Day 38 - Another Foundation

It rained quite a bit last night and it continued on into the morning. As I woke up I knew it was going to be a raining and half dreary day... and that’s exactly how it started. I had a good breakfast; french toast on wheat. It was OK, I can’t complain. It was a little difference but to be expected. I used a little vegetable oil and Blue Band spread to grease the pan and give flavor. I ate 3 pieces of it with french toast, I was pretty satisfied, although I ended up downing 2 bananas after that. We made our way out the door at 11:00 am, I sort of slept in an hour later than I should have, I felt bad about that. Luckily, the rain was too hard to go out into anyway so I didn’t feel as bad, though I could have gotten some reading in.

We went to True Light this morning ready to fill in the foundation we built last week but ran into a problem: they hadn’t gotten enough clay. They had gotten less than half of what we needed. We told him we needed two more large bags of clay. He informed us that the bags were each 5000 shillings. Amber and I talked about it a seconded and decided that we could pay for one of the extra bags. They had already provided the cement which we usually go and decided we could switch the cost of the cement we didn’t use to help paying for the clay. Isaac told us that they could have it by Wednesday, hopefully that’s when we come back and do it.

We made our third Simba Stove foundation today at a lady’s house named Betty. She was present when we made the stove at Equator Primary School and was very interested in having us come to here home and help her install a stove. Amber, Leslie, Emily and I went up there to build it. We are building the stove in her home in the kitchen area. She has been cooking outside for who knows how long and we are very excited to help her move her cooking inside but not have to worry about the smoke. The stove ended up being relatively small compared to all the ones we have built so far. Granted, it’s in the house of a lady who generally cooks for her and a couple of kids, not an entire school. We designed the size of the stove to enable her to cook with larger pans on the weekends when she has guests. We are quite excited about this stove, it’s our first residential stove and comes closest to the design that we were trained to make. Betty is such a nice lady, happy to have us up there at her house and it very fun to be around. There are many kids that come to the house as well when we are there, they can’t stand not to see the freak show when it’s in town... us of course, and our white skin. Betty was very willing to help and was eager to learn our methods. We of course want to train her as much as we can so that she can pass the information on to her friends and community memebers. This is how we are helping the Simba Stove program be sustainable.

Without sustainability, our efforts here in Lugazi are only short-term and will on affect the people we work with directly. Well, our goal as HELP International volunteers is so create sustainable support. Everything we do here needs to be able to be replicated by the people here with not much effort. So, in order to have our training of how to make Simba Stoves go the farthest, we feel the absolute need to teach the people so that they in turn can replicate our work and help more and more people. I think about how good it feels just to help the people here for only a couple of months. But the thoughts and feelings of my work and knowledge being extended infinitely after I leave brings so much more happiness. There is a man named Joshua that I think is going to be of great help in the future. He seems very interested in what we are doing and wants to be involved. It will be nice to have a “representative” for the village of Namengo, one who will be able to assist people like Betty in making stoves in her friend’s houses.

I’m listening to Love Song by 311 right now. It happens to be one of the most soothing songs ever... give it a listen sometime.

With more and more appointments to build Simba Stoves we could very well hit our goal. We are going to have to incorporate a principle my mission president installed when I was in New York. It’s something called Focused Finding. It’s a time when you do nothing but find people to hear the gospel. Whether it was knocking on doors or fearlessing, as we called it, on the streets, we had to do it for 2 hours every day, no exceptions. Appointments did not overrule, it itself was to be considered an appointment. Anyway, we are going to have to dedicate some time such as focused finding to go out and just find tons of schools, women’s groups, or any other community situation that would like a stove. This way we can fill up our appointment book and just be constantly making stoves. This will help us reach our goal of 40 stoves by the end of the summer. I’m so lucky to have been part of the first wave, even a week extra having come with the country directors early to help them out. I have seen everything come together and been a part of all the hard work to make it all happen. This is an exciting work and truly reminds me of the mission field, something you generally don’t get to experience more than once in a lifetime.

Well, my eyes are slipping on me, I better get some shut eye. Until tomorrow.