opening WALIPO

We had our official opening of our womens centre yesterday. It's called WALIPO - Women in Arumeru Living Positive. They are very into accronims here in a big way. It was a good day and it felt like a big relief when it was over; a bit like, finally we have acheived something, and now it's done.

When people have a party here, everyone comes over and helps prepare. It started thursday arfternoon, which we spent sitting around with the women from the neighbourhood peeling potatos and cleaning rice. Friday morning i arrived at 9 and so much had already been done i think everyone must of been there since 6am. A big tarp had been constructed outside, some trees looked like they had been cut down to use as supports. We hired chairs and even had a dj, which meant running cables to a neighbours house somewhere in the village who had power.
We felt pretty useless as we often do here at times. We just get in the way or do things wrong because their way is so different. After sufficiently getting in the way in the outside make-shift kitchen with open fires, I decided to usy myself with decorations - thinking this is something i can handle, finally i can be of use -so I started blowing up balloons that Emma and i had bought but apparenly i was doing that wrong too and the girls soon took over. Very frustrating for me but i think they probably just wanted to help and sometimes, actually a lot of the time, you just have to stand back and let people here do it their way.

When Emma and i thought of the idea to have a party to launch the centre a simple casual affair with snacks and drinks came to mind. But this is Afirca and everything is so totally different from eerything we know. So this is how its done:
The idea is to invite 100 people, cater for all of them and serve lunch. Lunch includes fried chicken which came from our new chicken house. i saw a man with a handfull of chickens and a knife so i decided to look else where. Emma and i had recently named the new members toour chicken house but we decided to keep that to ourselves to avoid being the crazy Australian girls. Lunch of course includes lots of rice and being a special occasion, a rice and meet dish called pilau. Then theres a stewy meet thing and vegies and fruit and salad. Soon the whole neighbourhood was turning up to be fed and we soon ran out of food which is hard when all these street kids turn up looking at you hopefully with hungry eyes.

There is also this other concept that happens at parties which i find difficult. There's a high table where the guest of honour (usually the chairman of the village) and the important people sit. Then theres a group of lesser important guests who sit on chairs next to the high table and then facing them is everyone else and the kids sit on the ground.
There were lots of speeches in the morning (in swahili) the music/drama group which we have met and do a lot of work with (because they do songs and comedy sketches about HIV) performed, some kids from the orphans group performed acrobatics which was funny and then more speeches from the high table and then lunch.
After lunch Crispin who we work with got us to come up and make seeches and then he thanked us. It actually felt really good to be appreciated and thanked and have a round of applause. It's under-reated.
To finish we led people around our centre to the office (which Em and i proudly painted ourselves) the nutrition centre (a room with bags of maize and rice) the orphan day care room, the vegie garden which is starting to sprout and the chicken shed which is now 6 chickens short (R.I.P jermima and bruce) and that officially opened the centre.
Then the best bit of the day... we all relaxed and everyone started dancing out on the grass. We even got Crispin dancing which he likes to refer to as 'making jig jig'. We then bought all the builders (who have worked so hard on renovating the house and turning it into a HIV recource centre) and the music group Raha, which is like banana wine but fizzy like beer. Tts very cheap and very strong so therefore quite popular here. The music went into the evening and being able to relax and dance with the kids and the people we work with was probably the highlight.

It was a big day but i think worth it. Emma and i are now taking the weekend off to fall in a heap. Now the real work begins. The centre has to become self-sufficient and sustainable. We want to get monthly nutrition and HIV seminars running at the centre and at the moment are waiting to hear back from a local hospital about having on-site testing days. Another thing is to train some of the women members to become community councellors and set up a network of HIV sufferers in the area for them to visit and monitor and work out ways for them to benefit from the centre. Also we need more members. We thought we had fifteen women but now there are 5. Apparently they feel like they cant contribute and are overwhelmed. Crispin has assured us it was like this with other projects like POSA (Positive Steps in Arumeru) when he started them and it takes time but people will come and get involved. fingers crossed for now.