More experiences at Common Ground

Hello everyone,

Today is my last full day with the people of Common Ground. The past six days we (two other Village Volunteers - Dena Jasper and Jeanette Herting) and I have been very active in all aspects of life of Pathfinder Academy and with the "Communities" supported by the Common Ground Program. Dena and Jeanette are teaching women and students at Pathfinder to cook using solar ovens. Dena raised money from friends and family at home to buy solar ovens to give to community leaders and women interested in training others. The women have been very excited by the possibilities of cooking with these ovens. Their excitement was evident in their smiles and laughter and even spontaneous song and dance! Very fun! I became the official photographer and have been very happy to have Allan's camcorder to capture the song and dance.

We have visited many small communities.

A farming cooperative ( 40 families) is using biointensive farming techniques to make it possible for a large family to support themselves on one acre of land. There crops and animals appear very healthy and their farming techniques very simple yet sophisticated.

A women's self help group has learned to make pots with local clay from the Nzoia River - a 4 km walk from the potting "studio". They make clay stoves used by locals to cook using fire wood or charcoal. They sell the stoves in the farmer's markets and also to their immediate neighbors. They were in the process of firing 600 stoves in their kiln when we were their.I spoke with these women about potential "Potters for Peace" water filters project. These locals may be very helpful in providing local knowledge in creating clay water purification filters. We also spoke with these women about their current water use practices. They have a deep well but their pump is broken and they don't have the 36,000 shillings needed to fix the pump. Currently they walk 4 km to the river for their water. They know that they get typhoid from this water but their prefer to take their chances rather than spend time and fire wood to boil the water. This will be a very difficult education project to change the practice of drinking unpurified water.

Two HIV/AIDS widows each with 7 to 9 children have set up very small retail kiosks where they sell products that they buy in bulk and repackage for sale to their immediate community. This provides them with shillings to buy essentials and also means that their neighbors do not have to walk so far to buy such things as tea, cooking spices, cooking fat, salt, sugar, bread, laundry soap etc.

Another widow - Grace- with young twins has set up a tailoring enterprise in her home where she makes dresses and also does embroidery on her dual powered singer sewing machine. The three of us "Village Volunteers" oredered a dress which Joshua will mail to us in Nairobi before we leave Kenya.

These microenterprises as well as others that I have not yet visited are supported by the 2005 Pangea grant to Common Ground.

Other activities since my last post include a day of Music competition amongst the primary schools of the Kitale district. This is a major event with what seemed like 30 to 40 different schools. Pathfinder students placed quite high in this competition and will go on to Provincial competition held in a town about 70 Kms from Kitale. Then if they do well there they will go to Nairobi for the National competition. The african children are very skilled and naturally talented when it comes to singing, drumming, and dancing. I had a great time that day!

I met with each of the 13 pathfinder students currently supported by Pangea. I have pictures of all and video of some. One of the girls is an orphan who is in 7th grade and boards at pathfinder. She is an amazing musician, an excellent student, and very kind to the younger children. She appears to have natural leadership skills.

Another of the girls lives with her Mom and 6 siblings in a tiny mud home. Her name is Robai and we visited her garden yesterday. She is the primary gardener for the family and grows maize, firewood, kale, carrots, cabbage, avocados, tomatoes, and mangos. She sells the food to provide money for seeds for the garden and other minimal essentials for the family. In the dry season her garden provides enough wood for cooking. In the wet season they need to buy dry wood. We gave her 200 shillings (about 3 dollars) so that she could buy seeds for tomatoes and kale. She was so taken with our visit that she gave us one of her hens! Joshua let us know that we could not refuse \ so now there is another hen at Pathfinder. Joshua will give her the first chick born to this hen.

Today's activities will include a visit to another widow, Gladys, where we will do the memory box project. This is a Village Volunteers project that allows the family to write about family members and draw pictures of how they remember the recently deceased or about memories of those who are sick. Gladys is currently taking ARV drugs for AIDS treatment.

Tomorrow we leave for Kisumu, and a night at Mama na Dada in volunteers huts. Tuesday morning Joshua and I will meet up with Chris, Jerry, and Linda at the Imperial hotel in Kisumu.

Asante sana,

Sydney