A Few Funny Tid Bits

Item 1:

(Apologies to Pam, who has already heard this story).  About a week ago, I was sitting in the large plastic bucket that serves as my bathtub. As usual I'm washing, relaxing, scrubbing the jungle grub off my feet and kind of zoning out. Then I happened to focus on the bottle of body lotion I've been using twice a day for about four months, sent in a care package from my former colleagues at UTC, and something catches my eye...

It says, "Intensive care for damaged hair." 

"For damaged hair?" I think. Why would I be putting body lotion on my hair? Then I look again.

"Daily moisturizing conditioner," it reads, very clearly.

I HAVE BEEN USING THE DOVE HAIR CONDITIONER AS BODY LOTION FOR FOUR MONTHS!!! My idiocy clearly knows no bounds. However, since I have not developed a skin disease as a result and very much like the smell, I think I will continue to use the hair product on my skin. Why not, right?

Item 2:

So the village of Ricanaumoffo has no regular electricity, no running water, no middle school, no gas station, etc. It does, however, have an Avon representative. That’s right! We have a local Avon salesperson who distributes the cosmetics/accessories catalogues and takes orders right there on the Cottica River. Who da thunk it?

Cool Stats About My Blog

Google now offers its blog subscribers free analytics.  Below is a highlight of the stats from my page.

·      Pageviews by Country: 99, United States; 7, Suriname; 2, United Kingdom; 1, Austria; 1, Canada; 1, Cameroon; 1, Spain; 1, Haiti; 1, Kenya; 1, the Netherlands.

·      Pageviews by Operating System: 61%, Windows; 19%, Mac; 11%, Android; 3%, iPad; 2%, Linux; 1%, iPhone; 1%, other.

·      As a point of interest on social networking, more people access this blog from Facebook than all of the other referring sites.

My last post received 75 pageviews.  That’s a big increase from the last few posts, but still down from the first three. Thanks for reading!

Trials, Triumphs and Challenges

Changes

After along battle with staff to obtain separate housing, a decision was made that my roommate will move to Moengo.  While bittersweet and certainly not the outcome that we originally had in mind, this arrangement will allow each of us to have our own sites and, most importantly, our own homes.  Suzie Kay has already established a relationship with the RGD health clinic in Moengo which, given her experience as a dietician, should open the door to a variety of project options. I will continue to live in Rica and work with the stichting on existing and future projects. Managing two separate sites will also expand our collective impact, enable us to work with a larger section of the population.

Daycare Center Update

The daycare has been under construction since January 2012.  Progress has been coming in waves depending on the availability of labor, the weather and the supplies that have been purchased.  On an extremely positive note, the stichting bought the remaining building supplies and budgeted materials for the daycare center (i.e. baby cradles, mattresses, wash buckets, mops, a water catchment system), which were delivered Monday, April 23^rd.  Final construction should be completed within the next two months with a training schedule for its local employees and an operational plan to follow in June and July. 

The community has taken some liberties with the initial building blueprint, but all changes have been unanimously approved.  The price of gas has also recently gone up, which has increased the price of several of our building materials. Receipts are due back to Rotary, at this point the sole funder, by the first week in May along with a progress report. 

Photos of progess:

The original structure (the former dance/community hall) was falling apart. The wood was decaying, eaten by termites, the cement floor was foll of holes and broken nails protruded from the busted walls.

A picture of the original structure on the inside.

Local construction worker Lando builds new walls from cinder blocks and concrete.

Construction worker Daniel takes a break after sealing the new wall.

Rehabilitation of the floor before the new cement was poured.

A young mother, Saa Dindin, with a handfull of the villages young children.

New walls built. Heavy duty screen will be applied to open areas to enclose the space while still providing for a comfortable breeze.

A makeshift door keeps young children off the newly poured floor and away from the other building supplies.

Wood beams mark the demarkation between where the napping and play rooms. A wall will be consrtucted. The far door space is where the bathroom is to be constructed. Small matresses (left) will line the baby cradles and the larger ones will lay on the floor.

Girls Empowerment Camp (i.e. Camp GLOW)

The girl’s camp for Marowijne has been funded!  A fellow PCV, Michelle, and several local women and I are working full time to secure lodging, transportation, guest speakers and local support for the event, which will cover a range of topics from nutrition and sexual reproductive health to career paths and protecting the environment.  Sessions and activities are designed to educate and empower, with a strong focus on improving self-esteem and developing leadership.  Given Peace Corps’ impending withdrawal from Suriname, we strive to involve and train a group of local women (school teachers, community leaders) in the planning an implementation of the camp so that they can replicate it in the years to come. This year’s camp will serve 30 5^th and 6^th grade girls from the villages of Ricanaumoffo, Wan Hatti, Moengo, Erowarte and Tapuku.

Ideas Requested

Rica has been active in UNICEF’s Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) program for the last few years. Trainings have been excellent, when available, but have been cancelled since August 2011. As with any large organization, the application process is long and the pace is slow.  In light of the latter, the community has secured some of its objectives, namely Durotanks and garbage pick-up, without UNICEF’s financial assistance.  Now, with the daycare center project winding down the toilet project is next in line. And here I find myself in a bit of a pickle: UNICEF has pledged to help but we don’t know how much and by what time.

What we know—We know, for example, that UNICEF has about USD $48,000 to be split amongst 16 different villages.  If every village gets an equal part, and there’s no guarantee they will, Rica would recieve about USD $3,000 (~ SRD $9,800).  Rica’s own community development organization has a small store of cash earmarked for the toilet project, in addition to any amount provided by external sources. Also, it has been agreed that each of the family 61 households that would to obtain a toilet will have to put up half the cost of the materials and do their own labor.  However, all of this considered, and assuming we get the money from UNICEF, Rica still won’t have enough money to buy the materials.

It is important to consider that the community should also have an engineer come out to verify where we can and cannot build toilets and to help us draw a model of the septic tanks and the structure that will house the toilet so that we can draft a budget. Plus, there’s always the possibility that UNICEF will not provide any money or technical expertise, or that it will take a very long time before any funding may be received.

A final complication is that members of the community do not agree on how to go about the project generally: Should a modest number of shared toilets be provided to the community to be shared at no cost to individual households or should each household be able to buy into an in-home pour flush model that would be subsidized by the community development organization and its funders?

What we don’t know—What to do? So, here’s where I solicit you clever folks for suggestions.  I’ve listed three basic options below and am open to other suggestions.

1. Wait to hear back from UNICEF. Assume they will provide technical expertise and the maximum funding (USD $3,000). In the meantime, devise a way to make up the difference in funding between the UNICEF funding plus what the community already has, and what it needs.
2. Assume that UNICEF will not be able to help in a timely matter (if at all) and seek all funding and technical expertise elsewhere.
3. Abandon the project entirely. Perhaps the community is not ready for a project of this scale at this time.

Random Project Ideas

The project ideas below are small in scale and outside the priorities of the community, which still doesn’t have running water, regular electricity or, in many households, toilets. You’ll notice that all of them involve Rica’s youth, who are its best chance for a better, more developed future.  In my opinion, that is why these projects are of the utmost importance.

I do not have any plan of action or funding scheme in mind for any of the items below at this time. Therefore, I look to you as creative individuals and experienced professionals for ideas about how to get them done. Thank you, in advance, for your feedback!

Just Shoe It!  Most children in Rica own two pair of shoes: A pair of flip-flops and a pair of dress sandals that they where to school/church.  A handful also has thin, plastic boots for the rainy season. That means that they do not have closed toed shoes to play sports or go to grounds.  You can imagine the amount of injured feet I see in a day! I’m trying to get in touch with the organization Tom’s Shoes about getting a donation, but a shoe drive would serve the same purpose, if the former isn’t feasible. (Heart & Sole; Take a Walk in Their Shoes…Or Not; Not-So-Famous Footwear; Keeping Toes Intact)

A Book A Day (…Keeps Poverty Away)  I’m fully absorbed in the Hunger Games trilogy right now and have been spending a good part of my afternoons over the last week lost in the pages of the second book, thanks to my newly acquired Kindle App.  Two days ago, my neighbor girl, 9-year-old Simone, asked me what I was doing on my computer. After explaining the logistics of how a book could be in my computer in the first place, we got to a more confusing question: Why do you read books? 

With the exception of those in my house, most kids in Rica have only ever seen one book: The Bible.  We could debate its merits and intrigue or even its instructive value, but I don’t think many would argue that the Bible is most kid’s idea of a good time. Additionally, the Bibles in Rica are written in Sranan Tongo, a language all of the kids can speak and understand, but not one that they learn to read or write in school. School instruction is in Dutch as is the professional sphere outside of the Interior.  Oral story telling is so valued here and yet the children don’t have access to the written word—the world of stories, of history of imagination!

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that without books, kids don’t learn to read. And, if you can’t read it’s unlikely that you will learn to write worth a damn.  Children here are held back year after year.  Some drop out, others push on and a lucky, gifted few will make it past middle school. What does Rica need: It needs books. A lot of them. As such, I would like to build a small library.  I’m pretty confident I can get the books donated, but the community will need a small amount of money to buy the wood, zinc and cement to build the structure itself and some shelves.

Written in the Stars; Pinworm, Ringworm, Bookworm?; The Written Word; Giving Your Word; Read Between the Lines; Kindles Are for Rich Kids; A Book A Day; The Power of Words; Great Books

Play First  Other than the football field, which is in serious disrepair, there is no location within the community that is designated for children to play. Kids collect found objects to use as toys. These object vary but include sticks, empty metal fuel barrels, mud, pieces of Styrofoam and even razor blades.  While the kids’ creativity sometimes leaves me awestruck—like when I realized that they were making kites from plastic trash bags that they found or that their play cars are constructed from old nails and empty water bottles, but there is an additional need. There is plenty of space surrounding the primary school and a playground would provide a safe environment for the children to play.  I envision something minimal: A slide, swing set, teeter totter and perhaps a series of half-buried large tires.

Women’s Group in Pikin Santi

I’m continuing to work with the women’s group in Pikin Santi to help sell their handbags and identify artisan bazarres and other local markets.  At the Suriname Heritage Festival the group sold over SRD $1,000 in products and we hope to exceed that number at this week’s Made in Suriname Fair.

Wildlife

I have killed yet another Fer-de-Lance (viper) snake outside my home in Ricanaumoffo.  The little bugger was hidden underneath my trash bag and poised to strike when I removed the bag to take out to the garbage truck.  Thankfully my new machete was nearby and the snake met his end after about five slashes (the machete needs to be sharpened).

I killed it. Take that, you deadly viper, you!

My counterpart's new baby monkey. The mother became someone's dinner.

Tarantula on the side of my house.

Alms for the Poor…Peace Corps Volunteer That You Love

Special thanks to recent benefactors Davis Smith, Bob & Janet Bennett (i.e. Grandma & Grandpa) and my mother and father for their lovely packages.  I relish your treats and they make the hot days so much more enjoyable! For any of you benevolent readers out there, ideas are below. Surprises are also welcome—I like EVERYTHING except tuna.

Things I need:

• Duct tape—an American brand like 3M or scotch or something
• A USB stick (my four sticks are almost full with project proposals, etc.)

Things I would like, but don’t technically need:

• Books in French or Spanish (even just printed articles) to help me retain the languages
• Books/magazines in general. I have the Kindle Ap on my computer so you can send electronic books via Amazon.com too!
• Stationary, American stamps, envelops (and your address if you would like a
• Granola
• Dried cherries
• Almonds or pecans
• Parmesan cheese (the grated kind, not fresh)

Things for the kids:

• Tennis balls (for the girls to play slagball)
• Coloring books and children’s books in English or Dutch (for the children)
• Crayons/watercolors/markers
• Lanyard material



GO BLUE!