Updates

Yes its been a while since my last post, but we’ve been busy in our village and haven’t had much time here in the city for internet. We just went up north for the annual Halloween party with the other volunteers and now we’re headed back to Tibati. So I’ve got to get all my internet and shopping in for the next 6 weeks. unfortunately I wrote a post back on our computer but I forgot to bring it with me. so here are some quick updates:

The village savings and loan program (that I described a few posts back (“237”) has finally gotten underway. I introduced the program to a few groups back in April, and while they all were really excited and said they wanted to do it, only one has adopted it so far. I think the others will wait until the start of the new year.

I’ve been going to the meetings for a Houssa women’s group all summer. It seemed like every week all they were doing was complaining about their president who may or may not have stolen money from them. I never actually met her because she was always out of town. I could never quite understand exactly what was going on. Then finally one day at the meeting they told me they had chosen a new president and were ready to start the VSLA. They handed me notebooks that I said I would make for them when they were ready. Over the next week I spent hours putting together notebooks for them to keep track of how many shares they buy.

I went to the meeting the following week assuming that I’d explain how to do the record keeping again- it had been a few months since I had originally explained it. much to my surprise everyone from the group was there and they were ready to start. they had all brought their money to start saving. so after 5 months of waiting, the start of the program is sprung on me. In the first week we collected about 50.000cfa, about $100, which is no small amount here. now, after 3 weeks we’ve got over 130,000cfa. in the next few weeks I’m going to have them create the rules for the credit part of the program. most likely it will be something like 10% interest over a 6 week period with no more than 3x the amount they have saved.

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The hospital: same work there, weighing babies, making bouillie and talking about nutrition with mothers. I’ve started doing regular rounds with the 2 Anglophone nurses just to get a chance to talk to more patients and keep busy.

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Girls club: I stared a girls group at the local school. its only been a few weeks, but they seem really interested. I had them do self portraits the first week and then had them draw themselves in 10 years. I think they really liked it because they don’t get to do art at all in school or even at home. some things they talked about doing were dance and theatre. if you’ve seen my dancing or theatrical skills, you’d say I’m in way over my head. but so far so good. we’re going to talk about HIV for the next few weeks, and then see if I can find a way for them to do dance. Maybe I can find an expert in town. it can be like a guest speaker series….

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brian is doing well, working at the prison and trying to get the pump project going. but its been really difficult to organize the community and get people moving. its also really hard to do a project when the authorities tell you that its “never going to happen” unless we have outside funding. the minister of water told brian that without international funding the people here would never be able to raise the money for themselves. its very frustrating.

Brian’s other project now is to make murals at the high schools with HIV messages on one side and a public forum on the other. a place where people can put up announcements or advertisements. get some sort of community bulletin going. now that school is in session, they should be able to get the kids together to paint.

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our garden is growing again for the second time. more cucumbers, tomatoes, basil and carrots. the first round of cucumbers was amazing, but the tomatoes didn’t quite make it. we had about 25 huge plants with tons of big green tomatoes on each. then, literally over night the plants died. I was able to salvage some of the tomatoes, but most were lost. hopefully this time they’ll make it.

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I’ve been sewing for myself, but its so tedious to do by hand. my friend just bought a machine, so I should be able to use it soon.

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the cat is pregnant again. we kept one of her last kittens as requested by Thom, and she is starting to be really mean to it. must be the hormones.

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we’ve been getting lots of letters and packages lately, so we feel very loved. I’ve been a bit negligent on my letters and blogs, but I promise to pick back up now.