For a while now, you’ve been reading our volunteer blog postings, instead of mine (thought I’d give you a break!).
Not true – I actually thought it might be good for you to hear how each of our vols is contributing and how committed they are to their area of the Kesho project. I’m sure their blogs give some indication of how, while we’re all working as a team towards a common goal, we all have a lot of ground to make individually in the areas we’ve come to volunteer in.
For instance, volunteer nurse, Heather, has had her hands full lesson planning and then teaching our Kesho house mamas about the various aspects of “health”. For three months, the mamas have been learning about nutrition, hygiene, anatomy, and health risks relevant to them (malaria, typhoid etc). Last week, we had one of our very bravest mamas request a HIV test. Heather spent much time researching for a clinic we could trust (not just to use new syringes, but to offer before and after counselling – our inimitable psychologist, Kelsey Wilson is yet to arrive…) After much to-ing and fro-ing Heather located the clinic and her and the house mama made their way in. We’ve been deeply gutted since. The test was positive. Now, we need to do some follow up testing to see how far along this house mama is. Naturally, we will support her, psychologically and physically (ensuring she receives the counselling and anti-retrovirals she requires). We can only hope at this stage, that coming tests show that HIV has not yet blown out to AIDS. We are positive, because this mama is healthy and strong, yet it’s still very hard to watch a fellow human being going through the process of trying to comprehend such devastating news, walking around in shock, moving towards anger…and then requesting that we tell nobody - as she doesn’t’ wish to be ostracised from her community and isn’t even planning to tell her one family member, a sister that lives 12 hours away in Dar. We all watched in disbelief as this mama then showed up to house mama lessons with her young family (who she plans to have tested in the next few weeks) and put on a brave face for all. Heather, our champion, continues to support this house mama, giving further ‘information’ counselling – and travelling to and from testing clinics with her. It’s been humbling to watch these two women progress together.
While Heather manages that, her multi-skilled partner, Nick Hirst, somehow juggles working full days at the building site (8am-5pm), heading up the team making the A-frames for the roof, while keeping our accounts in sparkling condition. Bear in mind that being bursar here doesn’t just mean you’re moving figures around in an excel document on the computer (while, of course there is plenty of that), but instead more often means negotiating with 5 or so Tanzanians a day – all randomly popping in whenever they’re in the hood, to see if they can borrow some money for a sick mother, late school fees, a pair of shoes for the kids, some medicine for malaria… Sometimes the answer is yes, but sometimes it’s no. We only give these “pay advances” to our employees or house mamas, but get asked by all! Reasons? We first have to be convinced our staff have the means to repay us – and when they’re asking for $50, as they occasionally do, and their weekly pay is more like $15 (standard local rate), then the answers likely to be a no. Or a… “try making do with $5”. So far, all debts have been repaid, so track records are good. It’s hard though to have a true appreciation for a what a drain on you emotionally this sort of decision-making takes. Each case, weighed up individually, checked with management, documented in the bookkeeping, followed up weekly… No, none of us here envy Nick his money-man role, that’s for sure. Yet he keeps telling Heather he “loves” being a carpenter, so maybe that’s why he’s escaping to the site four days out of five! Go, we say, enjoy!
Corky, fws environmental engineer – has some great news. He’s hired Kesho Leo’s Eco Farm Manager. Fidelus, who is Tanzanian and 30 years old, has worked as a primary school teacher for 10 years, worked with a few NGOs, developed a mushroom farming project with one of them, a juicing type project for another. He's currently studying law(six years correspondence) and has his heart set on ... being a land lawyer. When I asked why he told a story of how as a child, a woman in his community had her land stolen from her by her ex-husband and the customary law allowed this to occur despite the statutory law stating she was entitled to half. He saw the ramifications of this decision and decided to fight against it – on behalf of all women and families that experience this loss. I asked him if he realised that in the future, he could quite possible work for fws on staff as a lawyer to sort out many such issues for the many women in Sinon who find themselves in this position and he grinned. Anyway, for now he's our farm manager and very happy to have the job. Corky has identified that while he's seems to be great with kids (saw him interact with kids for 2 days at recent Tumaini course in permaculture) that he is quite likely lacking in extremely strong farming/agriculture skills. Corky plans to teach Fidelus the eco-systems: biogas, rainwater harvesting, fishpond, etc but has spoken to Fidelus about fws potentially hiriing a farm-hand trainee (from Tengeru Agriculture College) to handle the permaculture/organic vegie gardens at Kesho. Fidelus likes this idea, and so does Corky. Corky feels Fidelus is quick enough to learn the new systems, but it would be good to have the support of a farm-hand to handle the vegie stuff... Fidelus starts next Monday and wil work with Corky on making compost and then towards creating lessons with house mamas on KL eco-systems...
Corky also did a mortuary run last week on a grandmother who lived over the back, looking after four orphans, we think two are her direct grandkids and two aren't... Anyway, we've now got the knock on the door - a mama has taken them in, despite having her own kids, but can't really afford them. We've filled out our “Kesho Potential Kid” form (which really should be renamed asap!) and will add it to the other form I filled in a while back about the kids. It’s sometimes difficult to not be able to take these kids in straight away and ease the burden on their new carers – and to offer the kids some stability in life – but at least we are here, and operating and will be ready to help soon.
Daz is a roof man at the moment. You can’t talk to him about anything else. He is so excited about having the roof on, the tanks connected up, the rain falling, the water splashing into tanks that he wakes me two, three, four times a night to tell me that it’s just rained 20mm (he’s become good at guestimating rainfall) and that can only mean we’ve just collected an extra how-many-ever-thousand litres in our tanks. He’s a bit like a mozzie, but at least he’s stopped jumping out of bed to leap to the window and watch the rain fall down in the dark… Last estimated: we’ve collected 85,000 litres.
Daz is also stoked about having his son, Robbie here. Robbie has been brilliant, helping his Dad up on site every day, building, sawing, hammering, fitting, laying – whatever’s required. He’s also shown a remarkable ability to simply land here and operate – no culture shock dramas for this one. I keep telling Daz it’s amazing that both Robbie and Daniel (Darren’s other son, who flew over for five weeks last year) are so adaptable. It’s a credit to Daz for rearing such beasty boys, I say. I mean, gawd, I’m only just now starting to feel like I’ve moved beyond culture shock, eight months later!
Even yesterday Corky and I cracked up because we were talking about when we’d roll out our potential plan to build huts for short-term volunteers. GAP Foundation in Canada are keen to send us a steady flow of green-livin’ volunteers on one-month stints… Corky and I were discussing how we didn’t really see how we could roll out such a big project in less than two years (big because you’d need a full time volunteer leader, you’d need to orient all volunteers, deal with culture shock regularly, often, always…by the time they’d get over their culture shock, they’d be on the plane home and the next lot would be arriving, rah rah). Then Corky put everything back into perspective by observing, “Well, of course, it seems a big project, but compared to everything we’re already doing here, it’s really quite minute”. Yes, a speck of dust, in fact! But maybe that’s not ‘culture” shock – but rather “oh my, I can’t believe this is all working, happening” shock! Of course, most days I do believe it’s all working and happening – in fact, I EXPECT it to all work and happen, but some days you stand back for a minute and the size and success of our project is kinda mind-blowing and overwhelming!
Anyway, what have I been doing besides overwhelming myself? Always such a hard question to answer. Well, namely I’ve been facilitating the mamas to sort out some of their needs. This usually proves hilarious. Take this one: Bibi Frank has been at me to buy her 3 grandkids school shoes. I haven’t seen these school shoes yet but got Volunteer Education Programmer Clare to appraise them before she left. Report was: school shoes falling apart, very bad. Then I said to Clare: are they worse than any of our other kids' shoes? (ie why should gorgeous Franky, Haji & Mary get priority...over other Kesho kids?). Clare wasn't sure. Later on confirmed via Heather that Bibi's kids' shoes are in FAR WORSE condition than other Kesho Kids...basically threadbare, shoe top falling off Franky's. Then we had Easter break, then past week of partial holiday (no contact with mamas), so not much got done. So two days ago, Bibi Frank, god love her, sends me a message through Kesho Assistant Manager Mudi to say that... Oh no, worst of luck, Franky's school shoes have been "stolen". TOOO FUNNY! Heather & I cracked up! AAAAAZ IF anyone would steal shoes in that condition. Like, they're not even shoes anymore! Oh how we larfted. Later, sent a friendly reminder back to Bibi, explaining that we'll get the shoes this week, but there's no need for such exciting embellishments. Tooo funny. One of my favourite African adventures.
Inbetween these random African adventures, I’ve been updating the website. Check out
- the new story board at our photo gallery – www.foodwatershelter.org.au/photo-gallery.aspx
- our updated shopping list – www.foodwatershelter.org.au/shoppinglist.aspx
- our values (that we created in the early days but have only just thought to publicise!) – http://www.foodwatershelter.org.au/page11254140.aspx
An exciting visitor - fws board member Edwina Hammond, flew in from London with her teacher mate, Laura last week. This has been particularly exciting for Corky and I (who volunteered with Ed in 2003), so we spent much time saying "Oh it's just like old times..." only to have Daz look at us sideways. Ed wanted, of course, to be 'of use' (her favourite phrase ever since she read Cidar House Rules in 2003), so given we were on partial holidays (no mamas lessons & doing 'catch up' work for the girls - while the boys were business as usual all week), it was hard to help Weenies be 'of use'. When I explained that it was raining and we're doing catch-up computer work and reminded her that she doesn’t like computer work, she worked out she’d weed the shamba with House Mama Mary. Weenies did that and then joined Laura in helping Robbie’s girlfriend Allyce (who is volunteering here and wishes to be a primary teacher) bring together some lesson plans for the house mama's English lessons, which Allyce is taking over from departed volunteer NuNu. Ed traveled up to the house mama lessons and helped out Lucas and Aileen our teacher aides with the early-learning lessons. There was a game of pin the banana on the monkey’s gob (possibly not its official name) and some reading, and baby-animal play acting to facilitate the kids learning English. Ed and Laura also took time to hand out the gorgeous clothes they’d collected from the students at their school in London (Southbank Primary) – as the pix show, the Kesho Kids were absolutely stoked with their new gear (one item per kid, but there were no complaints!).
What else do we do in our spare time? Oh, you know, we host the odd Easter Feaster (which boasts more gourmet concoctions than a swish Byron deli!). Such a treat! Oh, but another must about Easter Feaster is that it comes complete with an “agenda” as opposed to a “menu”. The agenda, differs from a boring old menu, because it has times attached to it. This is necessary, explains Daz, because “I need to know what I’m going to eat when”. O-kay…relax
Easter Feaster also comes with a hat parade. NuNu appeared as Carmen Miranda but her fruit took the form of the self-professed “beautifully drawn” flashcards she’d been using to teach house mamas English “fruit” words. Heather came as Jesus (thorn of crowns made from our bouganvillea so her suffering was legit), Robbie came as SuperBoy and Allyce came as the embodiment of Generation Y, because we have spent many weeks teasing Robbie & Allyce that they are ‘pure generation Yers”. I came as Sadie The Cleaning Lady, with curlers in my hair – that were actually made from Pringles containers (Daz likes the odd Pringle chip), but in my estimation, by far the most creative and topical hat was young Nick’s. The photos speak for themselves – and yes, naturally, Darren needed to check if Nick’s A-frame Kesho roof could collect water too – not too bad, was the consensus.
Hope you all had a great Easter! Will blog again soon.
