Every Little Bit Counts

I love my life. I love my life. I love my life...

Or that's what I kept telling myself today as I was elbow deep in fish guts. But for fish tacos made with homemade tortillas, fresh guacamole, and fish straight off the beach, I can certainly handle an hour with my hands mushing around in innards and smelly fish poo.

But in reality, I have good news! My small proposal to begin a chicken project has been approved, and we are just tying up loose ends ie opening a bank account, signing forms, etc, before we can get at it.

The project is an income generating effort. The association that I work with, Associacao Viva Vida (Live Life Association) will be raising and selling chickens to the Chidenguele community as a means of income to support the association.

Ok, when I say support the association, I am exaggerating. Lets face it, the chicken business isn't ridiculously lucrative. But the principle focus of the project in its initial phase is providing food baskets to AIDS orphans in the community. The baskets will contain such essentials as dry beans, rice, oil, etc. To help these children meet their most basic needs.

It might not be something you thought of the moment you read my simple description of the project, but there is one HUGE flaw to this heartwarming gesture of feeding AIDS orphans. DEPENDENCY. Lets face it, hand out programs are impossible to sustain, and these kids will learn to expect a big basket of free food every month.

But think of it like disaster relief efforts. After a hurricane, food and supplies are rushed to the affected areas to help meet affected populations most basic needs in order to survive. These are children, living alone, with no money, education, or means of supporting themselves. The idea is that we are bringing in relief to satisfy an immediate need, because when you are starving and have little or no financial or emotional support network, you aren't really capable of benefiting from educational and skill-building activities.

The project will then grow from this not so sustainable stage, to incorporating the orphans in the association, training them to work at the chicken coop, in the association's farm, as community HIV educators, or providing them with other skill-building workshops. So worry not critics of international development work, sustainability is on the horizon for my little project here in Chidenguele.

Oh, did I ever mention that the significantly larger, $14,000 grant for the same association was approved last year? Did I mention that this same grant fell through the cracks, and I was told all I could do was resubmit the darn thing because the man that approved the grant ran off with US grant money?

Well out of the blue yesterday, a nice woman at the embassy called to tell me that she has my grant paperwork ready to be signed so we can proceed with the transfer. What do you know! Things are looking up for these orphans over here.