Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Hello All!
 
Yesterday was a wonderful, 12 hour trip to the Port Loko District With Heifer International! 
Both the drive and the time in the villages are always times of observing and learning for me!
 
First the 3 hour (1 way) drive:
--We saw a flock of large bats (mid- day) that I think might be fruit bats!!! About a foot wide wingspan. We have to go to the Zoo to see them!
--As we drove along in Freetown, we heard a siren. Tomba, the driver, pulled over for 2 police motor cycles, a large black car, then an open truck with armed soldiers standing in the back. It was the President of SL's motorcade with him in the black vehicle!   I thought that this was quite an occasion, but when I told Caleb later, he said it happens all the time!
-- The SL national elections will be in on a Saturday November. The date will be announced later.  The Pres and VP run separately. It's Tomba's opinion that the Pres will be re-elected. The Pres can fired and hire his VP.  It will be interesting to see if we can get news about it.
-- The Minister of Gender (which must be like our federal Dept of Health and Human Welfare) has started a campaign again child and domestic abuse!  As in out US past, they are wide spread and education, attitude and peer pressure are the real ways to stop them- they are already illegal. There are now large signs/billboards about them, along with malaria and HIV education.
--The Gov't has bought some new buses that run not only in Freetown, but also a few rural routes. These supplement the taxis and poda-podas (extremely old 15-17 passenger vans that crowd in many more than that!)  Caleb's street, a crowded 2 lane dirt road that has cars parked on it, as well as people walking, dogs sleeping, etc, is 1 of the bus routes!
 
 
The HI village visits:
 
   The visit to Malkabeng, a community of 3 villages, where WCUCC has funded 2 bore hole wells was great!  Actually, we raise the $6000 for 1 well. That is the approximate cost of 1 hand dug well. Fortunately, 2 bore hole wells in the same location can be dug for the cost of 1 hand dug well.  The digging started yesterday!
   We visited both the villages of Konta and of Malkabeng. (The 3rd village, which is quite a distance from the others, has a well.) At each of the 2 villages we were greeted by excited singing and dancing then seated while the villagers stood around for speeches. We were then free to start and learn about the bore hole digging process, which is low-tech, muscle powered and perfect for this setting! I have the whole impressive process well documented on both video and photo!   They will be easy to share when I return. It is such a wonderful bonus to have Nevin visiting villages and taking the video this week while I focus on photos and greeting people!  For those of you not at WCUCC, many of the photos and some of the video will be available on westervillecucc.org under "Serve."
   The joy and excitement were evident as the drilling began. People hung out near-by watching all day and there was abundant muscle power to pull from!  In each village where a bore hole well is dug, the villagers provide the water, sand and gravel to mix with the cement to make the concrete. The villagers also provide meals for the workers and for John's team and wife who are camping in the village for the 2 weeks that the bore hole digging takes.
   The team is a group of 6 men who are being trained by John to become proficient in the process. (At 1st it appeared simple, but it was soon clear that there is a lot to the technique and many opportunities for problem solving!) Some of those men are on salary with Willamette Medical Team and some are being trained by the job. I think that all will be offered the opportunity to begin their own small businesses with the goal of making pure water more available more widely in SL.  It appears to me that there is no end to the need!
 
   Later we walked the 10 minutes down to the stream which has always been the water source. It was quite shallow and will dry up completely during the dry season. Beyond the stream is the very large rice swamp, which is the only source of water by mid dry season. At that point, a hole is dug for water to pool so that buckets can be dipped and filled.
There is not enough firewood to burn to sterilize the water, so it is left to settle and drinking water gently skimmed off the top of the containers. The 3 minute video, by Bruce Houtz, that is on the website shows the name of some of the variety of diseases that are water-born in this part of the world. Suffice it to say that no one who has an alternative drinks the same water where laundry is done, the village bathes, and the animals drink even if they know nothing of the disease agents they are drinking!   I cannot keep all of the disease in mind. For me, the simple thought that is most discouraging, is that almost all of the rural people here have intestinal worms that eat the nutrition that they work so hard from sun up to sun down to produce!   
 
   In 2-3 weeks, the 2 wells will be drilled and lined, the pump will be installed, the water tested and it will be dedicated! Then the people of the Konta Malkabeng community will have pure water without having to carry it up the steep hillside!
 
   After leaving Konta Malkabeng, we visited 2 other villages where HI works. I had the added joy of seeing Paul again. He is a HI Community Facilitator (A paid HI employee who lives in one of the villages and oversees about 8 villages, then reports to the Program Officers that are over the whole district. They are bright, capable villagers who speak English, can translate and do an able job of being more present in every HI village. That is essential as the HI program grows so rapidly to service more villages!) Paul created salt licks from free local materials that greatly improve the health of the livestock!  They are made of dried local plants, fish bone, salt and eggshell, which provide vitamins and minerals. This is powdered and mixed with okra slime and powdered termite mound which hole the contents together as it hardens. The softball sized salt licks which the goats and sheep love!  For his invention, Paul won an HI award and his home village was awarded $800. They are building a community drying floor (where rice and other foods are spread to dry) and are starting a community savings and loan! The Savings and Loan Fund can save a family or community when there is a bad crop year and families can borrow to have money for the next year's seed! The loans seem tiny, but they make the difference between a family getting by or not! I have also heard of families borrowing money for medical treatment if they have a hope of re-paying it later.
 
    The 2 new villages are Mambanbu and Rombombeh. In Mambanbu, we walked straight to the stream without talking to village leaders or waiting for people to notice us and assemble. Needless to say, a HI vehicle and staff with 2 white people do not sneak go unnoticed where no one is wealthy enough to have a vehicle and no one is white! By the time we got to the stream, we were leading a parade of villagers!  The site is so beautiful to come upon walking through the woods and hills, but looks quite different as a water source!  Again, there is a very large rice swamp beyond the stream, which will soon be the only water source!    There were a few women fetching water, one with a toddler on her back. When she realized it was turning into quite an occasion, she hoisted the water to her head and stayed there in the crowd to listen to the formal introductions and impromptu short speeches... then walked up the steep hill with the rest of the crowd! I can not imagine walking up and balancing along that way with either the passenger or the water, much less standing there with the weight of both beforehand! These people work hard!
    We met By, the teacher who was born in Mambambu, got to go to college then came back to his hometown to be the only teacher for all grades!  The school is impressive! The community worked together to build a 3 room school. They made the mud bricks and raised money for cement for concrete to go between the bricks and to plaster the outside of the bricks. The school has a corrugated zinc roof! There are chalk boards in 2 of the rooms, but at present, there is no chalk!  By is given a tiny salary (or food?) to encourage him to continue teaching!
  
    When we got to Robombeh, Paul told me that their water situation is even worse than the situation in Mambanbu. I didn't see how it could be until I saw it. The stream water looks the same, but the stagnant water is full of iron rust!  Again, the beautiful rice swamp will soon provide the only water. Here there is a split log bridge over the stream. The women and children squat on the bridge to dip their containers without stepping in the water to stir it up!    Since it was late afternoon by the time we got there, we found ourselves in the mix of many women and children who came to draw water! The photo ops were abundant!
    Robombeh had a mud school house that was in bad shape,,, but it's adjoining soccer field had great bamboo goals!
 
   Neither of these 2 villages have had any NGO help since the war until HI began to work with them!
  All of the villages we provide wells for have gone through the HI training process, received the 1st livestock and had at least 1 cycle of "passing on the gift" of the 1st offspring to the next cycle of recipients.
 
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It is almost the end of the school day. We will soon be leaving for Tacugama, the Chimpanzee Preserve. It is a fun trip!
 
God Bless You and again, thank you for the greetings that keep me linked to all of you!
Jenny