Okay, we can only say we will do our best to adequately bring you up to speed on the goings-on from today. Luckily, our photographers did a stellar job, and we're pretty sure we are going to break a record for number of photos on this blog.
We knew it was going to be a day with a huge agenda, given that we leave in the next couple of days.
We started in town at the bank and internet café.
Sequoia attends to business at home.
There were a number of police around town and, not wanting to buy trouble, (sometimes taxi drivers get hassled) we had Theresa drive.
Theresa was happy to be behind the wheel again. It is not that often she gets to drive.
There were too many of us for one car so Muyunda contracted with one of his friends to take some of us out to Kantolomba. A very nice fellow.
Out at the Kantolomba property we found things buzzing. The men had made great progress and were closing in on completing the first large stove.
Working on the rim where the pot will sit.
Peter working on the edges.
Lingson on the edges of the inner wall of the stove.
Lingson showing Charles about the bottom.
Attaching the pieces that will support the weight of the pot.
And the sewers were working diligently on the book covers.
Josephine on the Juki.
A pile of nearly complete covers.
We decided to follow up on the rumor that people are paying far more than they need to by buying charcoal in small amounts instead of in bulk. We wanted to look into whether it would make sense to have the co-op purchase charcoal in bulk, and then allow co-op members could buy it in small amounts with no mark-up.
Beauty packing charcoal into small bags to calculate how many small bags we could get from one of the large bags.
We were so glad we did that experiment. As it turned out we got far fewer bags than we thought. In fact, by our calculations the people who are repacking the charcoal and selling it in small amounts are losing money! We are all scratching our heads over that one and will need a little more investigation—perhaps a project for a future trip.
Also, today was the day we had decided to take on fixing the leak in one of the water tanks. Friday showed up in the late morning, as promised! It is always a pleasure working with Friday and an even greater pleasure when he is on time! Truly a jack-of-all-trades, he brought a tiny soldering iron to try "welding" plastic patches onto the fractures.
Friday fixing the leak in the water tank.
Getting the bottom part.
All patched up and ready to test.
Meanwhile, Friday has brought two more metal drums with him for material for the stoves. Before anyone could say anything to the men (like, hey guys, the material is here) they were ON it! Brian was pretty excited about that!
Christopher and Peter carrying the drums.
Working to break the drums apart into workable pieces.
There are always a number of staff who have babies who are nursing. Every two hours or so an older sibling will show up with the baby to hand over to Mom. We were so happy to see Mwewa, Georgina's eldest, show up with Gloria, Georgina's youngest.
Gloria sound asleep in her big brother's arms.
We also had the great pleasure today of seeing folks working on their finance tracking project. It seems like people are really getting it and are quite willing to take the time to do it. This will be invaluable data for the project.
Estella and Violet working on their finance books.
Nice to see they can have a little fun with it!
One of the books.
And…drum roll please… the men finished the first large pulumusa stove just in time to be used for cooking nchima for lunch!
Theresa tests the handle.
And then the supports.
Everyone satisfied that it passed muster, Martha and Mabel take it off for its maiden voyage.
Cooking nchima.
It passed the most important test of all—it stood up to stirring the nchima.
Soon it was time to have some of that nchima.
Sharing lunch.
We nearly died of cute overwhelm when Jen, Lingson's granddaughter (not Beauty's little Jen), and Cheri, Christopher's daughter, decided to eat with their granddad/dad. It would be much more usual for them to eat with the women, but they decided that is what they wanted to do.
Lingson with granddaughter, Jen and Christopher with daughter, Cheri.
We had to get one more shot.
Now, the miracles really began as Zesco showed up! You may remember that on the last trip our main focus was finishing the inside wiring on the main building. That mission accomplished, it was now a waiting game for Zesco, the local electric company, to come put in two more power poles and hook it all up. And, three months later, today just happened to be the day! It was exciting.
The Zesco truck pulls up.
Zesco workers carrying one of the poles to be put up on the property.
The new pulumusa stove caught the Zesco workers' attention immediately, and they wanted to know all about it. It makes us realize that spreading the word about these stoves has the potential to bring in good business.
Zesco workers checking out the pulumusa stove.
Brian explaining how the technology works.
The next project is one of the more fun things we have done, and that is really saying something because we are doing a lot of fun things. We had the idea to get a group photo of the whole cooperative—everyone who makes it all happen. Part of the reason we are most proud of this seemingly not-so-giant accomplishment is that we really wanted all the players, including Friday, Martha (our accountant), Rose and Muyunda. There is no day in the week that all of these folks are on the property at the same time, therefore we had to make special arrangements. Getting everyone to be in the right place at the right time and ON TIME…well, we are thrilled we pulled it off. We did our best to have all the elements of the project represented in the photo. See if you can find them all: water, education, health (hint: find Rose), stoves, roofs, electricity, sports, girls' program, sewing, food, employment...
The group co-op shot. This is not, of course, all 450 of the children, just a representative sample. Even we could not take on getting all of them in one place at one time!
Friday wanted to have a solo portrait after the group photo.
While we adults gathered for a meeting, the children went to watch the progress of the Zesco workers laying out the wire.
Children watching Zesco lay out the wire.
Our agenda for today's meeting was two-fold: we planned to lay out the basic principles behind the stove project, and we were going to announce a whole co-op pay raise. Pretty exciting.
Brian and Jen explained how we hope the stove project will work—with a pilot phase over the next several months where people will learn how to make the stoves and produce stoves for everyone in the co-op. Each person will take a small loan to buy a stove and pay it back with the money they save on charcoal. It is an excellent opportunity to have a concrete way to learn about household finances and how one can increase one's "wealth" by having greater information.
Brian goes over the basic concepts of revenue, expense and profit.
Jen walks through an example of revenue coming in and allocating it to the various "boxes": materials cost, labor cost, and profit. It was helpful for all of us to have it laid out in that very tangible way.
Once we felt like folks had the basic idea of the stoves (we plan to have Martha continue to go over it in her financial lessons with the team over the next months), we went on to announce the raises. We have been very moved by the cooperative's willingness to add children to the food program—they insist that they can accommodate many more children without needing further staff—and by the great educational success of having a number of children pass their exams. It is time for a raise, and we decided to tie it to these accomplishments. It was popular.
Theresa and some of the team listening as we expressed our gratitude for all they do.
Then, the only thing left to do was to celebrate! We had brought along a few refreshments just for that purpose.
Brian and Sequoia passing out snacks.
And, of course, you cannot have a celebration without some dancing.
Nellie and Emmanuel, Josephine's baby, looking on.
Just as the party was winding down, the sky began to turn very gray. An afternoon shower on its way, pretty usual stuff. We noticed a Zesco worker still up on the pole and hoped he planned to come down soon.
Zesco hooking up the electricity.
Now we were sure it was time for him to come down, which he did, just in time.
A few minutes later the heavens opened up—truly. The rain came down so heavily we could not hear anything other than the rain on the tin roof. At one point we looked at Theresa and shouted, "Is this normal?" She assured us it is. However, soon the storm picked up momentum. Rain came down so hard that it hit the windows as if the whole building were in the middle of a car wash. The wind threw the rain everywhere, and trees swayed nearly to flat on the ground. This, we were told, was not normal. We sat together in the large room, babies swathed in blankets, all of us just sitting on the reed mats quietly, waiting. It lasted about an hour. When it was over they told us they had not seen rain like that in four or five years. It was a spectacle and genuinely special to weather it with them.
[swf file="http://www.thezencenter.org/video/March-21-2011-blog.flv" params="width=640&&height=480"]
Video taken during the storm.
The storm strongly underlined for us the importance of a good roof and strong houses. About halfway through the storm there was a commotion. People began pointing, saying one of the children had just run up onto the porch. Sure enough, we went out and found one of Eugenia's grandson's soaked to the bone and crying. He had come to find Eugenia because their house was completely flooded. They live at the foot of Kantolomba and water was rushing into their home. We all hoped the damage to their, and all the other homes, would be minimal.
We left soon after the rain stopped. The drive home was an adventure with roads even more washed out than usual, rushing rivers of rain water on either side.
Corn flattened in the storm.
Below are some bonus photos from the day. We are finding it more and more difficult to keep the blogs to a reasonable number of pictures as there is so much to tell and so much cuteness to share. The first series is a project Alex is working on of finding the children who were featured in the "100 children" video and taking portraits of them today. So fun!
Alex taking portraits.
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Agness Kabwe
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Charles Musonda
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Mary Bwadya
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Mary Musenge
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Memory Nankamba
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Miriam Kamfwa
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Monica Chipili
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Rachel Mapulanga
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Regina Chisanga
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Twaibu Ali
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And then just some great shots for you...
