holiday

(The title of this blog post goes out to Caela and Jason, my co-audience for the early-high-school carpooling extravaganzas put on by Stuart and his Madonna CDs)

This weekend is a super long holiday weekend in Zambia--Monday and Tuesday are national holidays, so no one is working. We're rocking a 4th of July party Wednesday, as well, so....basically....not too much will get done until Thursday.

Esther, a former Project Manager for FORGE (and so much more....she basically owns this camp) left Meheba last night. Friday we had a farewell dinner for her. She has so many friends in the community. It was very moving. This man named Ernest played several songs on the guitar and his sister sang with him in French, English, and Swahili. I can't really describe how beautiful it was....low candlelight and a room full of very close FORGE friends.....so nice.

Lots of details about our project are going to be determined by other NGOs, it appears.....we are waiting to hear from Lusaka staff of IOM and New Start. We're working in Meheba at an interesting time. Christian Outreach Relief and Development (CORD), one of the largest Implementing Partners in the camp, has just pulled out of Meheba. As such, lots of programming is on hold until the replacement IP comes in this month. It holds up our project plans, but also could be an opportunity to clean up many processes and channels that are no longer functioning optimally. Specifically, extra food rations, specialized health care, and transportation to Solwezi for HIV+ patients in Meheba are all in bad shape at the moment....hopefully we can be part of conversations in the coming weeks to improve these areas.

Did anyone see the Refugee All Stars documentary this past week on PBS? I heard it was running beginning June 26. Such a good one!!!

More soon. Happy 4th to everyone!