Helping villagers help themselves

Today we moved to another city called Kenema which is about an hour away by car from where we were. The project encompasses these two areas and will include 100 wells and some latrines. The war was in Kenema for 15 years where in the capital of Freetown it was only the final 2 years of the war. It is great to be here where very few others have come. UNICEF has been here but from what we can tell no other churches or non profits have done a project in the area. They are far enough away from the capital that they get forgotten.

The hotel we are staying at in Kenema is much better than in Bo because they will heat some bath water for us and bring it to our rooms so we can poor it over ourselves. Also, this hotel provides a towel and a place to hang your clothes. The Hilton better watch out because they have some serious competition over here.

I just finished washing my clothes in the sink with a bar of soap and am hoping they'll dry in this super humid weather. I love the new quick dry clothing. If only they could make some inexpensive white dress shirts out of it...

we met with the Kenema city council and mayor today and received their approval to work in their community and their support to prepare the communities for our project. That means that each councilman will commit his area to provide sand and gravel and volunteer labor. When we brought free labor up some of them started complaining and asked if we couldn't pay their people a little for their work, after all they need desperate help and we could provide them temporary jobs. One of the councilmen said, "Could you provide them with some type of incentive?" We looked at each other and said "Yes, how about clean water? Isn't that incentive enough?" Their was silence in the room.

Elder Greding stood and told a story about a boy who was given a bike as a gift. It rained and he didn't bring the bike inside. Then he contrasted that boy with another that had to work hard and earn money to buy his bike, it rained and what do you think the boy did? He put his bike inside because he had earned the bike and felt ownership. It was a simple story but it communicated a big principle. We explained that we are paying for the well and the way the people can "buy" it is through their volunteer labor. The mayor was fully on board and put her fist to the table and said, "We will do this. Our people will work for this and therefore they will feel ownership!"

This paved the way for us to make site visits tomorrow and then we will interview potential contractors and site monitors...

We do have a branch of the Church here. I'm excited to attend church on Sunday

~Matt