Shouting Silent

I just watched this movie called Shouting Silent. It was about young girls who lost their mother, or parents to AIDS. It was really interesting, it focused on the stigma that many of them had, and why life was so hard for them when their mothers were gone. There was one girl whos step father started to rape her when her mother died, so she ran away and was living on her own, she didnt have a house, she just slept outside, and she only ate when people gave her food. There was another girl who was 17, and had to take care of her 7 brothers and sisters, and her own 4 year old son. First off that means that she had her son at 13, and she was taking care of all these children all by herself! it was amazing, 6 of the kids were going to school, off their grandmothers pention. but the second oldest daughter wasnt becasue there wasnt enough money. So she wondered around all day, and was sleeping around with her boyfriend who was in his twenties ( she was like 14)and her boyfriend had multiple other girlfriends. But becuase her mom had died when she was so young, she was never told about condoms, and her mom wasnt there to make sure she was doing everything right. And what made it even worse for her was that she knew she would never go anywher in life, because she could go to school and get educated. Its hard to hear their stories, and understand what it would be like to be in thier shoes.

Voluntown Schools

On Thursday i went to Voluntown to speak to all the grades about Chikumbuso. At their school they are making cousin bowls out of clay, in their art classes and auctioning off one of them at a silent auction. All the money is going to Chikumbuso, and the night of they are going to make nishma to put everyones bowl, so everyone can taste it, and the students are going to play African music, and dance to it. It sounds like it will be a fun night. I think it is happening in April? I'm not really sure. At the school, i talked to all the classes ranging from first graders, all the way to eighth graders. I told them about the project, and what our school does for fundraisers. It was really cool because i asked some of the student what they thought they could do in their school to fund raise for Chikumbuso and their ideas were so funny. A little girl was like, we can buy plastic spoons and write Chikumbuso on it and send it to them. Another kid said we could buy hats and write messages on them to our friends and sell them, and give all the money to Chikumbuso. They had the craziest ideas, it was so funny, but i think they are going to do good things with this project. the kids seemed really interested.