Solemn beginnings

Date: 7:15 AM June 26th 2009

Venue: Our quarters, Sahn Malen

The air last night was heavy and overbearing. It was as if everything was in the grip of an invisible hand- nothing moved. And then the wailing started. It was the cry of a bereaved mother. Hers was the third child to have passed away in the village last night. More villagers joined in, in a disturbing chorus of wails and laments.

It is morning now and the new day brings with it new promise. The weather is pleasant; the older, stagnating puddles of water have given way to newer, fresher ones and from the scarce few barren patches of soil on the main path, spring forth new shoots of grass. These will be walked over today and be trampled to death, but as inevitably as they will die, will new blades spring up the next day too.

Ah! The sun shines through the blanket of clouds in the sky and the green fields take on a brighter hue. I like this.

It seems that the experimental deployment of the 30 XOs done in December didn’t go that bad after all. David met with a couple of kids last night who have done some great work with their XOs. Anthony, the lead teacher for the project sounded very engaged and I’m confident that we will find more people who will be able to lead the project well beyond this summer. Tomorrow, we will carry out an informal survey of children who got the XOs last December to inform our new deployment this summer.

Off to breakfast now. Will upload this later, since it seems more and more plausible that we will have some internet here.

Later,

Faaez