Tabar-tastic :)

Woop woop!

Met up with my sister, Rose, last night. Went for brochettes and a drink. She went to Uganda over Christmas to see her gran who hadn't met her great-grandson (Joseph) before. Unfortunately, the journey nearly did them in: bus to Kampala, then another three hours. Both the kids fell ill with malaria again, but they got there and back okay. Her gran's really old now and Rose was worried it might be the last time she sees the children.

Before leaving for her new job in Zanzibar, another vol, Amanda, left us some money. At her school back in Canada, kids in their final year have to do a money-raising project for charity. They gave the money to Amanda to distribute here and, so far, it's paid for a primary teacher and some other things, but there was still a lump left over, so she gave it to the single parents network! :)

We're totally stoked. It's easily enough to do some small-scale activities in Kigali. Rose’s going to hold a committee meeting to discuss what to do with it. There's the possibility of a bit more from the school if we submit a plan to them.

It's fantastic news, and our main priorities are to hold an event that all the people from last time can come to so that they know we're still here and active. Apparently, one of the people who came to the last one turned up on Rose's door asking where we'd gone. So we need to keep the trust there.

We also want to produce something we can use for income-generation. Artwork from the kids and stories from the parents that we can use for T-shirts, posters, etc. and send back to the UK to raise funds.

I'm really excited to know what the committee decide.

Rose is also going to visit the families who attended the meeting just to check that they are above board. Sometimes people make claims so that they can get money from NGOs, when they don't really qualify. But I'm confident most of the people who came are sincere, as they didn’t get transport money (which is extremely unusual here), and they seemed committed.

Rose is just happy to have something to do. She's desperately looking for work at the moment, even housework, but there's little about and she's stuck in the house all day feeling pretty low. She's an active person, so I'm happy she now has a project to manage.

It's really good to have her back, but things haven't been so easy recently. E's back in town - turned up miraculously jut before she left for Uganda and started making physical and verbal threats, saying he'd bring down the NGO. I'd like to see him try, but it's become a matter of pride to make it successful. I told her she can't be the only single mum in this position, and that a support group might be something to think about. The authorities have been very supportive towards her, and there's been a huge domestic violence drive before Christmas. It's harder here than Uganda for absent fathers to throw their weight around apparently, so she's confident it'll be okay, but I still admire her pluck. One of our committee members is a single mum, and also a councillor, so there's a lot of support. Rose turns 27 in March. There's only a year between us, but our lives have been so different.

She also didn’t manage to get her passport sorted to get Rwandan citizenship because, on the Ugandan side, they had an issue with her name. Ugandan surnames are supposed to be related to tribes, but names don’t run in families, you’re given your name. So brothers and sisters often have different surnames. Her surname is Swahili and translates roughly as ‘miracle,’ because she was born prematurely. Her mother didn’t make it, and her father was absent. She was raised on goat’s milk and nobody thought she would survive because she was so small. But, because this isn’t a tribe name, they gave her a really hard time over it and she’d spent the money they wanted on the kids when they were ill and had to be admitted to the hospital. So, all-in-all, she’s not had a very good Christmas.

Still, very positive about the funding :)

Had a bit of a scare Monday. Went in to check on the dictionary and they said loads of it hadn't been translated into English. I looked at it and realised I'd already translated these words, but couldn't find the document on any of the computers!

I rushed home and thankfully found the back-up file, but I think I would have booked a flight home if I hadn't! So close to finished now, and it's great we've finally got internet in the office because I can communicate with my colleagues from home much easier.

Still working on tracking down copies of sign language curriculums so that we can start thinking about developing our own.

Between the single parents network and RNAD, I'm generating a little work for myself at least, but still very slow.

MINALOC is within a hair's breadth of giving us our registration number. Apparently there's another organisation by the same name operating, but because our objectives are so different it's no longer a problem. They made us rewrite our constitution, which was an added expense, but seems like we're just about there. Rose has put in so much work to get it achieved.

So, yay for us :)