Theresa prepared her financial plan before coming to the microloan workshop hosted by Jacaranda Creations, Seed of the Lord, and Surprised by Hope. She detailed a well-thought out pricing strategy and repayment plan and presented that plan to me as we worked together to complete the application form.
Theresa was asking for 8,000 KES (about $90 USD) to start an eco-jiko business. An eco-jiko...
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Microloan Workshop
Recently Brenda brought some small (by American standards) financial needs of the Jacaranda Creations women to a group calling themselves Seed of the Lord. This group is interested in anonymously offering microloans to meet these needs. Their heart is not only to meet the needs of these ladies, but also to help them learn financial principles that will give them a greater opportunity for success...
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Driving in Kenya
Day One:
Three practice drives in Uganda and I’m taking the girls to Nakumatt today. I hope they know where they’re going. Katie is keeping me on the left and Karen is giving directions. Becky recommended assigning someone for speed bump patrol too, but I’m out of girls.
Day Two:
I dropped Katie off at school for a clean-up day – only one helper in the car – and made it home all by myself. I’m such a big girl now.
Day Eight:
I’m an old pro at driving one particular path. I can get to...
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Jacaranda Creations, Maruri Branch
Jacaranda Creations is a ministry designed to serve the ladies who live in the Nairobi slums by providing work and thus income. The needs of the families who live here are much greater than could ever be met by one ministry, but the effect Jacaranda Creations and Brenda are having on the women who live there is tremendous. I hope to learn more about her business model with the idea that it might...
Friday, June 24, 2011
The Great Rift Valley
The Great Rift Valley is one continuous trench about 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) long. The Rift runs from northern Syria in Asia to central Mozambique in Africa. Once upon a time the earth’s crust weakened and tore apart, which created this jagged rift. The land on both sides erupted with great volcanic mountains and the valley floor sank into a low, flat plain. The Rift neatly divides Kenya down...
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Seed of the Lord Microloans
I think the new Jacaranda office is on one of the roads near the school, although I wouldn’t bet my life on it. I met with Brenda today, the servant-leader behind the ministry. She and some other ministry-minded folks have been hoping to start a microloan service to meet the immediate and urgent needs of a few of the many people in Nairobi. Although we realize that most microloans are offered only to businesses that have already proven to be viable, they’re willing to take a few risks with start...
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Andrew and Lauren's Wedding
Witnessing the planning of an intercultural wedding was…interesting. The wedding committee meets several times ahead of the wedding to advise the bride and groom and to help ensure things run smoothly on the day of the wedding. In Lauren’s case, Andy was in the UK for several of the early meetings and Lauren was left to hold her own against a band of Ugandan cultural traditions. No, she would not...
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Open Air Film Ministry
The Namulanda trading center was the location of our open air film ministry. The center boasts a small circle of open space surrounded by vendors of various sorts. As darkness descends, the food vendors emerge. This nightlife is all new to me. I’m instructed to stay inside at night for safety reasons – with special dispensation when surrounded by lots of guys from the ministry team – so I never...
Monday, June 20, 2011
Change for Change
Many of us have heard that change is normal and that we should get used to it. Just about the time we get used to constant change, something changes. Some of us have even choked on a change wheel designed to “help” us through the change process.
For the women of the Nairobi slums, sometimes change doesn’t happen fast enough. When will change come to their living conditions? When will change come...
Attention Coffee Lovers
Six million people work in the Kenyan coffee-growing industry, an industry regulated by a corrupt government auction system. The idea was to create fair international trade for even small and family-owned farms. However, because the industry has become so lucrative, given the delicious flavor and high demand of Kenyan coffee, small and family-owned farms are losing out.
Unlike Kenya, I’ve actually...
Fred's Mom's House and Bujagali Falls
The house was a generous gift from a Florida family and we stopped there to visit the woman known only as Fred’s mom. Henry, Gabriel and others helped to build this small house for Fred’s mom, who took five grandchildren into her original one-room home after both their parents died.
We found Fred’s mom and daughter sitting on the outside veranda shucking beans for their one meal of the day. They...
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Street Children
Cars come to a screeching halt at the wave of the traffic police (never mind the stoplights) in the 1.5 million-person city of Kampala. A 10-minute or more wait is not unheard of during rush hour traffic. Most people call this a nuisance, I call it motion economy. The hawkers shove their wares – sunglasses, belts, airtime, maps, sugar cane, and more – into open car windows until the passengers forcefully...
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Konoweka Bibles
“Turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 2:1-10.” Typically the sound of pages fluttering would fill the room. However, silence filled this small church. The group of women meeting at the Konoweka Orphans and Widows Hut are learning about entering God’s presence thanks to a set of Bible study guides donated for their use. Unfortunately, they cannot turn to the Bible verse because most don’t have a Bible...
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Konoweka Children
Children scream “mzungu” and come running at me as soon as I turn the corner. Runny noses, dirty paws, coughs and all…I greet these children with hugs and cheers. We walk together – three or four tiny hands in one of each of my own hands – toward the church. Initially the children ran around the dirt-floored structure until they were shooed out by a passing adult.
Last week I began singing children’s...
Monday, June 13, 2011
Real Pancakes
Betty Crocker has been tucked away in a Ziplock for several months now just collecting dust on the lower pantry shelf in the kitchen. Mom sent me two boxes of white cake mix with frosting because Lauren had a hankerin’. Lauren picked up the box while I was away and never made the cake. These boxes called to me…but the dilemma, as always, was how to cook them with only a propane gas stovetop cooker.
Eventually...
Saturday, June 11, 2011
People of Karamoja
The woman on the right is Gabriel's mother.
The girl sitting up had been wobbling back and forth
trying not to fall over as she dozed off to sleep.
The little one in yellow obviously had the right ide...
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Leslie Learn's to Drive
Along that remote dirt road returning from Kotido some of the team hopped out for pictures of the countryside, others hopped out to “ease themselves.” Gabriel had taken my camera so I, devious person that I am, hopped into the driver’s seat and took off down the road at what could have been clocked at 10 km per hour…at least. No cars had passed to this point so driving down the center of a remote...
The Back Way Home
Our trip to Kotido added a few hours to the very long return drive, but the view along the way was beautiful. Uganda is very mountainous, although a bit like the foot of the Ozarks rather than the Ozarks themselves. We watched the people go from being bone thin, wearing wraps, and walking with a staff to having just a bit of meat on their bones, wearing western-donated clothing (although...
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
A Dolly in Kotido
Mercy Uganda visited Kotido for the first time “on the way home” from Matany in Karamoja. Our objective was to meet with a family who was building an orphanage there to see if we might find ways to work together. I came across this proper little young lady who seemed the perfect size for a dolly. I love spreading these gifts far and wide across the vast African continent.
This young...
A Dolly in Kayapath
For the first time ever, a dolly recipient (not shown in photos) rejected the gift, perhaps out of fear. Keep in mind that Kayapath is far away from the semi-developed parts of Karamoja and the concept of a doll or any man-made toy may have been quite foreign…let alone a very bright mzungu. The nearby men quickly moved the gift to another girl who took a while to warm to the thing.
The...
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Matany to Kotido
A long dirt road connects Matany and Kotido – subcounties in Karamoja. Somewhere in between a game preserve promised some interesting scenery. While this preserve is not the same as the wildlife preserves where giraffe, elephants, lions and the other expected African animals could be found, we did see two fox, some partridge, and a few four-legged hoppy things (like the deer family but very small).
The...
Rain for Karamoja
Typical landscape
with a few watered crops from the new well.
Green, green, green. Karamoja seldom gets rain…seldom as in a few days each year. This lack of rain causes starvation for the people in this region. Boarding schools send students home for weeks at a time because of a lack of food. But this week the rains came…and they came. The formerly brown and gray landscape became that...
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