A Fishing Village

Yesterday had an adventure out of town with two folks from YGC (including Andy, YGC's treasurer) and a guy who works for an NGO concerned with rural empowerment. We took about an hour motorcycle ride down south along the coast (which given how slow traffic moves on the narrow roads here, means about 20 miles). We met up with a group of about 6 other NGO activists and then went to this little village right on the beach. Quite beautiful, with a little island right off the coast and a big nonfunctional ship right up on the beach:



Some smaller fishing vessels too:



These folks are quite impoverished - electricity, but no running water and such. So the NGO activists are helping the villagers develop alternate sources of income by making ceramics, weaving, etc., since the money from fishing is limited and not that much. We went up into one of the little wood homes and had a lovely lunch of cucumbers, beans, cabbage, and fresh grilled fish. Then had a meeting with representatives from four villages touching base on the alternative income project. Andy had come as an accounting expert and met with the persons from each of the four villages in charge of accounting - it was very helpful because they were making all kinds of mistakes in their bookkeeping and were getting confused as to how to manage the money allocated for the project.


It was great to see how the GC staff are becoming trusted by other NGOs as a source of knowledge.