Susanna and Joe Grannis are in Kigali, Rwanda

Susanna and Joe Grannis are in Kigali, Rwanda. Really, to be accurate we
should say, Remera, Rwanda.

We spent an uneventful trip to Africa, and found all the cases in good
shape. South African Airways would not let us split the cases, so the two
bags of dolls are here in Rwanda, too. We will take them to the First
Lady's office -- or after we go.

We are, as usual, busy with CHABHA business. Today, Tuesday, for example,
we are interviewing candidates to take Eric's position when he leaves at
the end of 2007. We have plans to go to Nyamata tomorrow, and on Friday,
to Nyanza to a school which is currently training four Project
Independence in plumbing. Our CHABHA-Rwanda staff has negotiated a very
good price for what they feel is good education there.

Otherwise we are seeing associates and attending festivities connected
with Eric and Ines' wedding.

Our best,

Susanna & Joe

May 16, 2008

It’s Wednesday, and Belinda and Jane left this morning to travel home,
Belinda as planned, and Jane due to illness in her family.

So this is about the last few days, and is brief because events move
quickly, and reports on business meetings are not terribly interesting.

On Sunday, the three of us, plus our three CHABHA staff, plus 9 leaders
from the associations went by bus to Gisenyi, a town in the northwest,
right up against Goma, Congo on the shore of Lake Kivu.

The bus trip was great – the countryside in Rwanda is extraordinary. The
roads have much improved over my trip here in 2003. The vegetables and
crops are planted on mountains at angles you wouldn’t believe. Vistas of
mountains open up around every corner.

In Gisenyi we registered at a Presbyterian Center, which cost about $5 a
person – with breakfast and running water! We had a good meal and much
laughter as Eric regaled his Rwandan friends about the USA and our strange
ways – music in the subway, for example.

We Americans did not go to the lake later with the young folk but enjoyed
hearing how they walked through a fancy new hotel to the beach to enjoy
the evening despite questions from security.

In the morning we had a fascinating organized discussion on HIV
transmission and gender. I shared some facts about the diseases from
recent reports and though could point to data on Rwanda that is better
than the rest of Africa, did show that the infection rate among 15 to 24
females is twice as big as among men. We separated into two groups to
answer two questions: Why is there such an imbalance in rate? What can
we do about it?

The resulting discussion, both among the women, and then with the whole
groups was astounding. They said things that do not appear in the
writings I have seen, comments about marriage, sex, and behaviors that I
am still trying to figure out – let me just say that it is very, very
complicated and somewhat discouraging.

We spent some time at the beach.

After another long but beautiful trip back, we were really tired.

Tuesday was a day for a workshop on counseling. Belinda felt sick, so
Jane led the workshop with a little help from me.

So, from here the time will be largely spent in planning budget,
organizing, visiting various officials, and even writing a grant. None of
these things are of interest on a blog, so, unless something amazing
happens, this will be the last.

Best to all, Susanna

Happy Mother's Day to All!

For those who have come to Rwanda: Eileen, Hilary, Helen, and Alison, do
know that our friends send their greetings!

We arrived last Wednesday evening in Kigali and have hardly stopped since.
For each of us, it is great to be back here. And for each of us, even
Susanna who was here only 5 months ago, there continue to be changes; more
cars, more office buildings, more housing construction. The streets are
clean and landscaped. It gives the impression of a society on the move!

And it is a society on the move, but with our sights on the associations
and Project Independence, there are a lot of people not part of the
society on the move. It would be easy to blame something: the government,
the form of development money pouring in, selfishness, etc. But the fact
our friends here continue to remind us is that there is and has been
terrible poverty. Nevertheless, it feels like the children are being left
behind. The title of a report, "Isolated and Excluded," applies.

But we are terribly impressed by the good work of the CHABHA staff, Eric,
Alice, and Justine. And we are impressed by the growth among the leaders
of the associations. Among other factors is their bringing on new, young
leaders and helping them take important roles in the work!

From the staff and leaders we note these developments:

• CHABHA is a registered NGO here and has applied to be part of the Joint Action Forum to learn of grants, etc.
• Kayitare, the President of AMAHORO said, "We are growing up with CHABHA's help." They are. AMAHORO has helped 9 new associations. He has met with USAID and PEPFAR and hopes to work on proposals.
• CHABHA Rwanda has a scheduled workshop with a consultant who will help leaders learn to write proposals. The man has been a successful grant writer here.
• AMAHORO has two paid administrative assistants, chosen by an open and transparent process from among the leadership group. They are already making a difference.
• AMAHORO has two young girls, newly graduated from secondary school, who are volunteer (small stipends from a grant we got) home visitors. They keep records of every visit, written in a book and transcribed to their computer. Justine from our staff goes with them. It is remarkable to be with them and see their quiet, strong, reassuring, empathic, and helpful manner.
• AJESOV, Nyamata is doing well. Jean Marie, its founder and president, is also now a paid administrator (tiny monthly stipend). They have two volunteer "children" doing home visits. They got an extra $1000 from CHABHA and have a motorcycle to visit the families who are spread all over the region.
• Some Project Independence graduates have regular jobs; some have "informal" means for helping out and getting money, like the mechanics who do odd jobs. Some of the teachers make a big effort to place people. We estimate but are not sure that about 55% of the graduates so far have jobs. The CHABHA staff is teaching about how to apply and trying to build a network.
  

But there continue to be great challenges.

• AMAHORO continues to receive new children. There are associations of persons living with HIV that help pay for health insurance and school costs. When (if) the parent dies, the children are not helped. They come to AMAHORO. The leaders explain it is because the associations simply don't have enough money. But it puts a strain, and we will talk about this at the next meeting, a retreat tonight and tomorrow at Gisenyi.
• With more funding, AJESOV in Nyamata could help hundreds more children who are not getting any support and not going to school!
• AGAPE needs more support.
• The leaders need emergency funding. Example; a boy whose mother just died and he has no money for a coffin; a family with no money for food; a girl who has a job after Project independence but has not enough from that job to fix the house, and it is falling down, etc., etc.
• It is difficult to trace youth after they leave Project Independence or finish school.
• It is critical to find ways to provide nutrition for those on ARVs. Though the drugs are free and more available, without food the impact disappears.
• Transport costs are high; if we are able to get a vehicle, all kinds of arrangements and supports will be eased.
• AMAHORO meetings on Saturdays bring in 400 - 500 children and the space at the district office is often used for Gacacca trials.
• Belinda and Jane have been talking with the leaders and learning more about the extensive mental health needs. In our meetings and visits to homes, tears roll down the cheeks of these brave young people trying to keep going despite the loneliness they feel and the heavy responsibilities they bear.
  

We have learned that $450 provided really vulnerable families makes a big difference and will try to figure out how to put that into our fundraising and administration here in Rwanda.

The leaders and visitors are struggling when they are faced with
children's problems they cannot solve, like housing. Despite the
difficulties they persist in their good efforts to bring solutions, solace, fun. These young persons show confidence, tenderness, compassion, and have grown in professionalism and in structuring their organizations. This is a story that needs air!

We wish you could share in this experience.

News from Jane, Belinda, and Susanna

Tuesday

This is the first time we have been near an internet café, and so will
tell you of the projects, people, and especially, children we have met and
seen. We will skip the touristy stuff – except to say that we did spend
time at a park and saw next to nothing.

On Thursday last, Lynne Coulle, a friend, guide here in South Africa, and
priest of Anglican church, Diocese of the Highveld, working with AIDS
projects, led us to Standerton, a large town east and south of Jo’Burg.
We went to the settlement / town of Rooikoppen. This area has emerged in
only 12 years and has 1.5 million people. The part of the area we visited
is around a church and school. Covering the bare hills are shacks,
thousands of them, made of corrugated iron, pieces of this, pieces of
that. Some are marked with rocks to show boundaries. In every corner are
mounds of trash, more trash than you can imagine. But it is not as if the
government does not supply anything; there are roads, terrible roads;
there are electrical poles, but most people cannot pay for it; there are
water spigots with good water; many of the shacks have government built
latrines. All this would not have been the case before democracy.

As we entered the only brick building in sight, a primary school, its
principal, Themba Maseko, shouted “Welcome Home”. We sat in a large
meeting room with Themba, some of her staff, a local ANC leader, clergy
helping out. The school has some 500 children from grade 1 – 7, and has
added a preschool, too, though our impression is that they just added on
their own. Themba has enormous energy and determination to make a
difference to her children, many living extremely difficult lives. She
worships at the local Anglican church, and its rector, Father Joe Khumalo
had communicated needs to Lynne. Because of the food needs, CHABHA sent
$4000 a few months ago, and two groups in UK and Australia have as well,
so that there is now a once-a-day feeding scheme. We went out to view the
children eating millet and beans, cooked by local volunteers, the product
of our donation. (We heard that they have no money to give children food
packets for weekends and holidays.) The children are eating two and three
to a plate, plates on the ground. There are not enough plates, but Themba
has made it a lesson – the children are learning to share.

The area has more than 80% unemployment and no services like transport.
Persons eligible for antiretrovirals do not have the money to get to the
clinics and die. They estimate that one third of the children in the
school are orphaned. Many families have come after farms stopped giving
them work. Many others are illegal immigrants from Nigeria, Mozambique,
Angola, and especially Zimbabwe. Being illegal they cannot register the
children and are therefore not eligible for the grants the government
supplies those fostering orphans. They can go to school, and Themba says
she will make sure no interference occurs with that.
Given the lack of control over their lives, the great desperate poverty,
the emptiness of lives, we suppose it should not have been surprising that
sexual abuse is a terrible problem, abuse of even small children, that is
experienced there. They work hard to respond, immediately and directly
with the parents. They organize to try to make sure the children get some
time of help. But there is so little.

A new program is beginning there, the Isibindi (we care) program, already
in practice in some 20 sites in SA. In short, young people are carefully
trained to become Youth and Child Community Workers, and when trained, are
assigned 5 to 8 families, very vulnerable families with sick adults and
child-headed families. They go several times a week, to play, to help with
cooking, shopping, school events, to be like parents. We were very
interested in this model and will learn more about it.

We visited four families and will focus on one: An older woman (in her
50s) known to Themba and a neighbor of hers (Themba and her family live in
the area) has taken in two children who are not related to her. One is a
girl, grade 5, an AIDS orphan, and one a boy abandoned by his mother. The
woman is very very poor but making a family for these children. And with
help from Themba, her staff. In ways like this, the school is a
functional, vibrant community center.


We spent one full day with the Ingwavuma Orphan Care project where we had
been twice before, in 2004 and 2005. It is located in a corner of SA,
just east of Swaziland and just south of Mozambique. It is a truly remote
place and requires many hours of travel from Jo’Burg. The region is
mostly flat, at least from the Indian Ocean coast to the mountains in
which Ingwavuma is located. It was a Homeland during apartheid, one of the
many places where people were sent but where there is no real land to
farm. Just outside the area there is rich, flat soil and huge sugar
farms, still owned by the white farmers.

Anyway, in this region of Ingwavuma up on the hills are homesteads made of
rocks and sticks, mostly, with one or two buildings to a family, and
again, an area. Many people have a couple of goats or cows, but not much
in the way of vegetables. People are scattered over huge areas and the
roads are very poor making travel quite difficult. It is, nevertheless,
quite lovely there, the far hills, rondovals, etc. If one didn’t know the
story of the region.

The infection rate is very, very high. While now the ARVs are available,
getting to clinics is beyond many people, and there is a distressing hole
in the benefit picture. Though SA is rich, compared with other African
nations, and while there are benefits, like the aforementioned grants for
fostering, there is this hole. Disabled people are eligible for ARVs and
the food that must accompany the drugs, and once the CD 4 count gets low,
200, they get both food and drugs. But it is only for 6 months! The idea
is that once improved with the ARVs, people can get jobs. But there are no
jobs in Ingwavuma, only the hospital, schools, and the Orphan Care
Project. So people end up sick again, maybe eligible again, but the
downward spiral continues.

The Orphan Care Project has grown enormously. They hire 70 people, do
home care for sick people (1000) and orphan care in a variety of ways.
They have financial support from a number of organizations and are putting
the money to use. We went on a home visit – up on the top of a mountain
and older woman, infected, who cares for a young grandson who was in
school at the time. The nurse (volunteer from UK there 2 years and great)
and driver who translated had a long talk with the grandmother about her
needs and left her with a number of medications. She and all the other
1000 patients get one or two visits a week from home care workers who walk
from patient to patient. The project is a critical bridge between the
reality of distance, poverty, needs and the life sustaining ARVs.

We went in a truck to a school, another ¾ an hour from the office. There
an orphan club of 20 children (grade 1 – 7) gathered for motivation,
receiving sweets and instant pap, list making of crucial needs, and a
short “lesson”. The club named themselves the Lions, and turned to
consider “abuse”. In four groups they listed abuse they knew about:
sexual, physical abuse, being shouted at all day, being denied food, not
being allowed to play, being chased away from home, and “forced to do
something you don’t like.” They talked (too briefly but plan to follow up
later) about avoiding abuse.

In the face of the enormity of what is happening in poor corners of this
world due to the unholy interaction of poverty and AIDS, it’s really
amazing to see the young workers and project persevere.

We were awed by the experiences with the projects we visited.

Now, it is time to push on from Pongola and tomorrow to Rwanda.

A message to friends of CHABHA

Three of us will be traveling to Africa, leaving May 2, one returning on May 17 and two on May 24. We are Susanna Grannis, Jane Davis, and Belinda Whipple Worth, all members of CHABHA's Board of Directors. In South Africa, we will be going to a project east of johannesburg not a part of the list you read on the website, but an interesting one that helps children of illegal immigrants who have been orphaned or otherwise made vulnerable. An Anglican church is working to help the children. We will also visit Ingwavuma Orphan Care out in the east. On May 8 we will fly to Kigali and spend the rest of the time working with the project leaders there. We will have bags of knitted dolls for the children. Many hundreds we think.
Periodically we will post words of our travels and invite you to respond.
Thanks, Susanna

Knitting for a good cause. CHABHA featured on Fox News-Boston

BOSTON (FOX25, myfoxboston.com) -- Knitting has become a creative and cool way to raise money for charities. Even celebrities like Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz and Laurence Fishburne have helped bring knitting into the mainstream. Susanna Grannis, president of CHABHA (Children Affected by HIV/AIDS), discussed how you can get involved with knitting for a good cause. Knitting for a Good Cause