chikumbuso

chikumbuso community, ngombe, zambia

chikumbuso is a project that started january 05 in the zambian township of ngombe. it began with one widow and her seven orphan children and over the past 3 years it has grown to include 30 widows and over 300 school children. the program aims to combat the effects of HIV/aids by building a community for those who have been orphaned by the disease.

bag weaving

chikumbuso is the newest project ive gotten myself involved with. though i wish im actually there in zambia, for now, my involvement is creating an identity for the organization (pro bono). aside from building and maintaining a school in the township, the group has setup a program where the grandmothers create these bags from plastic bags. the goal is to try and have the bags sold through some stores/designers here in the city. my role would be designing the promotional and information materials for them. kinda cool actually. in a way, its a neat design exercise and obviously its a great way of "giving back" to humanity in a 10000 miles away sense.

classroom

chikumbuso means “remembering forever what others have done for you". in a way, it's kinda cool how projects like this pop up out of nowhere (an officemate of mine approached me and asked whether i was interested). it was an easy yes of course, as it's definitely a nice way of expanding ones world without really needing to leave ones world. and particularly a good way of "remembering forever..." in generally-self-centric nyc.

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champagne

in an "others remembering what ive done for them" moment, i got a nice surprise present from the photographer i had worked with a month plus back. she sent over a nice bottle of veuve clicquot champagne. and right now it sits happily next to the bottle of south african wine on my office desk, both waiting for a good reason to be celebrated with.

free arts day

got to volunteer yesterday for free arts. spent the whole morning and early afternoon buddied up with isaiah (a 7-year old african american kid) working on art projects. at first, he was reluctant to spend the day at the event but eventually he warmed up and enjoyed making a robot out of scraps of this and that. we ended up playing checkers as well on this board he made out of box carton and bottle caps. cool stuff.

tax time

apart from my capoeira class, today was spent mostly with numbers as i worked on my taxes. its probably that one time during the year when i actually am able to use my secret math skills. managed to finish my federal and state tax forms and looking forward to the refund ill be getting. although realistically speaking, ive probably spent that amount already. oh well.