Cooking Class

Inspiration, Coordination, Cheering, Financing – the Team from Left to Right: Maria da Luz, Alcídia, Sister Broderick, Carmo, and Fatima

One project that has brought Janet and I great satisfaction this year is our adult ed cooking class. It has also fulfilled a dream for Maria da Luz and Fatima who are the heart, experience, and energy behind it all. We have to give great credit to the two adult ed coordinators, Alcídia and Carmo, who have contributed energy, vision, and direct involvement throughout the experience. This is the team shown above.

Humanitarian services has financed more than 90% of the course. In the photo above the full class shows off their work. It was February and our first opportunity to attend their practical class on Saturday.
We first learned of this opportunity about a year ago when we were visiting with Alcídia about various projects ideas of theirs. We learned that the idea came some years earlier from one of their adult ed teachers who loved cooking to use a cooking class to encourage success in adult literacy efforts. Alcidia is the overall coordinator of the adult ed program in São Vicente. They have a very aggressive program to offer both literacy classes, primary school grades, as well as a chance to complete high school grades they missed.
In general literacy in Cape Verde is high among the young, but adult literacy, especially among older women, is poor. Even today it appears that among the poorer people, lack of money and lack of family support leaves too many out.

Illiteracy follows poverty, and one of the challenges in adult ed is how to keep adults in their classes and progressing in development of basic literacy with many other pressures upon them, including financial pressures.
The cooking class was one answer they saw to reduce adult drop outs. This would be an incentive class. In order to enjoy the cooking class they would have to continue to progress in their literacy program. We have recently learned that the literacy program in the city of Praia has also been offering incentive courses in cooking and esthetics and beauty.

This cooking class was not designed as a professional course in cooking that would result in a certification. They refer to it as a capacitation class. Even so, cooking as an avocation has a lot of appeal, especially when you have highly motivated and skilled instructors who give their students lots of room to contribute in the planning and to try their own ideas out.
We proposed the project to fund the equipment (stove, frig, storage cabinet, pots and pans, dishes and cups) and the first year of the class (with ingredients, teacher salaries, coordinator costs, copies and teaching materials, etc.) late in October last year. It was approved and we began right away setting things up.
They had selected an elementary school near the city prison. It was a central location, but had a history of vandalism. Our first phase was to improve the security of the areas designated for keeping the equipment and supplies to prevent theft.

Next we purchased the basic equipment and ordered the storage cabinet built. We had fun buying all the mixing and cooking equipment and dishes with the instructors, and delivering it to the school.
In early January the course was ready to begin. We attended the opening session to meet some of the students selected for the course and explain our hopes for the course. We didn’t get any photos of that session, but remember how quiet and reserved the class members were. None seemed inclined to even speak with these American strangers who didn’t really speak their language. Before the evening was over we opened a conversation with one of the more outgoing students, Telma, and were fascinated with her life story.

From that beginning we continued to follow the course and provide financial backing over the next six months. Each month we met with the instructors and coordinators to evaluate the progress, look at the plan for the coming month, and provide a cash advance for purchase of the cooking ingredients. We came to enjoy those get togethers as our friendship with the group increased.

We also made it a point to visit the Saturday session of the class about once a month. This was their practical session when they cooked. At the beginning they divided up into three groups to learn and make the recipe of the day. The instructors were leading the way using tell, then show, then guide. We took lots of photos as much of what we saw was new to us and we wanted to document the progress of this group.

With time we noticed the students becoming much more confident and independent. We began to interact much more with the students too and they seem much more comfortable with us.


The class was not all women, as this group was quick to point out

We had heard much about a fish delicacy from Portugal called bacalhau. In April we watched with great interest as they took this dried and salted cod fish from Norway, separated the rehydrated fish from the bones and made a very savory dish. We decided this fish could grow on you if you didn’t try to use too much as it is somewhat expensive. We later watched them prepare a wonderful tuna dish that we have since reproduced at home. We really hope we can find a fish in Danville that will work with this recipe.


The course officially ended the end of June. The students pooled some extra effort and some extra funds to make this a very nice event with a focus on a very polished presentation. They worked in teams of two or three to make a dish of their choice. We took advantage of the opportunity to recognize, with the help of the students, the extraordinary efforts of the teaching and coordinating staff. Several students got a little emotional as they expressed their appreciation for these teachers.

The teachers noted that many of the students had progressed well beyond their expectations. Not only were they doing well in their literacy and basic education, they had gained confidence and developed socially from the supportive spirit of the group. They were very pleased with the outcome of the program. We got a good group photo at this final class.

Our class of first class cooks

We were beginning to feel right at home with students and teachers

As a final exam the students and instructors organized a graduation type event in which they showcased the dishes they had learned to prepare throughout the class. They scheduled it for late July during Elizabeth’s visit.

They also showcased their food presentation skills. As a graduation event everyone dressed up in their finest. We started with a program with speakers, including one student selected for the part. Each student received a certificate congratulating them for their new knowledge and skills.
They made a special recognition for us with an original painting of a Cape Verdean woman cooking in the traditional style. The husband of the instructor Maria da Luz is an artist and they had commissioned this piece for this occasion. As the sponsors of this class they took very good care of us during each of our visits with this special honor at the end.

Following the formal part was a feast where selected invited guests enjoyed the full range of dishes mastered throughout the course. It was most impressive to see all their skills come together. They had to feel very accomplished.

A cooking class that turned into a life changing experience for 24 adult students working to learn basic literacy, two teachers who had dreamed of creating just such an experience, and two humanitarian missionaries who felt inspired to help make this possible and will never forget it.

Anatomy of a Water Project

A nice photo Elizabeth took while visiting us in July

Donkey's carry water too, but in a tire bladder

Anyone who knows anything about LDS Humanitarian Services has at least heard of water projects. Sometimes called clean water projects, these take various shapes and colors, but the bottom line is always providing needy families and communities with a clean, reliable supply of water.

For a village in Africa, a water project often involves building a well, installing a pump, and setting up a program of maintenance with the village water council.

In some countries with remote villages, the water project might involve laying pipe, installing pumps, and building storage tanks to establish a water supply to the village.

In yet other communities that have an existing water distribution system, the project takes on the flavor of helping those too poor to pay the cost of a connection a way to afford a water connection anyway. Cape Verde falls into this last category.

Getting water is a community event in Salamansa where everyone is in the same dry boat (photo credits to Elizabeth)

In all cases having clean water readily available frees people from the often time consuming, daily routine of getting water from some source, possibly of questionable quality. Water is life, it is sanitation and health, it is essential. Having a faucet in every home has become almost a mantra for politicians in Cape Verde, and no doubt other countries.

Most of us from developed countries never think twice about turning on one of the many faucets in our home and enjoying a plentiful supply of clean, drinkable water. We freely spray it on large landscapes, then wash our cars, our dogs, and our sidewalks with it.


But for many others in our 21st century world, having water in their home just to drink, do basic cleaning, bathing, and maybe flushing or emptying a toilet, is a dream or a daily nightmare.


We have written in the past about our water project for our own island of São Vicente. We are pleased to finally be able to report that close to 100 families now have running water. By the time we are done, hopefully in less than a year from now, close to 600 homes will be enjoying daily water from a faucet in their home, at much better prices than they pay now to haul it home in buckets on their heads.

Signing São Vicente project contract

As we have pointed out, the São Vicente project was created by Elder and Sister Goff starting almost two years ago. That gives you some sense for the timescale and a little of the challenge of setting up such projects.
As we have also pointed out, we are in the process of creating our own water project from the ground up on the island of Fogo. Water projects are one of the five types of major humanitarian initiatives promoted by LDS Humanitarian Services, sometimes referred to as LDS Charities.

In this posting we provide an anatomical guide to water projects to help you appreciate and maybe enjoy with us a little of the experience of developing a new water project. Water projects represent probably the largest humanitarian effort of our mission.
    

For a successful water project you need:

• a source of clean water
  
• a way to move it to where water is needed
  
• someone to identify who needs help getting water
  
• a plan to help the recipient help themselves
  
• a supply of pipes and fittings to make the final connection
  
• contractors to do the work the recipient can’t do
  
• LDS Charities to pay the contractors, and
  
• donors who support what LDS Charities is doing

There are some important helps for water projects which are essential to a successful project. They are:

• Water project manager in Salt Lake City who oversees these projects globally
  
• Short-term specialists who come and work side by side with missionary couples to help develop their project, in our case Elder and Sister (Tom and Jill) Blotter from Smithfield Utah.
  
• Area Welfare Specialists and Welfare Manager who work with the missionary couple and Area Presidency to support and approve the project

The Mighty Foursome – with our Water Project Specialists – Tom and Jill

So lets look at the makeup of this water project for Fogo.
Fogo is a volcano. It has the right geology to funnel fresh rain water from the rainy season into deep springs that provide ample water from wells for the needs of the island. In this picture taken next to a couple of the wells we are looking down 200 meters to the ocean where natural springs continually flow into the ocean changing the color of the ocean water due to sweet water growth. Their wells tap into these flows.

Wells are drilled into these underground flows then pumped up to where the water is needed in towns and villages, generally in steps of 200 meters. Here is a pumping station where the outflow of several wells are combined.

On the left is a well housing. On the right are the pumps.

The flow empties into a manmade storage reservoir up the mountain. If needed, another pumping station moves it up another 200 meters to a second reservoir. Homes and other customers who sit below these reservoirs receive their water by gravity flow from the reservoir. Larger regional reservoirs serve the larger population centers and provide feed to other reservoirs.




The highest reservoirs will be over 1000 meters above sea level. The water utility company, Aguabrava, is in the process of building he basic water system to pump water into the higher zones around the island. With the growth in the water system they are adding up to 15 new wells around the island to make sure there is enough water for everyone. Most of the people we will help live in these higher zones that up to now have not had a water network.

Partners

As with all our projects, selecting the right partners is crucial. Our partners know the territory and have the skills to deliver the service. Often they will know who the needy people are. If not, we might go to another partner for that knowledge.

Meeting with two of our partners – Aguabrava and the County of Santa Catarina

With water projects, we look to the local government to identify those with the greatest needs. That is part of their job, to know their constituents. For the technical knowledge of water systems, proper piping and connections, and providing reliable service to customers, we look to the water utility. For Fogo it is Aguabrava (Wild Water).

Some customers may question the reliable service capability of their utility, but the utility can always point to factors beyond their control to explain water outages, that can be frequent.

For our Fogo project our principle partner for the whole project is Aguabrava, the water utility. This “company” is owned by the four local government entities that it serves, but was created to be financially and operationally independent of them. We have worked closely with the director, who has been very open and extremely helpful. He has helped us develop the basic financing formula that we have taken to the three county governments. We are impressed with and trust the leaders of Aguabrava.

A group photo with both our partners in Mosteiros, the County Government rep next to Janet, and the two blue shirts on the right from the Mosteiros Aguabrava office

Our government partners are the three local “county” governments that cover the island of Fogo. (The fourth county is on the nearby island of Brava where better than 90% of the homes already have water connected.) They are Santa Catarina, Mosteiros, and São Filipe. The needs, geography, and state of water supply is different within each, so the project will look somewhat different from one county to the next.

Hillside homes in Mosteiros without water

The Contract

All our major projects require a contract between the Church (or LDS Charities, the Humanitarian Services arm of the Church) and our partners. The contract clearly defines the common objectives of the partners in the project, lays out the responsibilities of each partner, establishes payment schedules and project schedules, and covers all liability and other issues that lawyers worry about.

Getting the contract drafted, reviewed at a couple of levels, translated, reviewed with local legal council, presented to the partners for their review, revised, and finalized is critical to the start time for the project. For our project in São Vicente this took three to four months. We hope to get a jump start by building off what we did in São Vicente and apply lessons learned.

Paying for it

You might think this is our job, and yes, we are the primary financer of the project, but we look for ways to share the cost and get financial participation from the partners and the beneficiaries. As a result of this cost sharing, we will pay about half the total cost.

For our Fogo project, the beneficiary will pay only half the normal contract price. This value is not insignificant for a poor family of subsistence farmers, but Aquabrava allows them to spread it over 5 years which makes it quite doable.

By cutting the cost in half for the beneficiary, Aguabrava is participating in the cost. The county governments have also agreed to contribute a percentage of the remainder. The Church is contributing the largest share, but the other shares are each significant and keeps our cost per beneficiary in an acceptable range.

The Beneficiaries

This family now has water in their home thanks to donors throughout the world. The young man on the far right is Elton, our project site monitor.

The primary purpose of a water project is to help the needy get water. We help them help themselves to water to improve their health, quality of life, and allow time for more productive activities, including improved family life. In this project we also contribute to establishing an improved water infrastructure for the whole community.

The beneficiaries are not necessarily the minority in some of these communities. The community may be one of largely subsistence farming. These farmers work hard but have limited cash to pay for extras such as a water connection.

These three water carriers will be freed from this daily task to pursue other opportunities in their lives

In other areas of Fogo the beneficiaries are distinctly poorer than their neighbors. They may not have electricity nor water nor a bathroom. Getting water will be a big step towards other improvements needed.

Our Fogo water project will provide nearly 1000 poor residents an opportunity to bring water into their homes to a basic faucet. Around two dozen of these beneficiaries will be kindergarten or elementary schools that currently have no tie into the public water system. The school districts are among the poorest members of the community.

Doing the Work

The beneficiaries will help pay for the project, as pointed out above, but will also help do the work of the project. Much of the labor needed is to dig trenches from the water network to the beneficiary’s dwelling. Most beneficiaries can do this work as part of their contribution. All the specialized labor, laying and connecting the pipes, will be done by or under the supervision of Aguabrava.

Many of the opportunities to connect people up with water on Fogo is made possible by recent or yet to be built extensions to their water grid. All three counties have significant areas that don’t yet have water piped into their neighborhood. You may recall that in most areas the work requires more than just laying pipe. They also need to put in pumping stations and enclosed reservoirs that gravity feed to these additional neighborhoods.

The Village Association is building this water storage reservoir to serve the home right below it. They are a group of beneficiaries that will also do the work of trenching for the connections to their homes and the homes of those unable to do this type of work.

This work is planned and developed by Aguabrava, paid for in many instances by countries that provide foreign aid to Cape Verde, and built largely with labor provided by neighborhood associations. Our project will not build the basic water grid, only connect needy families to the existing or newly expanded grid financed by others.

Hygiene Training

We use the term hygiene training to capture a whole set of messages and awareness trainings we offer to beneficiaries of the project. This “training” is done by women trainers we hire from the local Church units. We help them develop the content for presentation along with handouts and visual aids. Then they meet the beneficiaries, set up group sessions, and lead an interactive discussion to cover the materials.



The content of the awareness training does include some talk about hygiene, protecting the water supply in the home, and general sanitation. It also addresses the concerns of our partners for saving water, being responsible for water used, paying your bills, and living safety with water.

When the water is hooked up and flowing, the trainers also present the family with one or more hygiene kits to encourage usage of the water for better personal hygiene. These kits contain towels, soap, combs, toothbrushes and toothpaste for up to four people. For larger families we will provide additional kits. The beneficiaries are always very grateful for this extra gift from Church members.


Our trainers also represent the Church and put a face on the Church as one of the principals of the project. We are not concerned about getting credit as much as we want our friends to know that we are here and why we do what we do.

Closing the Project

Major projects such as a water project can create a lot of good will for the Church and by the Church. We use opening or closing ceremonies to bring the partners and beneficiaries together to celebrate the progress these projects represent.

For water projects, the closing ceremony signals the end of the work and the beginning of the benefits. For our projects, the benefits come much sooner for the first recipients as the work is done in phases and the beneficiaries of the first phase will be months ahead of those at the end.

This is more of an opening ceremony for our São Vicente project, but it reflected the spirit of cooperation to serve the needy we want to close with

Still we can all celebrate together the fruits of our partnership and common desire to help the less fortunate enjoy the blessing of water in their own tap.

Janet and I have yet to participate in a Closing Ceremony. Chances are we will not be able to participate in one for our Fogo project, but the next couple will.

Have a big drink of water and think of the simple blessing it represents.

Weddings – Caboverdean style

Weddings are wonderful events where a new family is created! We were very pleased to receive a wedding invitation to the marriage of Ducha and Antonio on May 26, 2012. Ducha is a convert of just over 2 years. She is in her second year of university studies in social work. The only other member of the church in her family is her next younger brother. Antonio comes from a member family, all active. He is the oldest of the 3 Cruz brothers, all returned missionaries. He was recently called as Branch president of our sister branch, Mindelo Ramo 3.

Note: this is Ducha's "real" name. Most people have a name from birth and than another nick name that they go by. Sometimes we have no idea what their name on the church records are.

So, what is a wedding like in Cape Verde? We also asked that question and the event was a fun way to learn!!

The invitation said the wedding would be at the Registo Civil in the Palácio da Justiça at 4:00 p.m.  Not knowing the wedding customs, we decided to be on time!! We knew we were in the right place when there were groups of people, very dressed up, waiting outside.  Not much after 4:00, a decorated car drove up and Ducha emerged with others of the family. We didn’t see Antonio.
Everyone went in and the first set of pictures were taken.







Ducha and her father in the foyer of the Palácio da Justiça.

She is a beautiful bride, não é??

 A special room had been set up for weddings. It was very simple – about 50 chairs in rows, a table, and a picture of a rose and 2 golden rings on the wall. Everyone came in to take a seat and Ducha and Antonio (he must have already been there) came in and sat down, front and center.



The back of the room. You can see several of our young adults and two sister missionaries – all here to enjoy the event  and support their friends.

Picture taking was the order of the day.

 


Ducha and Antonio are waiting patiently for the justice to enter to begin the ceremony.












We were impressed that, as the justice read the various ordinances relating to marriage, he specifically said that marriage in Cape Verde is between 2 persons of different genders.

After a simple ceremony and ring exchange, Antonio signs the certificate. Ducha will also and then the 4 witnesses.

The newly married couple!

Exiting the Palácio da Justiça in a rain of rice!

The couple in the bridal convertible, decorated and ready to go.

The party is ready to begin. All the wedding guests get in their taxis and off we go in a long line. I guess there were about 10-12 taxies with the bridal convertible in the middle. The lead taxi took off and all followed. First, to the main plaza and circled around. And, by the way, every taxi is honking their horn!! Our taxi driver was particularly good!

Then we were led to the home of the bride. The honking taxis going through this section of town brought out the residents, wondering who in their area got married. It was quite a parade

Our companions in the taxi and ready to honk and roll! No reason not to have the taxi full! You paid the same amount.






After circling through the bride’s home area, we went back through town to the groom’s house where the party would be. It was a small home and the 50-60 people (at least) overfilled it.

The line to enter the house. We weren't sure how everyone was going to get inside, but they did!

As we entered the door, the first room was decorated and had a beautiful wedding cake on a table with the newly wedded couple standing behind it. Everyone that wanted to could get next to them for a picture. Of course we had to as well!!




A message of congratulations!
“Happiness to the betrothed”

The wedding cake. It was beautifully done and made to order for the couple.

The was hardly room to move with all the people that were there.



Notice the stairs on the left side of the picture. They led to the……


Roof top with a lot more room. There was a DJ playing traditional Cape Verdean music and a few couples dancing. And, best of all, with a nice cool breeze blowing, it was very pleasant on top.

We stayed for a while to visit with various people. But, it was time to go and we left the party in full swing.

On our way home, going down the hill, we looked back up to the home. You could see and hear the party going! It is the house on the top level on the far left (with all the people on the roof).

 
We pray that Ducha and Antonio will have great joy in their lives. They have a goal to go to the temple, maybe even this year, so their marriage can be an eternal one. We are very happy for them!