This trip was a wirlwind . We were double timing it the entire month . I will do some catch up posts and fill in the blanks , but I wanted to share part of our last day.
We were up early finishing off popcorn and 100 lt of lemonade while Sergey went to town to get icecream cones for 400 kids .. Thats right 400 kids .
The boys helped our welder go down to the playground and put the finishing touches on the playground and install the swings .
At 12:00 the festivities began ..
We arrived just in time for the meal and the speaches .. I am so glad that I was not asked to say anything this time .. I don't think I would have been able to speak .. I was just so overwhelmed by the Joy and the excitement that we were experiencing here .
Every piece of play equipiment was jammed with kids, and boy were they having a good time.
I had so many people come to us and share how this is what comunity should be . So many different tribs and nationalities are represented in this village , and today they were all together celebrating , not because they had some special holiday , but because they could come together as a comunity.
We have done a lot of projects over the years with the Rotary club . They have been such a blessing to us enabling us to do projects that otherwise we would not have been able to . One thing that I have learned from them is the "four way test" .. Well this project sort of snuck up on us so we moved ahead because it needed to be done .. the playground had fallen into disrepair after about 6 years of heavy use. When we were making the decision wether or not to move ahead, I could hear my friends at Rotary ... "How will this build comunity ?... will it pass all four aspects of the test."
We do have a couple projects left to do at the playground. Not so urgent but a fun one. There is a large cement block wall along one side of the playground. We would like to paint a giant mural on this wall . We have the talant at the farm with a couple of our guys so we are looking for about $150 for this and we can move ahead .
The next project is a bit bigger . The families in the comunity are going to start taking responsibility for the caring for the park and the children in it. They have taken up a colection among the comunity to build a fence around the park to keep the kids safe and to give un understanding that this is a protected territory .. It is a cultural thing in Kyrgyzstan that with out a fence , things are considered to be "Help yourself" but when a fence is up it is then safe. Even so far as people thinking that they could just bring items from the playground to their own home is an isue , simply because there is no fence. As well as the cultural significance of a fence , this playground is close to the road and while cars may stop and watch for kids , herds of Cows , horses and sheep don't always .
We would like to be able to offer to match the funds raised by the comunity to make it possible to move ahead with this . I was thinking that this would be a good project for a team in the fall , but The village has asked that we have the fence up by the end of May . So our share of this will be about $750. We think it is important to have the families involved in this so they can take ownership, so we will limit our suport to $750. If you would like to sponsor this in whole or in part , please donate at the top right side of the blog.
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