Looking at Daniel’s wood stove prototypes
Today, I started out with a little exercise on my own when I took a walk to Gunnel Jönsson’s solar cell charger to get my computer to work. I left it there to become fully charged. We had breakfast as usual at 7:30 a.m. with tea – coffee and a baguette. Today, all of us participated in Apg 29’s morning prayer. It began with a chorus in Swedish, “I come as I am, have nothing to hide,” then there was a short reflection by the leader from Congo, interpreted by Bertil Åhman and then a chorus in French. Then the young people stood up in two lines facing each other, they took each other’s hands and prayed for eachother. A good way to start the day.
After prayer, we got the opportunity to talk about the activities of MSG, how we started with Samuel in Matadi and the Youth House, how we educate entrepreneurs, 40 people have been trained, 30 on their way, five trainers in line to get their training, two from Brazzaville. Our three tools: Training, business loans and follow-ups. Our three principles: Openness, transparency and results. We have 30 paragraphs where we declare our ideas and experiences: There are no shortcuts to success, it’s just hard work that applies. It is only the Congolese who can lift themselves and their country. The missionaries along with the Congolese have organized education, health care and built up the church, for all this, material resources for maintenance and development is needed. We believe that entrepreneurs in Congo with their entrepreneurship and other abilities can create a solid sustainablility.
Christoffer, along with 50 children and youths have built a dojo which is a training area for judo, the size of 10×10 m. At the bottom of the dojo is a few cm of sawdust, then a rug of palm leaves and then 15 cm of chaff. Finally everything is covered with a cloth he bought from a local seamstress. They brought the sawdust and chaff to the dojo site on a large carriage pulled by hand about one kilometer one way. They had to make four rounds with the carriage before they had enough. Tomorrow at 4 p.m. the actual training will start.
At 10 a.m. we went to the workshop owner Daniel Bimpe and his wife Annie. She has taken our entrepreneur course and she gave us a report of their projects. They grow corn and manioc and want to develop it. They are also constructing a building for processing the crops. Daniel builds his machines himself, he is a talented innovator. We also talked wood stoves and he showed some prototypes that he has made.
At 1 pm Gunnel Jönsson invited us for dinner at her house. We had vegetarian meatballs, rice and manioc and bananas for dessert. We had a nice time with good fellowship and tasty food.
We had some individual consultations in the afternoon and during our meetings four young people from Apg 29 came by. They wanted to know more about MSG and one girl who has a financial education wanted to work for us in Kinshasa. It is great that young people are interested, and that they even have skills that we need in MSG.
