twelve....

i have twelve girls on my volleyball team.

we had our first tournament today.

i had to be in olympia at 7:30 this morning...so i got roughly 4 hours of sleep.

we have to be in fife at 7:30 again tomorrow...so i need to go to bed.

i forgot my camera at home today...so here's another picture from last night.

it makes me laugh.

eleven

i should really be in bed right now. i really wanted to be in bed by eleven. i have to by in olympia at 7:30 in the morning for our first vball tournament of the year! i'm sooooo excited! (now if only i could get our rosters to print out on my ghetto-fabulous printer...argh!!)

tonight was a busy, fun-filled night:

first my co-workers and i went out to a fun, and extremely crowded german bar not too far from the office to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the program.

then i hightailed it up to the u-district for a fireside by elder richard g. scott. it was...interesting...

then i booked over to easy street in west seattle to see ian play. this was the first time he's done a show in about a year. "sea.mine" is no more...now he is part of the "black swedes." i miss hearing ian's voice percolating up through the floor of our house! (we discussed it extensively and determined that, yes, things can definitely percolate in an upward direction.) it was good to sit, listen to good, mellow music, and chat...even if only for a bit...

today was definately a 10

today i am cheating because i didn't take a picture. one of the elders in my parents' ward had surgery today, so he is staying at our house. when i got home from work i helped my mom take care of him...i love my mother to death, but let's be honest, she's not the most gentile person. she tends to forget, for example, that a person's nose is connected to their head...and for someone who has just had major surgery on their nose, it is excruciatingly painful to have her tugging and pulling on the velcro of their ice pack while it's still attached to their face (as opposed to sliding it off and then opening it up) or trying to scrape dried blood off their lip (as opposed to getting a warm washcloth).

poor kid.

anyway, today i'm going to post an old photo prompted by a conversation i had at work.

i took this picture two years ago as part of a project when i was working at the international rescue committee (www.theirc.org). these are the feet of a refugee man i got to know...


today i found out that one of the ladies i work for also worked for the irc. she was the country director in cote d'ivoire. we talked refugee camps and resettlement and the crazy folks at the irc...and i am taking her to meet the folks in the seattle office in a few weeks.

she also had a meeting with a really fabulous guy from the unhcr. i had a lovely chat with him and he gave me his card.

i finally feel like my career path is back in focus and it feels dang good!

nine...

854 million people suffer from hunger around the world. they are starving to death.

2 billion more people suffer from malnutrition and vitamin deficiency due to the low nutritional value of the food they do have. their quality of life is severely effected.



one of the things i love most about my job is the fact that i constantly have the opportunity to learn. i am really, really excited for my new position and the opportunities i'll have to learn more about and converse with folks on some really important issues. i already have a "reading file" chuck full of interesting articles and reports that i've accumulated in just the last week.

today i was able to attend a meeting on food aid and food security. it was very interesting. there were players from many different organizations, including the world food program. it brought to mind issues i studied in a sustainable development class my last year at uw.

it's difficult for me to understand why more "big players" (organizations, foundations, ngo's, and above all, governments) don't invest what is needed to really address the issues (yes, that is plural on purpose) of world hunger.

maybe because the solutions are so much more complex than simply dropping crates of food from the sky. if given in the wrong way, at the wrong time, or in the wrong amount, food aid can actually do more harm than good. so, how do we feed the people that are hungry now...while building a sustainable market system?

i think successful solutions have to approach the problem from many angles:

• international in-kind food aid - this is most crucial during or immediately following crises - one important key is that this needs to be the right kind of food, in the right amounts, at the right time - as one example, most food aid comes in the form of corn, wheat, and rice, while cassava is the staple of most households in africa. families will sell the 50 lbs of government wheat they are alloted to purchase 5 lbs of cassava.
  
• local/regional purchase of food aid - this helps to strengthen the regional economy, but there must be government regulation on markets for countries selling food to neighbors in crisis in order to avoid the ballooning of food prices to their own citizens.
  
• market improvement - communities need to be better insulated against crises in the future - this is possibly the most difficult because it must continue after the emotional draw of a crisis has passed.
  

obviously it's a complex problem and no one has found all the answers...but i'm glad there are folks like the ones i work for who are willing to help look for an answer. and i'm glad i get to play a small part in the search.

ocho

eat. your. veggies.