Hey Folks,
I haven't been writing because I haven't had anything
interesting to tell you. It's either horribly depressing or comes off as “I am
warm and you are cold *sung to the tune
of the eskimo from boy meet world* And even now I'm considering stopping
because my new kitten won't stop sitting on the keyboard. Her name's Arwen and
she's super cute. Except when she LICKS my face all night and I can't sleep.
Cat kisses sound cute in theory but the scratchy tongue is just the worst. Also
fish breath. Gross. I've been a little lonely lately, and Arwen is nice to come
home to. *** edit Arwen is actually a dude and I thinking of naming him Lucic.
LOOOOOOCH. *******edit decided to name cat, Goose. He’s so SO WERID.
Anyway, development—true development-- is so slow it's
painful. Any project I want to start has to go through the planning stages, the
convincing stages, the money stages, and the building stages. I'm almost
positive I'll have to extend my service to accomplish anything I want to do.
Sorry mom and dad.
Here's a break down of what I'm working on:
My first project that I'm super excited about and my
organization is too is a cloth diaper project for the home. It'd be easy to
just call up a good intentioned organization to do a diaper drop, but what
happens when those run out? What happens when the company will no longer donate
diapers? This babies' home has been around since 1968 so it's safe to say that
it will continue one for years and years to come. It'll outlive any goodnatured
individual's new year's resolution, any resume building mission trip, any
mid-life crisis, or what ever else posses people to volunteer for a few weeks.
So donating nappies is at best a temporary fix. I chose to help the mothers
create a cloth diaper project because they already have a room full of sewing
machines and caregivers who want to know how to sew. However, pricing out the
materials and writing the start-up grant has proven to be a time suck. And with
the holidays coming it's even more difficult to get everyone to together to
plan. I was searching for a way to get a major company to donate material, but
I realized that that is not sustainable either. Will the company donate
forever? Will the suit with a heart that I've found always be working for the
fabric company? What happens if they decide not to give us the free fabric? So
now I'm on the hunt for a cheap fabric supplier in Uganda. But when you say
fabric, they steer you towards the indian fabric markets in Mbale. The places
with the silks for gomes and cotton kyitengue for dresses. I'm looking for
nylon. Tough, umbrella quality, nylon. And I'm looking for it in rolls. For my
prototype I just destroyed an umbrella. That's not cost effective in the long
run. Also, Uganda in the world of estimation. To budget out this project I need
exact numbers of yardage or meters of elastics and fabric. Exact numbers of
what goes into making one diaper. Every time I try to get these numbers, the
word “somehow” comes into the mix and I want to tear my hair out. Just keep
swimming.
My next project is something the home has been asking for.
It's sort of a “prove myself” project. I need to prove to the people working
here that I'm not like the short term volunteers who come through, cuddle
babies, and leave. I need to show them that I listen to their wants and needs
and I'm working with them not for them and not telling them what to do. This
project is the chicken coop that many of you have seen me chat about on
facebook. The chicken coop is going to be a real game changer for this
community. The babies home relies on donations from parents of the children and
from goodnatrued souls through uganda and the rest of the world. Now, if you
come here, they seem to be doing well. However, what if people can't donate one
year? Living off the generosity of other, as any waitress will tell you, is
always a gamble. And you cannot afford to gamble with the lives of children at
stake. The chicken coop will allow the babies home to become completely self
sustainable. To have money to provide for children for always.
Now, you might say that between the nappies and the chickens,
how are these people going to have time to do all this work and watch the
children. Well, that's what i've beeen thinking too. I've researched and found
a babies home in Tanzania that invites relatives (older sisters, aunts,
grandmothers, etc) to come and stay at the home. These women (because lets face
it, women are the only ones who do anything in the developing world) come and
learn how to properly take care of these children. I've gone on several
resettlement visits and seen that some families can really take care of the
their children once they come home. And some cannot. There's this one little
girl who's face still haunts me, as cliché as that sounds. I can't pronounce
her name, but I see her whenever we talk about children who have falling
through the cracks. My counterpart says that one thing that we could really do
to help these families is to give them an income generating activity. Eureka!
Viola! It all comes together like a play or an after school special. The
families send a representative to live at St. Kizito for one month. During that
month they bond with their specific child, learn to cook nutritious meals,
garden, prevent malaria, and keep hygienic conditions. They can also work in
the chicken coop to learn chicken farming and work in the diaper IGA to learn
to sew. A short term group also came and built an oven. They can learn to bake
as well. And if I can swing it, we can make clay beads and they can learn to
make and sell those. It's also a great opportunity for a village savings and
loan. I've also had to go even slower to convince the people I work with that
it's a good idea. Normally, after the host country nationals veto a project,
it's dead. If they don't like it, they won't continue on with it after you
leave so it's just a waste of time. However, I can't think of a better way that
accomplishes all the problems they keep coming to me with. So baby steps. We'll
do a dry run of this in August 2015 and if it works out we'll do another one in
November 2015.
And the start up money for all of this can start with Peace
Corps grants, but I'll need to find another institution to fund the health
classes and the IGA classes after I leave. The Peace Corps grants leave when I
do. I'm thinking Bill Gates but that might be thinking too big. We'll find it
though, where there's a will, there's a way!
So that's what I've been doing—-as boring as it is!