Good News/Bad News

The Good News (there's a lot of it!!)

Will

Will's surgery last Friday went very well. The surgeon and laser surgeon guy (that's his technical title, by the way) were in and out in three hours. Since they warned us that if they ran into complications, it could take as many as 1o hours, three was great. So, Will is sore, and understandably not excited about still being in the hospital (it's been almost a month now), but is relieved that everything went OK. He has one more surgery, on Monday, and hopefully will be back home in Los Feliz on Tuesday.

After I got this great news on Saturday morning, I felt comfortable enough with Will's situation to head to the Kakamega Forest for the rest of the weekend. Along with Chelsea, a fellow FSD intern (who's going home on Saturday, sniff sniff!) and Carolyn, who is working for another scholarship organization in Kakamega, we stayed in Corey's little forest house. Corey is a primatologist friend of ours collecting data on two troops of monkeys for a Columbia study. So, the four of us had a lovely girls' weekend and Chelsea, Carolyn and I learned what it's like to be a biology researcher in the field. In a word, glamorous. Here are the pictures—we saw dozens of Blue and Colubus monkeys. The Village Troop was completely comfortable with humans and if we stayed in one place, would run all around us.

RAIN

The rains came back on Sunday night—Mother's Day. It's been raining every day since, and sometimes all night, too: maybe Mother Nature is playing catch-up for the week she missed. So, I'm glad the farmers are out of the woods for now. Still, don't forget when you're driving your SUV and running your AC all night that you're not just changing the climate at home, your changing it EVERYWHERE. And here, people don't have the ability to adapt to climate change as easily as we do... If it stops raining here, rest assured that people will starve. I would say just a small percentage actually has the money to think about irrigation...

ALEXANDER RYAN

Danielle & Phil had their baby on Tuesday!!! I am so excited and can't wait to meet him. Everyone seems to be doing well. Bummed that I have to be so far away at a special time. Can't believe Danielle didn't schedule her offspring around MY travel itinerary! :-)

The Bad News: The budget for the rest of 2009

At work, we got our final budget numbers from Canada on Monday and they're pretty rough. I guess our grant from CIDA ran out in March, and it's unclear whether we're going to have a new one... We'll find out in June or July. The part that was the hardest for me was the fact that we're cutting teacher's salaries from about half of what they were to 150 shillings ($1.20) a day. That's how much I paid the mason's assistant for the rainwater project. The mason himself got 300. But the teachers are college-educated, trained professionals. Here's about how far 150 shillings will take them (keep in mind they are not paid for holidays or vacations.)

Soda - 25 shillings on the street, 40 at a midrange restaurant
Beer in Kakamega - 100 shillings (cheaper in the villages)
Brunch at Golf Hotel, nicest place in town - 500 shillings
Roundtrip matatu ride to Kakamega from the schools - 100 to 160 shillings
1 kilo of ugali flour - 40 shillings
Firewood for a day - 35 shillings
Glass of fresh juice in Kakamege - 30 shillings
Malaria test - 75 shillings
Medicine to treat malaria - 800 shillings

I am deeply disturbed by the whole thing, knowing how hard these teachers work. True, some of them only stay in our non-formal schools for a year, until they can get job at a public or private school (better salary, benefits, and a longer contract,) but some of them do it for the love of the kids. I can only hope that most of them have spouses who are also working. I've been stressing out all week over what I can do, but feel pretty helpless. I figured it would take about $1,500 per month to keep the 40 teachers at their current salaries. Should I give them some of my savings? Or at least curtial my Tusker lager intake and donate the money instead? As much as my first instinct is to throw money at the problem, would making a donation to ACCES to help with teachers salaries be a sustainable solution? What would be a sustainable solution?

The teachers get the news late today at the annual teacher meeting at the offices. We'll see how they take it.