Ending Extreme Poverty in the Congo

An Urban School Is Out

You can see the differences between the urban and rural school.

The urban schools require uniforms. The typical uniforms are white tops and dark blue bottoms.

The urban schools have painted white walls surrounding the buildings. The walls create a small campus.

Rural schools are different.

The Hospital's Water Distribution System

 
 A few young women and girls routinely visit the hospital.  They come to the hospital once or twice a day.  They are NOT coming to the hospital to seek medical care.

The Bulape Hospital, located in rural Congo, has underground water cisterns.  These cisterns are used to store collected rainwater.  So these young women and girls come to get water for their families who are hospitalized.  The family is responsible for non-medical care of hospitalized family member.  This care includes such required and necessary functions like preparing food and cleaning their clothes. 

So everyone needs water throughout the hospital.  Since the hospital has no running water, these young women and girls serve as the water distribution system.

Imagine Sitting On Your Church Pew Every Day At School

"Children, please sit down at your desks!"  That's a typical teacher to student command.

In most US school, you may think that school desks are part of the basics.  Some progressive schools use group table sitting to foster learning and team work.  However, just suppose students sit on benches versus sit at desks in school.  I think that would be a different learning experience.  And it would not be an unpleasant experience.  

Many Congolese students do not have a school desk but they must sit on a bench.  The bench is actually a church pew borrowed from the nearby church.  I wonder how the teacher-student exchange starts between these Congolese students and their teacher.  Since the children do not have desk, are all references to desk omitted?  Are students assigned their bench positions at the beginning of the school year?  Also, do they recognize their pew from church?

Visit Congo Helping Hands to support their school desk project.

They Are Happy and Showing A Big Smile

Some of us can smile when we work.  But I think if these Congolese young women could whistle, they would whistle while work.  They would probably be better than Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, too.  

Why would they whistle while they walked home from a hard day in the fields?  Their basket of full of produce and food to feed their families.  In Congo, food comes from the field and goes directly to the pot for cooking. 

In a poor country like, refrigerators or ice boxes are rare except in some commercial establishments.  Corn is only saved until it is dried to make flour or meal for cooking.

So these young women are happy.  They are smiling and proud of the food they are carrying from their distance farm fields.   

The (Lack of) Popularity For Kuba Cloths

Art is in the eye of the beholder.  Everyone has their own taste for beauty, art, and even music.  Today, I watched the video, The Hangover, again after seeing it at the movies.  It was just as hilarious.  But I got that song, spin me right round by flo rida, lodged in my mind.  I went out to YouTube to see the popularity of the video and song.  Both of them had over 2.7 millions views each.  Proof that lots of people like it.

When I first saw a Congolese traditional kuba cloth, I did not see the beauty or the artistic appeal.  So, I did not step up to the front of line to purchase a cloth.  But I was given some cloths as tokens and gifts for my visit.  I thanked the givers and proudly put them away.  I brought them home and displayed it on my nightstands.

A few years later, I tried to sell some kuba cloths as a fund raiser for the poor Congolese women in the village.  The cloths did not catch the eyes of many potential beholders.  They are interesting but not a popular item for sale. 

If they were popular items for sale, a cottage industry of kuba cloths makers could bolster the economy and alleviate poverty in rural Congo.

The Way Home Is Up The Hill

Let's start with the truth.  Water does not flow up a hill.  So why would Jack and Jill go up the hill to fetch a pale of water?  You know it does not rhyme if they went down the hill.

Any Congolese girls would probably shake their heads or roll their eyes at such silliness.  They know that they have to go down the hill to fetch water.  They have carried too many full buckets and jugs up the hill.

The way home is up the hill.  Also, they know that five gallons of water weighs over 40 pounds, too.