Besides the questions “When are you going to retire?” (answer: “Just getting started here in the DRC.”) and “When are the Ostranders going to stop having babies?” (answer: “Uh… any other questions?”). I’m most frequently asked, “Is it safe in Minembwe?” Fair question, since the Ostranders were flown out of here via the UN back in July and came back to Minembwe 29 days later. Reality is that on Monday it might be safe, and on Tuesday it might not be. So, I’m going to answer, “Kind of safe, and since it’s not possible to leave every other week, we don’t.
But… good things do happen in Minembwe! Over the past week, we’ve been able to set up Sawyer water filtration systems at the university, the university clinic, and in every home in our village. I asked our Grounds Manager, Ruzisana, to bring to us one mama of each house of our village so he and I could set up a water filtration system in each of their homes. A few days later, there was a knock at my door, so I opened it and saw Ruzisana and 17 mamas sitting in our front yard. “Michael, the mamas are here,” said Ruzisana.
A few hours later, under the watchful eyes of some very short local “health inspectors…”
…Ruzisana had each home set up and each mama trained how to use these systems which are made up of two buckets and a Sawyer water filter kit.
On the walk back to our house, I found Miles and crew working hard to finish the trusses on the village’s church building project.
Watching these guys work is like channel flipping between Fixer Upper and The Three Stooges.
Miles is teaching a Small Solar Energy Systems certification class as part of the local university’s newly accredited Vocational Training Program. Solar energy is slowly creeping into our area, so there is a great need for skilled technicians.
The other day, Miles moved his classroom over to the orphans’ home to give his students a chance to put their new knowledge to work helping Miles set up a simple solar energy system to light up the orphans’ home.
Even though life can be stressful to process here at times, the girls continue to creatively show us adults how to escape the sometimes-harsh reality of life in Minembwe.
We can now thoroughly recommend “Chalk Art Therapy,” but only if you are willing to fully immerse yourself like Ruth did by expressing her feelings in concrete terms.
And, here’s me, Michael, Director of “Are We Having Fun Yet?” leading the girls from the orphan’s home in some spontaneous dancing. Quite possible that some social norms were broken that day, but look at those smiles. Click on the picture below or on this link to see the video:
Somehow!
Michael