First of all, the women's group/jewelry project is up and going and items are now available for sale online! Whooooo hoooo!! You can find the groups blog here. There are pictures and stuff there so I won't add too many here.
You can find jewelry for sale at our Etsy page: HERE!
Or, go to www.etsy.com and search for "mulembe" our seller/page name is Mulembe Craft Company.
A big thanks also goes out to Karen who has sold almost $300 worth of jewelry at home for me. Awesome job Karen, me, the girls and their families all thank you! If anyone else is interested in selling for me, let me know. Otherwise, please forward the Etsy page to anyone you think might be interested. I'm hoping the snowball effect takes over and you guys are the first part of that!
The upside of me not posting in awhile is I have a bunch of pictures to share...
Here are some from Hannah's community health day in June. I forgot I had them but better late than never I guess!
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| Me and the girls of Hannah's family (L to R: Hannah, me, Mom, Helen) |
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| "Teaching" good oral health. Even though I made the disclaimer that I was NOT a dentist, people still came up pointing to teeth that were rotting out of their head and asked me what to do... I of course told them to see a dentist, which is pretty unrealistic in the village. Nonetheless, there isn't much else I can do than teach them the correct way to brush and good oral hygiene habits. |
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| My awesome dentists in the States (Woodbury Dental Care) sent a bunch of toothbrushes and toothpaste back to Kenya with me when I was home in May. |
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| Planting a tree. There's this tradition of the VIPs planting a tree during an opening or a special celebration.. so, Hannah's family and I planted trees! |
The cats are doing well. Jordan is finally eating on his own (I don't have to bottle feed him any more!) but doesn't really want to venture into the great outdoors yet. I've tried getting hi to explore in the front yard but he just sits there and looks terrified and crawls onto my foot and looks up at me with this face that says "mooooom, take me back inside!"
So, we're making baby steps toward his release into the front yard. I mostly worry that he's going to get stepped on by a cow, eaten by a goat or pecked by a chicken. Here's hoping he gets bigger...
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| Facing off. Jordan prefers to climb things so he can look down on Boo and at least feel a little bigger than she is. Plus, its tougher for Boo to tackle him when he's barricaded by stuff. |
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| Trying so hard not to get attached to the little ginger |
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| "Whaaaaat?" |
Let's see.... what else.... The garden is better than it was, but still no where near its former glory. I accidentally sprouted some indigenous legumes so I threw them in the garden and they grew. I've been told I can eat the leaves so we'll see. My pumpkins are coming along nicely, evidenced by the fact that there are no fewer than 10 stored under my table in my living room right now. I'm in no danger of vitamin A or C deficiency any time soon. I've also planted sweet potatoes, carrots, beans, onions, lettuce and cucumber, so if everything takes I'll have some good variety.
the resource center has been slow going because I've been so busy trying to get the jewelry website up and going, plus training the new members of our group, Juliet and Gentrix. We got the girls and their families together last week to take some pictures for the website. Here are some that didn't make the company website:
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| Celestine's son Dallas (L) and her brother Ambrose (R) |
Hopefully this video works... It's Celestine's daughter Darleen doing her A B C's. She's only four years old and isn't even in school yet, which minus the fact that she consistently skips over the middle fourth of the alphabet, is pretty impressive. Also keep in mind English is her third language...
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| Baby Linds - love this baby & not just because she has my name :-) |
Celestine and I have taken some "walk abouts" lately. We played soccer with a bunch of kids one day (they totally kicked my ass) and visited her sister at her boarding school another weekend. On our way to the school we passed the the gold mine (literally, they mine gold) that her uncle Timothy works at (and where Juliet's husband died last year). Here's a few pictures from there:
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| I consider myself pretty adventurous but I don't think anything short of a gun to my head could make me climb down there... |
I finally finished my first round of medical school applications this last month. I wrote at least half a dozen drafts of my personal statement before I finally got the thumbs up from my Aunt and Uncle, who are both physicians and were giving me tips along the way (Thanks again Dy and Char!!!). I turned it in almost 2 weeks ago now and It's been really strange not having any looming projects or studying hanging over my head. This is the first time in over a year that I can watch a movie or read a book and not feel like I'm supposed to be working on something else. That may be why I started the series Prison Break 2 Sundays ago and finished it Tuesday night. 4 Seasons in 10 days. Awesome.
I managed to narrow down my school choices to 11 different places. There's a smattering all over the country, Chicago, MN, Philly, Atlanta, Portland, NY, Virginia, Nebraska... so I could pretty much end up anywhere. However, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping that I get into MN, not only because its a top ten school, but also because I want to be close to my family and friends when I get back.
So I should have a few more weeks of reprieve from the application process before the schools all send me their secondary applications and I'll probably have to write a dozen more essays. Lucky for me I have the craft company to keep me busy until then!
Ebola. Did you hear about the outbreak in Uganda? Probably not, only 16 people died, which isn't earth-shattering news in Africa. However, to me, this was pretty epic. Ebola happens to be my favorite tropical disease. I read "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston when I was in Jr. High and fell in love with the prospect of a tiny little virus which could make you bleed from every orifice in your body and that had up to a 90% kill rate (Zaire strain I believe..). I never imagined that 15 odd years later I would be within a hundred miles of an outbreak. So cool. I saw a crazy space age WHO vehicle on the side of the road. I like to imagine it has some space age lab inside or a portable isolation unit with big bubble-headed suits... of course it could also be a really big copy machine... but that's not nearly as fun to think about.
Finally, here are some more random pictures just because I actually went into town to use the internet at the cyber cafe and its about 10x faster than at my house...
