Update: Brick by Brick

The parts of our Peace Corps service that will have the most significant effects are the small changes we make in peoples minds concerning the way they conduct themselves in business, taking care of their children, etc. It’s the fact that my neighbor now adds peanut powder to her children’s breakfast porridge because she believes me that they their bloated bellies are a result of a lack of protein. That people seem to recognize that a husband and wife can treat each other with respect and be friends. That people in Yorosso think about planting trees as a necessity rather than a luxury. A lot of the little lessons and capacity building comes through our radio show, our periodic village wide awareness activities, and school-based trainings. And its through these activities, we have truly come to appreciate the role of a basic education in the ability of a community to develop. It may seem obvious, but often people do not realized that individuals are more organized, efficient, creative, and resourceful when they have basic literacy and mathematic skills.

 

Therefore, though Peace Corps generally discourages construction projects, we’ve decided to spend a large part of our last 6 months of service focusing on what our community identified as their first priority when requesting a volunteer, building 3 traditional mudbrick classrooms, with the tin roof, cement floors, metal doors, and windows being funded by Peace Corps. Though we have paid teachers for these classes, the courses are currently being taught outdoors due to a general lack of anywhere else to study. Our hope is that these classrooms, though far from ideal in US standards, will serve as a safe, distraction-free, center for study for the next 10-15 years and will improve the overall literacy level in our village. However, the most exciting part of this project is that we are not building the school, but the community is doing 99.99% of the work (See pictures below for the other .01%). As of mid-January, they  made 15,000 mudbricks and transported them to the building site by donkey cart. Then this week, 200 men showed up for the ground breaking ceremony and after they dug the foundation, the village chief laid the first mudbrick to kick off  building the classrooms.  They will be finished with the walls in the next two weeks. Then, hopefully the roofing and cement work can be done at the end of February/early March. We’re thrilled to see our village realize that through unified hard work and goal-setting, they can achieve great things without a huge investment from outside resources.

On another note, Jim has submitted a tree-planting project for approval soon.  (Above right) Jim and his workpartner who owns a tree nursury are coordinating a tree planting effort in March that will teach 25 associations a new method to allow trees to be planted in dry season which requires little watering. Around 2000 trees will be planted in our commune do to his hard word, so we certainly have a busy few months ahead of us!

~ Joye (and James)