Tuesday, November 24, 2009

It's Thanksgiving Week!! OMGoodness





Thanksgiving totally snuck up on me. But what a fabulous time to give a shout of great thanks for an awesome month!


This month we have completed our garden and have already begun to see our seedlings sprout! It’s quite a spectacular site, seeing the garden, literally, come to fruition. After tireless days in the unforeseen pressure of the sun or the heavy rain, we are now done!


Now, we are preparing to select 25 different families to participate in our organic farming experiment, where we prepare the land and manage it differently than how they have in the past. We are hoping to start a microfinance enterprise out of it, where we can mobilize seeds and fertilizer to their homes at a small price, that participants can pay back once there crop comes in and they sell the items grown.



Health classes have started! We have tried our first run-through, teaching the kids about physical education. Mostly, we wanted to see how many kids would participate and over 200 showed up! The kids are on their holidays and we cannot yet manage that many all at once as we get into the more in-depth chapters. It’s a good thing we started with games of “Red Rover”, (I switched up the rhyme a bit so the kids could understand the game in Portuguese), and we were able to learn one another’s names.

It was quite a difficult task to control so many students at once, so we hope to break them up by training teachers primarily for the lessons and then implementing them. Although Pastor Joao, would have liked us to hold classes first and demonstrate to the teachers by example, we are still working out how to do all of that and have quality in the classrooms and see that they're learning the material, too. After the first try we're learning how we want to see the future of the program proceed.


Christmas is in the air—and recycled art, too! The kids are turning trash to treasure at lightning speed. It’s so great to see them fight over the trash that litters most of the community. I’m hoping to create more of these “sustainable art projects” in the future so the kids can continue to make great toys and games with the things they can create! We have already created enough decorations for our upcoming Christmas play!

I have to say, it really doesn’t feel like November at all. This will be the first Thanksgiving I spend away from home. I’m truly feeling the heartstrings tear as the days come closer. I will be spending the holiday in South Africa with familiar friends. I’ll also be there to get my computer repaired and to see what goods I can collect for the kids that I can’t get here.

We made little halos for the kids to take home to wear and for our upcoming Christmas play.

From litter to treasure. We turned a common nuisance into a new toy!


I will be moving out of the house the Korean missionary family and I have lived in since I began here. I’m so grateful for their help in getting me on my feet and offering me their home. I’m now ready to take on the city on my own and couldn’t be happier.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’d like to ask for some prayers of thanksgiving:

- For a truly incredible start to Project Rx. I am floored with how much we have accomplished.

- For the Jeong Family and their incredible generosity for letting me live with them for this time.

- For the amazing provisions that we have added to the program, including but not limited to new chalkboards, all of the garden tools and supplies, oral rehydration kits, games for kids and all of my office-like materials (printer, paper, tape, etc).

- For all of the challenges, struggles, triumphs and breakthroughs.


Thank you so much for following this and for all your continued support. It would not be anything without you. [Round of applause!!]

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Interesting info about African internet



The African continent is rapidly changing. In the next two years 2 billion dollars will bring 12 terabits of connectivity to the continent. Will africa become the world’s newest outsourcing hub? Will it foster it’s own tech and startup culture? The image above explores the ‘infostate’ of Africa in 2009.

Monday, November 16, 2009

My Days in Pictures


i love these kids.

Check out her mango helicopter!! by far the most clever toy I've seen thusfar. :)

The kids get to play pool. Their own personal billard--when it's not raining.

More updates on the garden to come!!

Saturday, November 7, 2009

The Game Plan*

Now that we have the few months ahead of us with no interruptions, we are full-force in planning out the rest of my time here.


Our garden is at the top of our list of things to do. Below is the plan that we have come up with about how the garden will grow and look on the property, overall. :)


Above is the map of the property.



This is the farm portion. If flipped clockwise, this is what we're filling into the bright green area on the map.

The garden is the first task we're really trying to tackle based on the time-sensitivity of the Spring season. We’re trying to capitalize on the warm weather that we get here year-round. Hopefully we can have 4-seasons of crop production. We should have at least three rounds of good vegetables produced.

Our second most important task is our upcoming holiday programs. There is currently no real coordinator of the children’s programs, (even though there are 300+ children who attend every Sunday for songs, a story and biscuits). Project Rx gets to be inventive about all of the wonderful things we can do for the holidays.


I have since been in charge of Holiday festivities, which I don’t mind one bit. I’ve arranged a game of “Feliz Natal Bingo” for over 500 kids, some great holiday print outs for them to color. More importantly, we can give kids at home kits for their ailments, such rehydration mixes for common diarrhea, band-aids for cuts, and soap for everyday washing. Though these may seem very small, most children do not come into contact with any of these items regularly.


Each of the items will be paired visual aides and a small lesson on how to use each item. One thing that has become very clear, is that the level in which we have to describe most things has to boil down, often to nothing more than a picture or a short statement. Anything more than that and we may run into situations of illiteracy, the difficulty of understanding complex language, or confusion about what the main purpose of the item is. The level in which we have to speak to the community speaks to our capacity to be able to reach people at all levels.

This brings me to my third task at hand, which is designing the health curriculum for children ages 3-7. I have been designing a health curriculum to allow teachers to simply aide young children how to live healthier lives, tailored to the community’s environment, resources and lifestyle.


I am clearly no expert in Shangaan culture, however the lesson plans are there to allow teachers to learn their students and teach a lifestyle of healthier living, starting with children of a young age. This will be later adapted for older students and finally adults. I’ve completed two of seven units in our health curriculum. I can complete the lessons on a rolling basis as we evaluate how well the first few lessons will go.


The teachers, (who have also vowed to be servants of the church), are eager to learn new things and have a better idea of what they can teach to students. Because there is little direction at this point, they are very excited to have more direction and a more focused task. They have been extremely helpful and supportive of the work that I’ve been preparing. They keep asking for more and want to know how they can help.

Although they have full schedules each day, starting with their early morning prayers at 5am, they are very excited to participate in something new!

So, it’s yet another exciting time for all of the potential we have in the coming months.


The obstacles we face are mostly in the form of communication. This is a true test of whether or not we can apply all of our knowledge from all sides of the world. To me, it’s not worth a Stanford education if we cannot communicate with our friends in Machava, Mozambique. It will be a great time to reflect on what we can accomplish and what we will fail at, indefinitely.


To recap (+ add a bit):

- Seeds are purchased and we’re on the brink of planting our garden! The land has transformed so drastically in the past months due to all of the hard work of PapĆ” SebastiĆ£o, myself, and Eric, (my Korean bro).

- We’re looking forward to the holiday’s to start the children up with an intro to health practices and lots of fun times for the holidays.

- I’m going to Cape Town for Christmas! I’ll be working with African Leadership partners to present what has been done here and see how we can start looking at implementing the health curriculum into the South African preschool program.

- Teacher training is our next task followed by preparing all materials for our first few health lessons. This should be ready by December with all of our Christmas festivities!


*sorry for the weird formatting. I cut and pasted from my word doc. :-/

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Quite an in-depth look at malaria.

If you have the time to check it out, please do.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Korea Meets Mozambique = Incredibly entertaining cultural experience = SUCCESS!


When our Korean visitors first got off of the bus, I could tell the pairing of the two cultures was going to be interesting. At first, the visitors seemed a bit uneasy. I assume anyone would be if this was the first time in rural Africa. They were greeted by dancing and singing. The community was pouring their heart out as they danced to entertain their guests. After an hour of singing, dancing and drumming, even the visitors were dancing their hearts out.

This weekend was a huge success. We fed over 1,500 children, gave them each a gift (notebook, pencil, eraser, sharpener and balloon), handed out over 500 loaves of bread, watched dancing and singing for over 14 hours and had a great time in the process.


Koreans in Mozambique; no comedian, writer or animator could have come up with a more random scene. The fun of the process made me laugh at times, looking at my own culture, wishing I had someone else to empathize with on the random happenstances of it all. God's some funny dude at times. hhaha. I'm grateful to have had such a random experience, just to make sure that if I'm ever trapped in a broken elevator with a Korean and Mozambican, I can assure them we'll all be fine. hahhaha.