Morning prayer awakens

2 Apr 12

It’s seven am and so many ideas are pouring in that I can no longer sleep. I haven’t a pen near me but a computer so I’m typing them. Writing them out at this hour with my penmanship would be somewhat futile anyway.

The main thought over and over again is about the children. There was a naming ceremony here yesterday which may still be going on as the praying and chanting goes on longer lately. And I just keep thinking about all the children here and the pregnant women and then what food is going to provide for them? Already food is difficult and prices continue to go up and the desert continues to come in. I don’t think the population rate and the current economic and environmental status of the world match up and there are going to be more unnecessary hardships if the pattern doesn’t change.

That word change again, it takes such a long time. But that’s no excuse to not give it every go. Earlier I wrote about brilliant marketing schemes lending to our way out of this crisis if you will regarding overpopulation and food shortages etc. and so forth. But that’s more of a catalyst to change than anything else. The real lasting or sustainable (that word is starting to lose meaning) change comes from education. My advisor reminded me of this recently which has put it on the forefront of thought.

Planting trees and starting gardens are great and those need to happen too but I think a main focus of my time and effort out here should be about educating the young population as much as possible. This includes the youngest of the young ones, providing them a safe place to learn as in a daycare, perhaps. I wonder if I started one if others would find time to continue staffing it so that busy moms could continue to have a safe place to bring children.

But this probably means constructing a structure or two or three. And then if you want it to be nice you’d want paint and floors and and and... And typically it isn’t wise to just try to pour money into a project you’ll barely be able to see through as two years isn’t that long when it comes down to it.

For now I can chalk it up on the wish list of things to do in a perfect world: build a daycare that has safe toys to play with and books for learning and inspiring learning and knowledge at an early age.

My mind also almost always go back to waste management as well. When I was thinking of building a school I was thinking of taking a leaf out of a past PCV’s book from South America who stuffed plastic bottles with garbage to build a school using those and maybe chicken wire. I’m not sure how well a structure like that would hold up in a storm but it’s a thought. Another thought is to build large holding receptacles out of garbage to hold… garbage. The Fairbanks transfer station inspires this idea: waste is just haphazardly thrown everywhere and anywhere. Some of it tends to get piled in various heaps that are later burned which pollute the lungs as well as the air. If four or so large receptacles could be constructed as to sort and store the waste, I wonder if that could do anything. But unless theses receptacles were huge, they’d fill up before you could do anything with the fill and we’d have the same problem all over again. Except, if we started to sort it, like the transfer station in Fairbanks (which isn’t as much sorted as it is just a somewhat organized holding station), more people might be able to find valuable materials to use putting a larger dent in the trash than if it’s just scattered about. This would also make the startup of a recycling project go more smoothly if we could get even some informal recycling started.

Two years is starting to seem like not enough time. Again though one needs to pace themselves, without the language and understanding of the culture, all of it could be for not if not carried out in a participatory and culturally sensitive manner.

Hope your mornings are just as full in the states even without the call to prayer and continuous chanting all throughout the morning from both people and birds (this is a birders paradise this time of year). It does wake me up, every morning, but I have to admit, I kind of like it and already think I’ll miss it if it’s not at my permanent site, and certainly when I go back home to the states. But there’s something to be said about the absolute peace and quiet that can be found atop that quiet hill in Fairbanks AK that I have some claim in.

Tip of the day: if you have a young kid in your life, read them a beautifully imaginative and colorful story. If you don’t and you have children’s books but no children, send them to me in Africa and I’ll find a good home for them!

As always, cheers for reading! I pose these ideas publically to A) just have a place to document them but also b) to get feedback and/or critique or expansion to solving some of the world’s largest problems. Another big one is providing an efficient way of heating food. Fuel wood is taken from the bush, dried, and then used often with bits of plastic as kindling which flame up quite well (as it’s essentially oil). Which begs another question smoldering on my own inefficient backburner: could all this plastic waste actually be utilized as an energy source in a clean way? Bernie Karl purchased Japanese technology to convert plastic waste into fuel to run vehicles. I don’t know what the exhaust is like for 1) breaking the plastic back down to oil and 2) if the exhaust from the vehicles is better or worse than from traditional fossil fuels. It would be brilliant if we could somehow use the plastic as energy to cook if it could be done in a clean way because I’ve never seen more plastic in my life than in the developing world. Or it would be brilliant to come up with an alternative cooking method that made life easier on these people that would utilize heat efficiently with minimal exhaust. This would require free to affordable fuel that is readily available. Volunteers in the past have tried to encourage and construct mud stoves but they never last. People have been cooking on wood fires now for as long as anyone knows. I’m not sure how habit or pattern or tradition can be broken.

But what better way to end a post than with another TED talk that provides one alternative. I think this is a lovely and inspiring video but may have too many steps in preparing the charcoal to really be utilized. All the brilliant ideas in the world don’t hold much of any flame if culture can’t be preserved in the technology transfer.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/amy_smith_shares_simple_lifesaving_design.html