Recycling for Hope

I hadn't been in Gulu for more than a week when I asked David, my office mate at the time, where I could take my old water bottles.  I was beginning to feel guilty for all the waste I knew I would accumulate throughout the year since tap and well water is undrinkable.  He looked at me smugly and in a you're-obviously-new-here-and-have-no-clue kind of voice informed me, "There's no recycling center in Gulu."  I was surprised, and to this day, I do not think it was naive of me to be.  Gulu had been terrorized for 20 years.  The town had spent the last four years rebuilding itself almost entirely, and every NGO and development initiative imaginable had been involved.  How had recycling been left out so completely?

I was just sure it hadn't.  So I started asking around and found out about a church that was supposedly making gift cards out of recycled paper.  Well, it was a start.  I began trying to track it down so I could ask if they could use my waste paper.  It turns out, it wasn't a church - but a church's initiative, and it wasn't gift cards, it was sanitary pads.  They gladly accepted the paper I brought, and gave me a full tour.  I watched the women pulping the paper with a huge mortar and pestle, mixing it with papyrus leaves and laying it out to dry in the sun.  I saw them sizing and cutting and stitching and sterilizing.  My mind was blown.  This was so much cooler than anything I had been imagining.

Pads make from recycled paper - amazing!

A couple weeks later I returned, my head swimming with questions about their waste paper needs.  I was able to talk to the director who told me about how in addition to giving the sanitary pads to school girls along with an education program, they take in formerly abducted women, or battered women, or victims of sexual abuse.  They counsel with them, and of course, being church affiliated, teach them the gospel, and finally teach them a livelihood.  She also told me how they wanted to expand their efforts, and how they could use all the waste paper from all of Northern Uganda, but currently were forced to buy nearly all their paper and ship it up from Kampala.  Before I really knew what I was saying, I blurted out, "I am your woman!  I will get you more paper!"  I don't think I walked out of the compound that day, I floated.

The poster a friend made to advertise our concert.

Unfortunately, I left for the Galapagos shortly thereafter, (not that going to the Galapagos is ever truly unfortunate...) and almost immediately upon returning my job went from not-enough-to-do to three-people-should-have-my-job.  A couple months later though, I met Pilgrim Metts.  Pilgrim (and yes, that is his real name, and yes, he has white-man dreads) wound up in Gulu for the summer sort of by accident, and he didn't have anything to do.  I told him he needed to run my recycling project for me.  He agreed, he did.  We worked on it a bit together that summer, and though we weren't able to get nearly as much accomplished as either of us would have liked, (though we did put on a great benefit concert together!) through the meetings, the attempts, and all the discussions I had with people, I came to see just how passionate about this project I really was.  It took everything I had to continue working on the micro-enterprise project I was responsible for, rather than just bucking it altogether and concentrating solely on recycling.

Made entirely from water-bottle bricks! 

A week after Pilgrim left, I randomly found myself in a van full of female expats I'd never met, including a girl carrying an inordinate amount of empty water bottles.  I asked, "Why all the bottles?" and she told me they were building houses out of them.  My eyes lit up and my brain started churning.  I asked her if I could donate my own bottles??  (All the while trying to figure out how in heaven's name I hadn't met this girl before?!)  She answered with an emphatic yes, and said she was always trying to get as many as she could.  About a month later I brought her a large box full of water bottles and talked to her about my latest ideas for my recycling program.  I needed to know, could they handle the capacity of bottles I was prepared to get for them?  She said yes.  Would they be able to pick them up from the collected locations?  She said yes.  So I told her of my current dreams of going home and fundraising for the money to come back in 2012 and do the recycling program full time.  Could they wait four months for this?  She said yes. I don't think I walked out of the compound that day, I floated.

A few days later Elizabeth (water bottle recycling woman) called and said there was a dinner she wanted to invite me to.  There I made two important contacts - first a guy named James who wanted to start a new initiative in his existing NGO using old grocery sacks.  They would be ironed and re-purposed into what looked and felt like patent leather, then sewn into useful things like Kindle cases to be sold here in the US.  He was very interested in my proposed project and even wanted to pay me for the materials I found for him.  Second was a blessed man named Noah who asked me what I needed to get started on my project.  "I need about $3,000 to get the recycling boxes cut - that's the first thing."

Prototype of the boxes Noah agreed to buy. 

"Oh, well, I can give you $3,000."  ......  Seriously? .....  Just like that?  So, that did it in my mind.  If this guy was willing to fork over that much money, that easily, then I would do this project.  I would do everything in my power to make it a reality.  About a week before leaving Gulu I had another man promise me about $2,000 after a five minute conversation.

I came home at Christmastime with a goal to be back in Gulu with an additional $12,000 by mid-February.  A bit of an unrealistic goal, I'm now realizing, but which I blame on saints like Noah and P. Jackson for donating funds so plentifully and willingly.  I've had some rough patches and had to re-examine my goals and aspirations and methods several times, but every time I've come to the same conclusion, I need to make Recycling for Hope a reality.  And I fully believe I will.

I have had wonderful support from so many wonderful people, and I currently have an army of nearly 100 people helping me fund raise and network and get online and on and on.  How does one girl get so lucky?  Together, we will make Recycling for Hope a reality.  Just watch us!

(Visit www.RecyclingForHopeUG.com to learn more and make a donation!)

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