Tuesday, July 20, 2010

long post

Heya,

So i figured i would just blog when i was bored at camp and use word and date it, then post them when i got here, so here they are.


PS. i tried to upload videos, but i don't think they're gonna make it. I'll try putting them on facebook too to see if they work better there and try them again here later.


July 9th

So I’ve been spending some time in the mara lately. Actually I’m here now, and writing this blog in Microsoft word again. Things here are great. I’m not sure who I’ve told how much so I’ll just brief everyone. The organization I’ve been working with here for 4-5 years now (MERC) has built a center out in the bush. We camped around every other year and developed relationships and proved to the people that we weren’t just another group coming in with ideas on how to save the Maasai. Just last year construction on the center started. And this year, amazingly, it’s almost finished. All that’s left is a few things with our solar electricity and the floors and furniture. The solar is pretty much done though, right now, we have enough power to keep about 10 laptops running during the day, along with all the lights inside the center. It’s pretty amazing. So now that we have more trust of the communities around us things will go a lot better for us. Over the years we’ve brought tons of books so we have a huge library in here with a huge section on land rights and indigenous rights. I didn’t bring my cord to connect my camera to my computer so I can’t take pictures and put them on the blog with that, but I’ll try to use the webcam on my computer to take some, but I’m not sure if it will work or not.

A brief rundown of the building is there are four offices, one for Meitamei, Mary (the professor from Prescott that works with MERC year round), Kaitlin (my friend here that used to go to Prescott and now TA’s for the course and also helps immensely with the work), and one office for me! There are two rooms that we have set up with table/desk things and lots of outlets that will be used by people like interns, community members in need of the material here, researchers, etc. There’s a room that we plan on creating a radio station for Maasai news and music and stuff. There’s a woman who specializes in putting radio stations out in the middle of nowhere for this very purpose. She’s supposed to come out around December to get to work on it. The biggest room is the conference/classroom. It’s a room that can hold around 40-60 people and will be used for meetings or class or other things like that. All is completely open to the public to use for their needs as well.

We’re trying to get internet here but it’s kind of tough. Right now one computer can be online at a time, and it takes like 10-20 minutes to load one page, so it’s not really practical. Hopefully we’ll get it working better soon.

We’ve only been at camp for a couple nights. Pretty soon I’m going to start heading out to schools to get more kids to put into the scholarship program and also to pay the fees of the kids that I was able to get sponsors for.

I’ve been having dreams about home a lot lately. Makes me sad and miss everyone. But I know when it’s time for me to leave I’ll be really sad to leave the people here.

July 14th,

So I finally got to go to some schools yesterday, well just one. We went to Oloototo Primary School and I got about 150 names. Now the next step is to take this list and look at it to decide which kids we’ll put into the program. We’ll have to look at the names and see which come from families that are in need of a lot of help and which ones come from families that are a lot better off. After we do that then I’ll be heading back to that school to get more information from the kids we’re going to put in the program.

I’m going to be going to Nairobi on Sunday (which is probably the day I’m posting this) so I thought when I felt like blogging, I could just write in here on word, and then post it all online at once when I’m around internet, even if it is the longest blog ever.

I remembered that I brought my little flip camera thing, and if I remember right, it has a usb thing built in so I can upload videos whenever I want. Sooooo I think later I’ll record a video tour of the center and maybe our campsite so I can let you guys see what it’s like here.

We’re heading to my favorite school, Siana Primary Boarding, on Saturday. I can’t wait to see the kids there again, and I’ll try to take some flip videos there too to post for y’all.

Three weeks from now I’ll be sitting back at home. It’s going to be great to be able to see everyone. I can’t wait.

1 comment:

  1. Brad, the work you do there seems so wonderful. I hope I can one day visit it (slash you there)!

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