I am fully recovered and am in action doing so many things in Bariadi! Over the past week I have come up with two major projects that I have started and am so excited about: sponsoring families and feeding the kids at my school uji (porridge). I have done all the research and budgeting and to feed the kids (700 of them) it would cost $25 dollars a day. I would need two buckets of maize each day and then I would take it to the mill in town to make it into a powder form. I would also need 10 kilos of sugar. There are two men that work at the school as security but I would hire them to cook the uji and pay them per month. The students would each bring their cup from home and be responsible for washing it after eating. Each month each student would also bring 1 piece of firewood so we could prepare the food. This would allow us to have a stock of firewood per month. I bought two 60L jiko pots to cook on the fire with two giant wooden spoons. I am so excited to start this at school because these kids are starving. So many kids don’t take any food in the morning before school and walk miles each day to get to school. Then school is from 7am-2pm each day without any lunch being served. This affects their energy level, their ability to focus, and their willingness to come to school. If they know that during break time (10:00am-10:30am) they will be served uji this will motivate them. With my budget right now ($100 a month, $25/week) I will start only serving the kids uji once a week on Wednesdays. Hopefully in the future I can increase the days maybe to Tuesday/Thursday or Mon/Wed/Fri!

            As for the families, I have sponsored two families myself. A BIG thanks to Devan Kuhn and Taylor Sockwell they have also donated and each sponsored a family of their own! I am so excited about this! I am finishing up on the second family by this Tuesday and then I can begin working on the next two families for Devan and Taylor. With sponsoring families my goal is to find families in extreme need of help. It is difficult because everyone is in need here but I am working hard with a close friend of mine who is also a teacher at my school, Mwajabu, and we are trying to come up with a criterion for this. I buy food and clothes to help get them back on their feet for the first month. So for Mama Minza’s family I bought a sack of rice, small fish, cabbage, tomatoes, salt, sugar, onions, cooking oil, soap for washing clothes and soap for bathing, shoes for the family, and clothes for the family, school uniforms, etc. (All of this totals to around $65-75 depending on the number of children in the family.) Mama Minza has 9 children. Mama Minza went to the big market with me, which is every Tuesday and helped me pick out the right sizes for the clothes, school uniforms, and shoes. Nothing is more rewarding then going back the next week to see them and seeing the kids smell so good in their scented lotion, so squeaky clean not covered in dirt, wearing all the precious clothes I picked out that don’t match of course because there are such limited choices but they still look so cute, and to see their area covered with pots and pans because they actually have food to cook now for their family. It gives me a feeling I can’t even describe to you; to see the babies crying for food now instead of crying because they are hungry, such a change from one-week prior.  

            After providing things for the family, I then asked Mama Minza’s education level and her skills. I want to know how she can provide these things for her family without my help. She has a primary school education level and is a very good cook. She says that if I provide her with 100,000tsh which is $50 US dollars she could go to the big market each Tuesday and sell mandazi, chapatti, chai, etc. African foods to the people. This would be enough capital for her to start her own business and she would be able to provide for her family each week with the money she earns. This is my goal with each family, I want to help them get on their feet but then to find out how they can be sustainable on their own without me.

            I am still trying to collect backpacks for the kids. Backpacks cost $5, and I have a list of 44 kids from Kidinda who need them. I will continue to work on that little by little.

            School is going well, I just started a new topic….Reproduction. haha. SO awkward. These students ask me so many questions it is so funny!! I feel like I am teaching Sex Ed.

            The hospital is going well also. It is nice because I am starting to feel like a part of the staff, everyone knows me and I finally am remembering everyone’s names. They ask me to assist in certain procedures instead of just referring to me as the “mzungu” haha.

            Besides that I spend most of my days trying to figure out how I can help these families, trying to find more families to reach out to, meeting with my headmistress discussing my food project for the kids and how it can continue once I come back to America. I am trying to plan a trip to the village which is about 6-9 km away from where I live I just need someone to take me so I can see the conditions of the village and what I can do there.

            Hope everyone is doing well! If you have any suggestions or advice please let me know!! laurenbrookeparker@gmail.com