afriCAN

Well Happy Groundhog Day everyone! Thanks for taking time out of the busy day to check in here.

New paragraph…it looks like I got 2 sentences done yesterday. I am not doing so well at the blog writing. But I am doing well with the journal, which I have never been able to do, so that is super. Today is Wednesday, and Im sitting on the balcony at the Camunya hotel. In the last several days, I haven’t done a lot of anything crazy… One of my jobs while here was to finish up a research project on the efficacy of the hiv/aids prevention curriculum. The previous intern started the project with 3 rounds of questioning last summer, and I am following up with the 6 month later evaluation. It is not difficult, just entails traveling to the school and giving them a survey to fill out, probably 2 to 3 hours from the time we leave until we return. We have to do the surveys at recess time, however, so we can only do one school a day. There are 12 schools in total, but now that the 4 in Ugenya are done I happily on my way with that. No more for at least 3 weeks until I move to Kuria, south of here and south of Lake Victoria, after I head back up north to Mbakalo for a week or so.

The weekend was exciting though. On Saturday I spent the day with Calvin going over the goals of the organization here and creating a plan to create income with a poultry farm in order to reach those objectives. The organization has 4 acres of land, and a building, and has planted bananas that are producing, but because no comprehensive plan has yet been put together no one really had an idea what the money that should have been coming in from the bananas would be used for. ( there is no money coming in because the lack of a plan means that there is no caretaker, and thus, the neighbors are all getting fat off of the 2.5 acres of free bananas.) The local organization had no specific goal… aids is a problem, and poverty is a problem, but no one yet has decided how the organization is approaching it…and like they say, it is hard to get where you are going if you don’t know where you want to be…, so all the donations and land grants going towards the building , and fencing, and planting, and fertilizing…has yet to produce any fruit (pun intended). It was so frustrating to me to see so many plans and status reports for the bananas and for the building that have been coming in from the local coordinator and all of the interns that have come here since 2006….when nothing has been done, except for planting the bananas, because no one put the separate aspects of developing an income generating asset and then targeting the financial needs of that nonprofit if it wanted to be totally self sustainable. Hope that made sense. Anyways, with some tough questions, and a realistic look at what is really needed here, versus what is a waste, essentially I think we did in about 5 hours what hadn’t been done in 4 years. I will be putting the final report down and getting it off to headquarters in the coming days. All in all it looks as if a loan of about $5,500 dollars, which I have planned to be repaid in three years, will allow the organization to become totally self sustainable, creating 3 full time jobs, operating a daycare for 50 young children of child headed households (due to both parents dying from aids) which will allow the older children to complete their educations, and also provide total educational sponsorship for 2 more children at a time. (this includes books, uniforms, food for the family at home, shoes, uniforms, school fees – primary is free, but secondary costs- a major barrier to many children getting an education in developing countries- and medical care. Right now the organization has 38 sponsored children, but the problem is that it is not sustainable – they are totally dependent on a sponsor from the us sending the money each year, which can easily change, and thus is not the best way to attack the situation, in my opinion. This project will enable the organization to add 2 more children to the list of those who will complete an education, and do it in a sustainable way. Its amazing what such a small loan to those with no collateral can do – the wonders of microfinance. I just finished reading three cups of tea, and am excited to start Banker to the Poor by Mohammed Yunus. Besides that, I have just been working out, playing soccer, watching soccer, and trying to put up with the terribly repetitive music that blares from the market all day. How was groundhog day? i still don’t know the outcome…the sun was too bright for me to see the computer screen!! Stay warm my friends.