Meat the Kids

SIX SUPERBOWL CHAMPIONSHIP VICTORIES....GO STEELERS!!!!! It was a difficult and slightly terrifying couple of hours for me and those around me since I was unable to watch the game, but I want you all to know that I was wearing my Hines Ward jersey when I traveled from Dar through Johannesburg and into Lesotho, and the first evening of the conference. The morning after the game, or actually just a few hours from when it ended in Africa time, I saw highlights on CNN World News and I think I am okay with admitting that I cried a single tear when Santonio Holmes made that incredible TD reception. Moving on before I get too excited/start missing the Pour House even more, for what I have been lacking in words lately I will desperately try to make up by posting pictures. This has been a challenge for me, but seeing as I am around electricity and internet for a couple of hours I am giving it another shot.

And now.....Introducing Mary Ryan Foundation's Class of 2013 (the inaugural class):
Mwisho Luwela, Litiel Kiwoyela, Elisha Luwole, Mwakasita Saimon, Diana Nsahani, John Mwawa, Asia Pachanga, Afeli Juma, Willy Yella, Ebby Mwile, Shila Zakaria, Jeremia Elia, Tabitha Jackson, and Tabia Kaseka.

Many thanks to those of you who have donated to the Mary Ryan Foundation (http://www.maryryanfoundation.org) I know the MRF and the kids of Ilembo will appreciate your ongoing support..there is a lot of work to be done and it really is a unique chance to help an extremely underserved population in Tanzania. Again, I am working as a liaison between Community Based Organizations in Ilembo and the Mary Ryan Foundation, and the money is never going into my personal account, which is good, because it would be hard to do volunteer work if everyone in the village thought I had an endless supply of money. By giving the CBO's and OVC groups different resources to partner with, I hope that these kinds of support programs for vulnerable children could continue for a long time. All of these children are between the ages of 14 and 17 years old, and are living in an extremely difficult home environment. Most of the kids' parents have passed away, so they either live with a grandparent or in some cases a friend of the family or an older sister. When visiting them at their homes, it was such a wake up call as most of them slept in the uninsulated 'kitchens', which means on a straw mat on the dirt floor. It gets pretty cold in Ilembo at night, so seeing these sleeping conditions at their homes, along with the fact that women cook over a smoky fire almost all hours of the day made it not surprising that one of the most common diseases in Ilembo are upper respiratory infections and pneumonia. All of them passed their Standard 7 exams, which means that they are extremely bright because the majority of the Std 7 students do not pass, and therefore do not get the opportunity to go to school. (I am working to start up an OVC committee in Ilembo that would target helping the recent out of school youth who failed their exams, and getting an apprenticeship program going with these kids and the "fundis" in the village, so that the children can learn a skill of their choosing, such as sewing, making furniture, raising livestock, as well as teaching them different income generating skills like making batik, baking different foods that they could sell at the market, and bio intensive gardening/permaculture.

Each of the children above have written letters of introduction in Kiswahili, which I will be working with them to translate into English. In the meantime, I think it would be really cool if we started a Pen Pal program between you all and these kids (and eventually adding more kids if many of you show interest) If you would like to have a pen pal, simply comment on this blog and say that you would like to start writing letters, and I will "assign" you a child. If you are a teacher and would like your group of students to do this, then let me know and we can arrange something with the Coverell worldwide penpal service. This LoafLetters (too much?) thing would be a smaller group and it would be really cool for the first letter to enclose a picture and a letter of introduction, and I would incorporate the Pen Pal into the life skills session. So start commenting and getting your name out there if you'd like to get involved, it's a pretty easy, fun, and inexpensive way to make the day to day life of a child more exciting!

..and now I will try to post some photos of these kids and their caretakers...

...that didn't work so I am uploading some pictures to Picasa.. the batiks in the pictures are ones that we did during In-Service Training in Iringa with our counterparts..it was really fun and everyone came up with some pretty cool designs..mine is the red and yellow one that has the sun with a circle around it. There are also pictures of us doing permaculture gardening with our counterparts from IST, under the instruction of Peter Jensen aka King of Compost! He Some of the other pictures are from the HIV/AIDS and ICT conference in Lesotho. It was a really great time and I am so lucky to have gone..it was like a mini america! We stayed at an actual hotel, and I had cereal and orange juice and was incredibly excited. Besides the superficial parts that were a nice treat, I learned a lot about ICT and the activities and practices that are going on in other countries and in Tanzania. With everything from cell phone programs that health workers could use to send patient data to district hospitals (which would greatly help the PLWHA's that are awaiting ARV treatment), to anyone with a cell phone being able to text to a program to get information on the nearest Counseling and Treatment center or anonymously ask questions about a variety of health topics, these types of programs are getting started up across the region and Peace Corps volunteers could play a huge role in helping with the capacity building and training of local counterparts to use these programs to help the people in their community. So a lot of ideas were sparked and I'm excited to see how I can integrate the information from this conference with what I have already been doing...I am going to do a project to get just one computer and enough solar power to charge it so that I can start to teach basic computer skills related to health to a few people from the community (and start to transfer data from paper into digital so that it can be shared more easily with the higher levels that are actually providing the support for people with HIV and OVC's. At first I wasn't even considering this but in Lesotho they gave a lot of examples of health clinics in low resource areas where NGO's were able to assist them in setting up with solar power and basic skills training, so it seems like no matter where you are now it's getting easier to find ways to connect even the most rural areas. I hope the picasa album works... Miss you guys a lot, thanks for all the packages and letters, I can't tell you how much I love them. Well I guess I can tell you. I like them a lot..a wholleeee lot. But please visit the Mary Ryan Foundation website and also explore the other blogs of volunteers in Peace Corps, you can get them from the main peace corps website.. everyone is fired up from this In Service Training in Iringa and I know a lot of people from my training group are going to be doing some amazing things. Myself and two other female volunteers from my region are hopefully going to be writing a grant for a Girls' Empowerment Camp in June where we would select a group of young women to do life skills, HIV/AIDS awareness, teaching income generating projects/marketable skills, sports, and just all around good camp fun. Thanks for all your support....GO STEELERS