http:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/201508271257.html<\/a><\/p>\nThere have been multiple African presidents from multiple countries that have tried to change their constitution to run an additional term for presidency.\u00a0 Some successful (or unsuccessful depending on how you look at the response from their country men).\u00a0 This article specifically addresses Burkina Faso (and the burned parliament in 2014), Burundi in 2015, and the leading up to the election that is supposed to take place in DRC November 2016.<\/p>\n
In Burundi the president took advantage of an ambiguous clause in the constitution that allowed him to run for a third term.\u00a0 Although he \u201cwon\u201d, major violence broke out in protest.\u00a0 The super interesting thing to me is that \u201cboth Hutu and Tutsi citizens have joined together to oppose the president\u2019s illegal usurpation of power\u201d.<\/p>\n
Are those people groups familiar?\u00a0 They should be, they were the 2 major groups fighting against each other in the 1994 Rwanda Genocide when nearly a million people were, for lack of a better term: slaughtered.\u00a0 Now they are working together, both believing that their heads of states should be limited to no longer than two terms in power.<\/p>\n
The article then addresses President Kabila in the DRC, and the different efforts he has been trying to stay in office beyond his second term which is set to expire December 2016.\u00a0 In January, Blake and I were stuck within our compound for about 5 days during a big protest that took place in Kinshasa after the president introduced the idea of conducting a general census before the election could be held.\u00a0 In a country of more than 60 million people, a general census would be sure to delay the election for years before it was completed.\u00a0 You can read the full article if you are interested.<\/p>\n
What weighs on my heart, takes me all the way back to being pregnant with Maddy in Congo.\u00a0 You see, I KNEW I wasn\u2019t going to deliver there.\u00a0 People regularly die from routine procedures like having your appendix removed.\u00a0 The truth of the matter is that no matter how closely we hope we live with the people in our host country; we always have the option to leave.\u00a0 My friend in Gemena almost died while delivering her baby, although she lived, her baby died just days later.\u00a0 There is no NICU in the village.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t have the option to leave.\u00a0 Where would she go?\u00a0 How could she afford it?\u00a0 You see, I have emergency health insurance, I have a way out.\u00a0 Although we raise support and live simply, we still have MORE, much more, than most Congolese.<\/p>\n
Blake has talked about how much \u201cfun\u201d and what an adventure it would be if we stayed in DRC during the election in November.\u00a0 But what if the election is delayed for any reason?\u00a0 It would make the serious tensions in Burundi and Burkina look insignificant in comparison.\u00a0 Again, we have the option to leave, but what about our Congolese friends who can\u2019t just leave when things get ugly?\u00a0 Its hard, confusing, frustrating, and sad to think about it.\u00a0 I feel helpless, what can I do?\u00a0 It seems so overused and so insignificant, but all I can do is pray.\u00a0 Not that praying is insignificant, because God can move mountains, but it seems like I should be able to do so much more, and yet I can\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tuesday, October 27, 2015 *This post is a bit heavier than I usually write, so I’m posting a cute picture of Maddy that has nothing to do with the blog* I recently read this article and wanted to give a little feedback as my blog.\u00a0 Nothing super insightful, just a few thoughts.\u00a0 This is not usually something that I would…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drc","category-kinshasa","category-missionary"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":463,"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions\/463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"IMG_0399\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/IMG_0399-e1445975706946.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n