Anna’s letter, January 2, 2014 D’KAR, BOTSWANA, or we could say: NOWHERE , BOTSWANA. I’m talking about our children’s village, named D’kar, but it could also be called Nowhere. Because we are in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town, Ghanzi, is thirty kilometers far. Where the Bushmen of the village rarely go.

DUSTY, the village is dusty, the colors are dusty, almost everything of the same brownish color, land, people, houses, vegetation. A brown with shades of green when it rains a little and the bright colors of the clothing of its inhabitants. When I visited it there was also a sweltering heat, I’d say that also the heat was dusty! POOR, in perfect African style, poor but decent, but not dirty, perhaps at times messy, as the African nature, which I always like to say that it is a bit messy. Not those beautiful American landscapes with the underwood all clean and fixed. The African nature and villages are always tangled. STRAW, MUD, RAGS, PAPERS, this are the materials used for the huts, low, tiny, precarious, disarming. It does not seem possible that there are still human beings who live in these conditions. The brick houses are rare. Ivy, one of the women of Cecilia’s woman project, she has built a brick house with the money of the work of sewing and there is even electricity. Dorah has a daughter who has been with us for three years, now is a difficult teenager ! We hope she will be fine. Cecilia told us that Ivy had to give birth to a child, we actually found out he is a boy! WATER, there is water in D’kar, this desolate piece of land in the Kalahari desert has been donated by the Dutch Reform Church (and anyway what could they do there?) and local institutions have led the water. Every day people go to fetch water at the well, thanks to water they can go on. DOGS, skinny, breathing with difficulty, so painful. So helpless, like children. The next time I go I want to bring some food to them. CHILDREN, they are everywhere, so many to think that we could double, triple, the number of children that we host at the center. Emerge from all sides. We went to find some who have attended our school and are now attending elementary school. Cecilia takes care of the children and families even after they have left our school. On her indication we went to Cukury, XAE and two brothers. Cukury has a big problem to a ear, he is almost deaf, he should have surgery, but till now he hasn’t , his relatives are too lazy to take him to hospital, we will have to take care of this. Then we went to Caoka, a mongoloid child who attends elementary school. The grandmother showed us a wool colored blanket she has done with wool donated by Cecilia. The winter is very cold in the Kalahari, you can get to 0 degrees and it is not easy to warm a hut. And then we met Loeto , Hendry and Cuba, they are all fine, but we will continue to make sure that they go to school and are in good health … in the middle of NOWHERE .