Updating

Time for an update.

First, the Personal one: Jayme and I are great. We've stretched our two seasons of Corner Gas DVDs to last the nine months we've been in Africa since returning this year. And that TV reminder of rural Saskatchewan has been enough to keep us very satisfied so far away from home. Of course I was actually in Calgary for two weeks in middle-August, but, searching my memory now, it’s hard to believe that visit actually happened...it’s like a dream. Somewhere between my time in Mozambique’s dusty villages full of hungry children and time in South Africa amid thousands of AIDS orphans, there is this blip of tall, shiny Canadian buildings and fast food. Very surreal.

Still, it was great to see friends and family, and both of us are excited to be home again for the Christmas visit. But the transition between worlds was hard on me. I’m mentally preparing for the Christmas experience now.

Surprisingly, we are both quite healthy for once. Jayme continues to jog on regular occasion. I, however, am continuing my downward spiral of body shape, which has quickened since my 30^th birthday in August. The only thing keeping me from total imitation of a pear’s shape is my occasional bouts of Typhoid and worms, which keeps me trim. Africa changes your perspective of things.

Next, the Work Update: Of course, Jayme has built up a team around her (designers, videographers, etc) and is churning out products to tell stories of the work here like never before. But I’ll let her elaborate on that.

For me, I’m mostly focused on what we call the “Roadmap” to reaching 100,000. Hands at Work’s goal is to reach 100,000 orphaned and vulnerable children by 2010, and to do it in areas where HIV and poverty are highest and support structure is very low. My job is to make sure the plan to reach these kids is in place. Hands at Work doesn’t actually deliver services to children: we mobilize local villages (via the church) to care for the poorest among them, and then we provide training, structures, support to help them do it well.

So that means that as we go deeper into rural or slum Africa, where our above criteria are found, the job of mobilizing, training, supporting gets tougher and tougher, because the capacity in place gets lower and lower. All of that means plans get fuzzier and fuzzier.

But it’s happening. In each of our countries—Nigeria, South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, Congo, Zambia are our current ones, and we are starting up now in Malawi and Zimbabwe—the plan for expanding the work in existing villages and stirring up new villages is taking a shape. In particular, I am focused on Democratic Republic of Congo, where we plan to reach 10,000 children by 2010, and Nigeria, where we plan to reach 30,000 by 2010.

Jayme and I will be in Nigeria just before returning to Canada in November. The last time I was there we paddled on canoes to feed children living on stilts-houses on the water; up to 30 people lived in one house together and slept in rotating shifts to fit inside at once. Perhaps the transition from Nigeria to Canada is something I should start worrying about now.