Fingers Crossed...

Ok, So I don’t have much time but keep your fingers crossed for me that things with the grant finally take off. I had a meeting yesterday with one of the two NNGO’s after many sms’/texts with the two NGO’s that I’ve been working with to come out to the school and they are both planning to come out this coming week. I had a meeting with House of Men (the theater youth group that teaches about life skills) today and they had everything all put together to come out to my village to train and work with the kids in a 4 hour workshop for Tuesday! It was beautiful; I was so impressed and happy! They had an amazing outline for all of it…all 4 hours. They were so put together and happy to be doing it. I loved them! It was so great…so, my school head and I then went to Moleps to buy so many chips, cookies, and other snack stuff cause a huge things in Bots is that every time you do a workshop or any type of meeting its like a cultural “NO NO” to not have food offered! So, after we loaded our cart full of all these goodies that the kids in my village will royally freak over…forget the training…the fact that there is food will be possibly the talk of the village…Tuesday will be good (FINGERS CROSSED).
Then after days of texting The other NGO, Tebelopele (the Voluntary Counseling and Testing/Youth group to train and help the children learn all about HIV/AIDS and build their confidence), is planning to come (the head counselors, not the youth group yet) on Wednesday to make a plan/schedule for the Youth Group (Youth Against AIDS)…once again, fingers crossed! They are scheduled to come…I’ve been sending texts and “stalking” them for two months now…finally, the time has come…fingers crossed (Lets see how many times I can say this!)
We had a staff meeting at my school last week and after 3 ½ hours of discussing teacher like things in Setswana and me playing games on my cell phone we talked about the grant and about picking the second village to work with. I spoke with Sesung, our neighbor/sister village that the teachers decided on which is a village of about 1300 people…they seem receptive and I really like their school head. She’s great…so we’re doing the grant with them…but we’ve spent the last two months debating which village we would work with and I never thought the teachers would be open to this and would be ok with it, but actually came up with Mantshwabisi all on their own. I was so happy! It was great! Mantshwabisi is a village about 60 from mine, so a little bit way but it’s a primary school, which is a boarding school and from my understanding really needs help. It has a high rape rate among children, and high pregnancy rate among other things. The NGO’s I’ve talked to really think that PACT and our grant will be such a beneficial thing for these villages…I’m so excited to go to these villages that really need help and not just doing villages that are convenient …and more so I’m excited that the teachers came up with these villages! I haven’t spoken with Mantshwabisi yet and I’m planning to go this week and hitch hike my way there to talk to them and hopefully get them on board…I’m trying not to get too excited just yet since things are up in the air, but I’ve spoken with them I the past about PACT and they were really excited for me to help…so fingers crossed that they are still interested!
Not about the grant, I took the initiative and talked to my the Deputy Head and teachers at my school to help me finish collecting the Second Meal Data without the social worker…cause well, it needs to happen. This project has been going on for a year this September! So, we buckled down and told all the children to tell their parents to come the next day to school…they all did! I have all the data now for the second meal…AGAIN…so now I have to finish a new proposal that they are requesting from me and then get it turned it and then I’m hoping the hoop jumping is over…maybe on the 1 year anniversary of this project I’ll get it…but I’m not holding my breath on that one…but guess again…fingers crossed!
So, keep happy thoughts for me that everything gets pulled off and works out!!!! I gotta go now, I have to go run around and buy pens for the Tuesday training for the kids to use, finish buying more snacks, buy food for me to live off of in my little hut for the week, and I need to get home and take a nap…this whole actually working and accomplishing things (fingers crossed)…is exhausting!!

"These hands may not be perfect but at least I'm trying..." ~ the random lady sitting next to me thats doing Habitat for Humanity in Bots