Mali 17

Today was one of the days when the rubber hits the road.

After weeks of preparation, today was the first distribution that we conducted of household items to displaced people. Keeping it deliberately small, so that we could iron out bugs in our registration and distribution systems, we assisted 40 families today. It was a good thing, as first thing this morning we discovered that our truck was indisposed... and we were moving things in a small van instead. For those in Adelaide, it's like Christmas Cheer, except that we have to buy every item, move it across town (twice in some cases), find where the beneficiaries are now staying (most of them are with host families), register them and then do the handouts - and all through multiple tranlaters (the tribal languages from the north are different to those here in the south).

Over the next two weeks we hope to assist around 275 families in this way (I should point out that the family sizes here are huge - we have three families listed with over 40 in the family!!). They will receive blankets (believe it or not), mats, cups, cutlery, a cooking pot, a serving pot and ladle, mosquito nets, buckets, jerry cans, water purification tablets and the like. We also provide a small amount of cash to assist with transporting goods.

The sad thing is that we are limited by time and budget. So that these distributions, by a number of NGOs, are coordinated, we all receieve an allocation of names from IOM to assist. When we do, we are able to see their whole database. In Bamako alone, at the moment, over 77000 internally displaced people are registered, in 9000+ family units.

Our 275 families are but a small drop in a very large ocean. But it makes a difference to that 275 and we pray for the other groups that are also assisting so that between us we make a big difference.