Jennifer Natenshon

Text of May 4th Invite!

The party will take place at the home of Howard Natenshon, Rosemary Caine and Jennifer Natenshon on May 4th from 4-6 PM with wine, hors d’oeuvres and a few words from local author Tracy Kidder and special guest Deogratias Niyizonkiza, founder of Village Health Works we hope that you will be inspired to support Villlage Health Works on this special night. please RSVP with enclosed card and envelope. Thank you and can’t wait to see you!

Getting started and a story

Thanks to Matt and Linda for helping me put together this blog! Hopefully I will be able to use this blog to organize my thoughts and keep in touch with far flung friends and family.

This year I met someone who has inspired me in such an unbelievable way. I started out this year feeling confident about what I wanted, to go to a great and elite college, to make as many memories as possible and enjoy my comfortable place in school. However, the year I entered quickly became one of lots of stress, some sickness, and a healthy dose of self pity. It was amazing how quickly I went from confident, energetic and excited to dejected and lonely.

At some point during the fall term, in between applying to college and running around to doctors appointments I got to talk to two of the boys attending Deerfield from Africa. One, Paul was from Kenya, the other Asvelt, from Burundi. In my complete ignorance, I confess I had no idea where Burundi even was, let alone what it was. I kept wanting to talk to them because they both seemed so smart, interesting, and friendly. But time slipped away and I continued to think about myself and that college process.

I kept coming back to chats with Asvelt though because he had such a warm smile and every conversation with him seemed to pull me up a little out of my gloominess. One day, in the library as I was trying to put off writing more applications so I took a detour and walked into his study room. Earphones in, he was watching speeches made by Martin Luther King. When I asked him why he was watching, that is when he started to tell me a story.

I had no idea that the story I heard would be one of genocide, misunderstanding, misery, health, and hope. He told me a story that started when he was a six year old boy in Burundi, a story of a hell caused by civil war that he didn’t see the end of until he was eighteen years old. As someone who considers themselves a very amateur camper, even I know one rainy night in a tent can put a dampner(literally) on ones wilderness travels. In his story, the nights were spent on forest ground even in the heaviest of rain, hiding in darkness, waiting for the light to walk to school. A story of his mother’s absolute will and determination to see her children educated, even if it meant the daily dangerous walk past militia men to attend class.

The story he told me filled my eyes with tears but not because it was one of the most tragic and horrible things I had ever heard. But, because the boy sitting in front of me was the kindest, most insightful and compassionate person I had been fortunate to meet in my life. The word I remember him coming back to time and again was misery, a feeling many of us are lucky enough not to really understand. His story took me from forest, to school, to graveyard, to watching cows in a dusty field. Hutu and Tutsi, genocide, murder, and fear were the constants in his childhood. So, where did Asvelt’s story end up? How did it come to intersect with mine in the library that day in November?

That is where the story of Deo comes in. Deo, Asvelt’s elder brother, through much MUCH hardwork and incredible circumstance and community effort created Village Health Works, the only free health clinic in the entire country of Burundi, which I have since learned is the poorest country in the world. Burundi, a place where you are jailed for being unable to pay hospital bills in a hospital that may only have one tiny and obsolete operating room, no sterility to speak of. Deo’s vision to bring free, good, and stable healthcare to Burundi, much like the system developed by Paul Farmer and Partners in Health became the work of a family of people, now the Village Health Workers. The story, so incredible in its creation and history was being written by local Western Mass. author Tracy Kidder, a fortoitous thing for Deerfield which was able to bring Asvelt to study in his Post Graduate year here. I understand I am leaving many holes in the story but there will be more extensive posts to come.

The feeling I want to convey is a feeling I have had since the moment Asvelt opened his mouth and began to speak. In the fall, I had let myself sink into a black hole at the diagnosis “Metabolic Syndrome”, thinking a sugar life free life was no life to live at all. Looking back, it seems silly almost the amount that I was upset by this change in my life, this imperfection in my DNA. But every day, I had doctors, and nurses, and people to support and treat me, regardless of how small or non life threatening my illness was. Asvelt called me over vacation to tell me another child had died of malnutrition in Burundi, because health care aside, there just wasn’t enough food. That is real suffering and it is just unfair.

The hope a place like Village Health Works brings Burundi, the hope it brought me is what I am trying to convey, to share with you my friends and family. I have never met a person so clearly directed towards helping his own family and his home. Although I have barely met Deo, from what Asvelt tells me, from the community I have seen that he has created from the rubble of a civil war, Village Health Works is a model for compassion, the results of hard work, and the absolute necessity of food, clean water, and good healthcare as human rights. There are so many ways in which we can all help. Money, time, sharing the story, these are all pieces of a bigger puzzle that will make this clinic, the effort, and this way of life thrive in Burundi and in Africa.

I know this so much to read, much of it my own ramblings trying to sort out what this all means to me. Asvelt has changed my direction, pointed me towards a place I couldn’t have picked out on the map 7 months ago. But, so often I hear people say we need to help our own, our own communities, our own families before we go to Haiti or Africa. An extremely valid point, but I know now my community isn’t just the people who live in my hometown of Greenfield, MA or attend the same church or like the same hobbies. Asvelt is a part of my Deerfield family, Burundi is now a part of my life. So, maybe if we each do a little something, share a word about this with a friend, or donate $5.00 for a Mosquito net that can save another person from Malaria, we can help to close that global gap and share the hope that Asvelt and Burundi give me every day.