UMATU Centre is buzzing with activity these days. Today, Hedwiga was making bread, Sabina and Witness were churning out colourful kanga and kitenge bags, and Subira, Anna, Theresia and Victoria were doing beadwork. Everybody's been getting lots of practice and we're now getting ready to do some serious marketing of all the beautiful handicrafts.

Haraa Primary School Update

With funds raised in Canada during CPAR's World Health Day Challenge campaign, work is well underway at Haraa Primary School to construct two 30,000 liter rainwater harvesting tanks. The community has gathered local materials -- rocks, gravel and sand -- used in the construction activities, and community members are hard at work digging the pit for the Ventilated Improved Pit (VIP) latrine to be constructed next. We delivered gutters to the school and met three boys carrying water, which is unusual and actually kind of refreshing since girls are normally sent off on this grueling chore. Both teachers and students are looking forward to having water on site.

Still Baking

The women at UMATU are really getting into baking. Today they made bread, buns and a carrot cake. After a bit more practice, they'll be ready to scale up and open their bakery to the Karatu public. Here at CPAR, of course, we've already dived into UMATU's mighty delicious and very filling bread in a big way.

Bread

What a great day! UMATU women (and CPAR staff) learned how to make bread, quite literally from scratch. We started out by visiting the local market to buy wheat grown in nearby Mbulu Mbulu. We visited several stalls before we bought a debe (big bag) of really good looking wheat. Our next stop was the milling shop to get the wheat winnowed (separating the chaff from the grain) and ground into flour. Then we headed back to UMATU's spacious kitchen. After carefully measuring out the ingredients, we got into some serious dough preparation. The result was six beautiful loaves of golden, fragrant -- and healthy -- bread! Nderingo says it's the best bread he's ever tasted. UMATU's bakery is officially launched!