Getting Organised

Click on this video to check out village life (about 4Mb)

This week we have put on some new “staff”. Sounds all official, but really I wonder if we are just mucking around. Cynthia has found a great young woman called Sinta for the sewing room. Cynthia finds it hard to teach in a group setting so she has taken on Sinta as an employee to work in the sewing room. We hope that she’ll be confident enough to become a coordinator of this project and bring in other suitable women to be able to sew products. This week they have been working on women’s products as well as sewing up bags for school kids to carry their books. Cynthia is working hard on the numbers to try to make this a financially viable endeavour (so it pays for itself). Serenity is also proving to be one of the best sewers amongst the women. She is even on the payroll (is this child labour?).

Cynth in her element - materials, threads and sewing machines

Sinta - our new up coming Sewing group coordinator - she's a great worker.

Cynthia with Laura in the sewing room.  2 years ago she nearly died of dengue, this year her father died of alcohol poisoning.

I have put on a guy fresh out of uni to do community development. His name is Simeao. It’s a new area that we are going into and sort of riding on the back of water projects – its like the next step after getting water into a community. My hope is that if he can carry some of the responsibility, training and implementation then I can be freed up to do other stuff. (I get a bit busy.) I introduced him to the community of Beraka and we had a long talk with the community about why the water system is not going as it should. It seems there’s just one man at the top of the system who wants the water to go his way and to no one else. Pray for him. We have organised for the construction of a small dispersal tank to hopefully deal with this problem. They have a serious problem with evironmental degradation – many trees are being cut down for firewood and the creek has caused massive erosion in the last wet season covering good land with river rock making it unusable for crops. There are some good opportunites to provide seed and we are considering a small loans project to get in some vegies to sell to market. Simeao and I also went to his home community of Maquili on the island.

Simeao - uni graduate who is my new Community Development worker, checking out the rocky slopes on teh island.

It’s a fascinating village. They make awesome fish traps and seem quick to learn and try new things. They are already implementing some great ideas such as diverting precious waste water into banana and paw paw gardens and using quality composting toilets. I negotiated with one man to provide a $400 loan to build a chicken pen as a small business endeavour. All going well, he can sell chooks or eggs and pay back the loan over 2 years. Part of Simeao’s work will be to monitor this area of microfinance as well as provide education for the communities. (No harm in dreaming.)

On the roof of the beach villas with a labourer we employ - Juli

The beach house project is still going ahead. I put in a couple of days to give them a boost on the roof – it’s a bit technical with valleys and hips. We’ve put on another builder to help with this work. We hope to get one ready at least for a team coming in 2 weeks from Darwin.

Amau - Maun Je's second in charge.  A real nice guy who now becomes our head builder.

Scriptures are slowly getting distributed on an adhoc basis. We are also getting out our little activity book designed for primary school kids. Its been pretty exciting but unfortunately our wizz bang new printer is being very temperamental. We got it rigged up in a dodgey sort of way to external ink tanks so it seems the ink ink is running out externally everywhere!

Our truck made its first trip into the mountains this week to deliver drums to farmers for rat and weavel free storage. This is the work of an organisation called Drums on Farms. We are assisting with transport. It’s a two way street where they get cheap transport and we get enough money to pay for fuel, a driver and extra money that will help keep the truck maintained for all the work we do. Anen is training up a young man to take on the role of driver which we desperately need to free up both Anen and I. His name is Natalino and I hope that he will be also able to drive Simeao with supplies to community development projects as well as (dream big) support a vegie run to bring all those wonderful vegies from the community to the city.

It’s a big plan for a little guy. I suppose its just a little plan for a big God.

We finally got a tap rigged up to a basic water dispenser. Israel is fascinated with this contraption from which you can just put your cup under, turn it on and get a drink.

God bless, enjoy your week. Be grateful if drinking water comes out of your tap today.

Our back yard, yeah its tuff.