Gimme Five

(note: the internet has been a catastrophe this week. i manage to send one email and the power goes out, or the network goes down. MAJOR UG.)

I've been out "in the field" the last few days and coming home exhausted. The trips are long and bumpy and there's so much to take in. I feel like I'm in a movie most of the time, driving in a convoy with a Toyota truck leading the brigade, with 2 grey SUVs trailing through the African jungle to visit these remote villages where these NGOs do the awesomest work I have ever come across. Them roads are BUMPY.

I'm writing blog entries for the NGO I work for, but they *edit* them (booo!) and it takes a while to get a version we can both agree on. Apparently my writing is too "familiar" for the kind of work I'm doing. IT'S A BLOG! oh well. I smile, nod, and easily accept the editing. You gotta do what you gotta do - I'm easy.

Hopefully there will be a few entries soon so that you can all be up-to-date on the crazy work and things I'm seeing and doing.

I met the most amazing group of kids yesterday. They're part of a counsel of children between the ages of 12-15 who represent all the children in their villages. The things these kids do... I can't wait for them to start working with my NGO, they'll do AMAZING things together. DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE YOUTH!!

It reminded me a lot of the work la FESFO does in Ontario. FESFO is the Fédération de la jeunesse franco-ontarienne (formerly la Fédération des élèves du secondaire franco-ontarien) or Franco-Ontarian Youth Federation, if you will. They're young leaders who do different things in their community and in school. FESFO gives them tools to be leaders. How to lead a group, lead meetings, how to organize activities at school, how to rally the troups, as it were. FESFO should consider working with this NGO. Their young leaders would totally get a kick out of it, if it were possible. Not sure. But my brain is working on it.

We visited a site in the backwoods and while we were talking to these kids about their needs as young leaders, there were a few small boys (3-4 yrs?) hanging out, staring at me. I flirted with them and they smiled.

When we were leaving, these little kids were kind of looking at me sideways, curious, so I walked up to them and told them to put their hand out. The little boy thought I wanted to shake his hand (the most common way of saying hello here, other than kissing on the cheek 4 times or touching heads 4 times), but then I held his hand out and gave him five, and got him to do the same for me. Then all the little boys got excited and I gave them all five. teehee!!

We got in the car and I drank from my water bottle. I opened the window to shake another little boy's hand when my colleague Jean handed one of them an empty bottle. The kids went NUTS! We started giving them all the empty plastic bottles in the car and Jean told them not to be greedy about it and to share.

When's the last time you saw a kid go nuts over an empty water bottle? It has many uses, but I'm not sure why they're so valuable. Maybe like in Québec, when you return them at the store you can get money for them.

Jean and I had a huge discussion on the way home about credit cards, mortgages, the credit crisis and Walmart. He said, "if people spent $1 on an NGO everytime they poured out the rest of a bottle of wine, imagine the difference."

Imagine.