1. Because there is so much more poverty and in the cities at least, everyone is closer to each other, the rich make a much more obvious effort to separate themselves from the poor.
2. People are still generally happy and polite even though they don't have nearly as much, at least in the village. People are also more relaxed, and even though they work very hard, there seems to be a much slower pace of life. They don't have a lot of the things people in America seem to think are necessary to have fun, but they still can have a lot of fun, for example the soccer game I played with the young people from the village and our drivers was so much fun.
3. All of the aid we give them is necessary for a lot of the people, but sometimes it seems a bit patronizing. They are poor because they don't have as much to work with and not as much has already been done for them, but they still do good things economically, and its good that they are proud of what they have. If things weren't so bad to begin with they would probably be in a very different situation right now.
About the projects I've been involved in, a lot of the time here has been spent visiting the people here and seeing the area, but I have been testing their soil because often the fields don't grow enough to feed everybody. We have also been looking into ways to improve the solar power they have because there is no electricity in the village other than that. And, we are going to distribute a large amount of food and clothing to the families on Christmas.
For the soil, I brought a simple testing kit from the US that uses small chambers and chemical powder mixed with a soil sample and water to test the PH of the soil as well as nitrogen, phosphate, and potash levels. I found that the PH was right where it should be for the crops they grow, and both the nitrogen and potash levels were either sufficient or in surplus, but there was a deficiency in phosphate, so moving forward we're going to see if we can better fertilize the soil. I think the main problem is simply moisture though. The soil is very dry.
There are only just now power lines being put up in the village, but even when these become operational it will be difficult for most people to pay for power. The pastor has a small solar cell on his roof that charges a car battery which he uses to power a lightbulb, the TV (I'm guessing that thing was a TV and it works), and to charge his cellphone. Apparently the cell phone charging wasn't working very well, so we were wondering if the solar panel was failing or if he needed a different adapter.
After some research and seeing what the set up was like, we decided the problem is probably the cell phone because the solar panel was giving out quite a bit of power and seemed to be working fine for everything else. I'm very interested in the whole solar power thing and I want to expand upon the idea because its being used so effectively in Kenya, but at the moment there doesn't seem to be a huge need so we'll just have to wait and see what we can do.
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