had traveled by foot for days, others had been stopped on the way and got all their possessions looted by the militaries, and others again had been beaten and maltreated. But from the moment they were in this conference, it seemed like all of that didn’t matter anymore. People had come even from Goma and Walikale, where most of the troubles were happening.

They were proud to be attending this conference and couldn’t wait to go back and encourage each other to increase the number of human resources and help their neighboring clusters to become A clusters.

Thank you Nasim! Photo Credits: BWNS