The Office is Finished!!

It took several years - interrupted by malaria, Ebola, a PhD, rising material costs, and a family being started - but we've finished it. So now we can start the real work! 

The next year will mostly be planning, administration, and getting funding and materials. So we've leased it to another organization for the next year, to help us cover our costs while before start implementing our projects. But by next October we will have computers and space for the community, and be able to offer computer training, public internet access, and meeting space. We will also have office space to run our other projects from here as well. We of course have a lot of work to do to get the funding and materials, but it is an exciting moment for us... A long journey to get here, but one that is only just beginning!  

Desperation

Will this be as high as we get?

 As we speak an epidemic is surging through west Africa.  it is spreading incredibly quickly and has no cure.  Ebola is leaving a trail of dead bodies in its wake and is only a matter of time before it spreads beyond "the dark continent" and into our living rooms.  As most people that read this blog know, I spent some time there and helped to set up a community based organization called "aibia".  The name for this came from playing with the Chinese words (bo ai) for "universal love", a concept espoused by Mozi nearly 2500 years ago in ancient China.  It would seem like a simple concept, to create a political and economic system based on a universal caring and respect for all human beings, a system based on us viewing all others as if they were our brother or sister, mother or father, husband or wife.  Would we let our sister go hungry?  Would we let our mother die of Ebola?  No we would not.

I want to see this building that we started be completed...    

We are building an office and community center for our organization.  A structure intended to be a place for us to have meetings, voice grievances, create and incubate businesses, teach both marketable and enjoyable skills, arts, computers, etc.  A place for people to go engage with others and build community.  

But this will never happen if everyone working on it, or that could use it, dies.  And that is where we are headed right now.  An entire population of people is at risk of death.  Ebola carries with it a 90% fatality rate and is transferred simply through human to human contact.

Basically, we need to pay attention.  We need to realize that we can make a difference both with Ebola and in helping marginalized people gain a voice in their own lives and for their communities. Please help by donating even the smallest amount.  Just click on the donate button on the right hand side of this website and we will transfer the money in bulk amounts so we can save money on transfer fees.  Please help.

Breaking Ground!!

So it has been 3 years and 8 months tomorrow since I left for Sierra Leone.  What was supposed to be three months of walking/hiking through the country turned into a shorter stay within a specific location and for targeted work.  However, life, malaria, poverty, unemployment, an occupation, fundraising issues, bureaucratic hurdles, and now academia have all come in the way of me moving forward with this project. But now, finally, we have made some progress, and are building!

Funding an Office

I know that this project has been slow going.  Similar to most of you, I have been trying to juggle day jobs/responsibilities and the desire to see this project through.  This project means the world to me, as most of you know.  However, I have been asked by my academic advisers (I am now in a PhD program in Anthropology at Rutgers University) to step back from this work as they see it as a possible conflict of interest with my academic work.  As a result, I am not planning to spend any extended time on the ground in Sierra Leone working on this project.  This does not however mean that we will not be moving forward with our work, just that I won’t be moving to Sierra Leone!  

Our current goals are to provide a computer to send to Yapo, our country manager, and to help fund an office building there in Makeni.  That office will provide the tools to allow our team there to make things happen as per their own efforts. Our assessment is that with this office building (which will double as a community space) we will be able to launch our other programs and send volunteers to work there with our local team to see our projects through.  Yapo, has said the legitimacy of an office has been tremendously holding them back.  We are still in line for our brick making project, skills training programs, and most pressingly our women's cooperative network.  I have been actively recruiting volunteers to spend time there to help facilitate these processes, and I have some positive leads.  

For the office/community space we had looked at leasing space, but prices have risen sharply and the price of a three year lease (required) is more than if we build from scratch.  Our local team has found suitable land that garners a 25 year lease and made plans for a small office space.  They estimate that this space will cost $4600, $1000 of which they can obtain themselves for exchange in kind with the community.  This means that we need to send $3600 to them.  I already have purchased the computer.  A small notebook for $460 and will be sending it shortly.  We have garnered commitments of $2020, thus far towards our goals.  That means we need $1580, or to get as close as possible to that figure.  Please consider donating.  You can find a donation link on this website to the right, or contact us at walkinglion.org@gmail.com. Obviously, we do not have a large list of people to ask, but this is also not a large sum of money.  Any level of donation would be greatly appreciated, we have received pledges/donations from $20 to $500.  

All of this donated money will be used to build this office. An office and community space does is allow our local team to get to work.  It is not a hand out, simply a tool to allow both them and the community to make things happen for themselves. I have bought the computer on my own, and will not take anything from these donations.  Every cent goes to the Sierra Leone project or the cost of wiring the money there.  If we receive anything extra, it will go directly to our next project there.  So don't worry about giving too much!  ;)  

Burning Both Ends

Wow!! What a long day... Its midnight in half an hour, I'm on a subway platform at 59th street. I just had a great meeting with a guy who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone in 1961-62. Yes, the first two years it existed. He really likes what we're talking about and was impressed with it all. I think it will open many doors for us/me. Time will tell. We have a lot to prove and to make happen, but even if in failure this will be a huge success.

The day itself though, wow!  I got 5 hours of sleep on a few drinks while discussing the sustainable occupy stuff last night. Then I was up at 6, chi gung, shower and get out to Brooklyn for work.  We went back into Manhattan and walked around the whole of the Museum of Natural History, then back to Brooklyn and worked late. I mannied for a total of 11 hours today, jumped on the subway and Africa meetinged it for 2.5 hours and now hope to get home and to bed before getting back up at 6 and doing it all again. Long nannying day and then occupy meeting after...

But this is the way it is right now. I am working hard. Occupy, Africa, Mannying, these are the keys to my future. They will succeed. #36

Step back, reassess

It's been a long month.  I've really started focusing on a few specific things and this sustainable occupy project has really been received well.  I should post the first draft of its concept and then some other things as well in here somewhere.  We are having our first full meeting of it tonight.  Excited.  Sadly most of the crew I tried to pull in hasn't gotten to excited, but there still will be at solid 7 or 8 people there tonight, and that is about what I had hoped to start off with.

The Africa work is as well moving forward.  Yapo and I have been emailing back and forth every day or two for weeks now.  Making plans, getting things moving forward.  It has been really tough now though as I'm flat out mannying 50 hours a week, had car issues that took away the free time on the weekends, and just started this farmers market job.  The hiking place fell through.  Amazing story.  I said I didn't feel comfortable working for them until they could pay me and they responded by saying they were going to let me go because they didn't think I was committed enough to the company or working as a guide.  As if everyone should work for free for the owners longer-term benefit... Crazy!  But I think I'm gonna try to sit for the hiking guide exam in September anyway.  It could lead to some doors that I might not mind being open some day.

Anyway, the Africa stuff is looking quite positive and with the other things bringing enough income in to live, I should be ok.  I've got time to put into sustainable occupy and alternative systems research, and the development work in Sierra Leone, the two things I am really excited about right now.  Things are going pretty well.

Moving Forward(ish)

So this week has seen a lot of different things come and go.  I have spent a lot of time looking for work for now, but also working on finding a way forward for the longer term.  Of late though, it's mostly been about conflict.  no matter what it is that we do in life it conflicts with something that we either believe in or should/must do.  I've been getting a lot of advice of late an it all seems pretty much unmanageable.  No matter what I do, whether it's in life or specific situations, there is no victory.  If I get a job in international development like my experience and degrees point to, in some people's eyes I run the risk of becoming a colonialist, imperialist, or even a missionary.  I can of course stay working where I am and just not get paid for the too few hours that I'm working.  But even then, the job is really just another capitalist wage-labor position bowing down to the man (not paying me).  I've applied to do commercial interior painting, I followed up on a nannying lead for a toddler.  Applied to more retail, and got a networked in an application for post-conflict reconstruction work.  Who knows what if anything will bare fruit.  Yapo has also come back with some work he needs done on a prospective funding line from England.  I am not sure it is feasible though at first glimpse.  But will get further in as I can.


The heart and soul of my time has been of course on Occupy stuff though.  I am really getting further into this sustainability issue.  We have to find a way to sustain the movement's individuals in a way that leaves them empowered and energized to progress the movement.  We also need to try to find a prefigurative way to illuminate the inequities of the current system by showing that another way is possible - and functional - under current auspices.

I've had some really good conversations with a number of people about it and am starting to see a solid research project, and maybe even a group for moving forward.  It would certainly be a long slow project, but ten years from now the movement will be judged on what it achieved, not how long it took to map out a structure for success.

So there we are: I am trying to juggle life, work, occupy, and social relationships and whatever else gets thrown in there that day.  I know as per societies wishes I should just be settling in and working away.  But that is just what keeps the cycle going.  If I stay both dumbed and numbed down the status quo will maintain and most of our lives will just continue to lag behind just a few.  But I can't and won't allow it.  We will all find a way forward personally and professionally, so that we can keep working on finding a way forward for the movement and in turn a more economic and socially just society.  The journey of 10,000 feet starts with a single step....

Africa!

So timing is something that I will never quite understand, and probably shouldn't even attempt to...  On Sunday April 15th I learned I would not be starting a Phd program in September, that Wednesday I lost my job and my relationship was in dire turmoil.  Seemingly every part of my life had schismed aimlessly within just a couple days of each other.  Time as I knew it had stopped. 

What do you think happened that very next day?  I was standing in Union Square talking about getting a think tank going, and to people about this crazy couple of days when my phone vibrated and three quick successive emails came through.  They were from Yapo!  Now, anyone new to this blog won't know him, but he is my guy in Sierra Leone.  Around the turn of the year I had scratched together some money for our Africa work and sent it out to him.  We needed to get our national and municipal registrations up to snuff for our community organization in Sierra Leone and the bank account open.  We went back and forth for a while as it took me longer than expected to get the money and get it to him.  Things had kinda gone quite  and then when I sent the money I didn't hear anything.  He had told me he would be doing some election monitoring and be a way for a bit so I didn't know what happened.  I was worried, but Sierra Leone is an interesting place.  There is no electricity pretty much anywhere and communications are really tough.  He basically never got my messages saying the money had been sent, thus never picked it up.  He thought I just didn't send anything.  So he slowly got together some cash to do the registrations himself.  When he sent me the certificates I immediately asked if he had gotten the money.  No!  He went that night and got it all.  So now we have a sizable chunk of cash sitting in the bank!  We still have to do a couple administrative things, but we are up and running!

We do not have a specific project yet that we have committed to, but as of right now we are strongly looking at verma composting (composting with worms) of waste, and also at a sustainable internet cafe/office to work from.  That is where the most interest came from the government and seems most viable.  It is really tricky though as without personally going there and getting to work on it, it is very difficult to make things happen. 

All in all though, it was fortuitous that he simply popped back up when he did.  Down to the day itself!  Perhaps there is something to our connection that is in fact incomprehensible!?  Or maybe things just happen incomprehensibly... But I do know that it brought a huge smile to my face, and I immediately ran around the park and told everyone.  Any rain on my face that day was quickly washed away...  I had hope again of finishing what I started.  :)

A New Partnership

So I went back to the council today, hammered out the final aspects of the partnership with the them. They are going to pay for all aspects of the machines and the trainer coming here. We are responsible for running the training, managing the company and brickmaking, and putting what portions of any profits are not reinvested into the development of the company towards the development council's development projects. All the money will stay with us in trust until a project is ready to break ground. I don't know about you, but I am quite happy about that deal, should it all come to pass as agreed.

We also registered a company today. "aibia". It is first registered as a CBO (community based organization). This makes us able to provide services for the council here locally, while not forcing us to undertake all the difficulties and monetary constraints of full NGO incorporation. Once we are in a position to do that, then we can simply change the designation and keep all the assets with the company. We filed the cbo registry today, will pick it up tomorrow. 24 hour company registration (and only because the 2nd administrator that must sign it was out today).

I also have offered Yapo a position as the local manager of this organization. Everything is happening very fast, and it may seem impulsive. (I keep waiting for "the catch", but it hasn't come yet). This decision about Yapo though is something I have thought about. I feel that I can work with him, and that he can do a good job. He is a young guy, training to be a lawyer, but he has a good business sense. He is currently managing some projects for a few local NGOs, he has worked as a supervisor for a more traditional brick making operation, and also worked for the same development council that we are working with now. He understands their side, he understands a bit about bricks, and he understands the local environment. I feel that he will be a good fit.

I have yet to talk to Kaps about this, but he and Kevin are very much focused on ChildHelp. The track will give them a great opportunity. They are very committed to their work and I see them as being on the board of directors for aibia, and handling a good deal of the community projects we will undertake. I couldn't have gotten here without them, they are special people to me. I have to make the right business decisions. I am not sure how to handle this culturally, or if I should even be worried about it. I hope they didn't want to manage it. They are both very good facilitators. I think their strengths are perhaps more in aid and charity work then construction management though. But I will discuss it with them this afternoon and make sure we are clear.

Now to write a letter of introduction for this new company: aibia