Tomo's Business Card- Animal Series 3

This is the Hedgehog which I played with when I was in Abeche, Chad.

I found it at the yard.

I really like this animal. I know I can find them in Malawi but I have not seen them yet.

Understand visibly

Look at this picture. This is a package used for my prescription drug. As the illustration tells you, anybody can understand the directions for this medication like 4 times a day and 2 pills every time.

I bought another prescription drug and the package showed me the same idea. No words instruction but a simple illustration.

Now I am involved to make a teaching materials for HIV positive mothers. We want to teach them how to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child. It could be about 15 pages flip chart.

I drew a draft images and showed them to my boss (Jim). He was not happy ........because I put some numbers to indicate feeding time like 6 am, 10 am, noon.....etc. He is afraid that someone may not understand the concept of the clock.

He is right!

Here I made my image illustration. I am going to use this for one of the baby's feeding schedule pages.

Actually I really disappointed when he rejected my first draft but instead he gave me this idea like above. I drew his idea from scratch by my illustrator. Ended up turned out beautifully!

Thank you Boss!

49 years ago

I've found an interesting thing.

I was talking about my family.

I knew that my uncle, my mother's younger brother was an Olympic Ice Hockey player.

I knew it but nobody remember what year's Olympic and where it was. (My uncle passed away.)

I googled!

Oh, my god! I found his name on the web. <1960 Squaw Valley Winter Games > He was 24 years old, 166 cm 72 kg. That Olympic took place at California!

Wait! 1960, Jim and his family went to see this Olympic. They stayed at grandpa's lodge at Lake Tahoe.

Jim's dad was a semi- pro ice hockey player from Canada. I am sure he wanted to watch Canadian Ice Hockey games! Canada beat Japan.....(Jim says they could not get the tickets to see the game.)

Wait! Jim's father had a 8 mm video and he taped that winter Olympic. Jim copied that film onto DVD.

We watched that DVD again. Yeah! He taped ice skating and skiing scenes but no indoor sports.

I can see baby Jim, 3.5 years old with his family in this video. They were in the Olympic stadium.

Wow! My uncle and Jim's family were in a same place 49 years ago.

By the way, that time I was 2 months old baby in Tokyo.

The photo : 1960 Canada vs Japan

Are you hungry?

I could not make up my mind if I upload this photos on my blog.......

This is kind of creepy........

But I dare to share with you.

I took these photos from inside of our vehicle. When we pulled over the car and opened the window, boys who holding the mice sticks run up to us.

They just wanted to sell these dried mice. By the way, these are eatables!

There were asking money desparately, "Give me money! give me money!" I almost panicked because they pushed the sticks toward me.

"OK, OK! I pay you but I don't need the sticks." I just wanted to take picture. I could not focus my camera. That's OK!

I took several shots but I forgot to ask them how much one stick was. We got out of there quickly!

I showed these picture to my new housekeeper. She says her family don't eat this mice because they have enough food to eat.

(Glad to hear that!)

Some Malawian eat these mice.

I know Japanese eat jellyfish, seaweed, sea cucumber.......though.

Orphans

I had been lacked energy for a long time but now I am back! I could say that because I came through 4 nights 5 days business trip with Jim. We visited 12 orphanages around Blantyre area and dropped off tons of Vita Meal packages.

It is not easy to determine who are the most needy vulnerable people to get vita meal and how we could bring it to them continuously. So, this trip is a kind of assessment for a new distribution system. We rent a 10 ton truck with a driver and an assistant and Jim and I drove our Land Rover.

We saw the reality of orphanages. This country's government does not help orphanages at all because of too much cost. The orphanages are assisted by the oversees charities. Some of them are big which called "village" and they have homes, preschools, primary schools, secondary schools, clinics, farms, etc. etc. in the village. ( not all of them) Loving staffs taking care of children were highly impressive for me. The other hand, they told us several heartrending stories happened to vulnerable kids. The boy surrounded by a crowd of children, about 2 years old, was found crying near an airport 2 days ago. The police took him to this village home. He was not crying any more but still could not talk.

The other baby girl sleeping in a baby bed had rope marks on her neck. It told us the brutal days she got before.

One of the twin sisters I saw her this February, she was sitting on the grass. 　She was being well taken care of by the loving staffs and looked healthy. She went back to her own mother and was neglected. She could not get enough nutrition and died recently. The twin sister was taken back to the home again. (this mother had mental problem .......)

The Madonna’s adoption news is still fresh in our mind. Malawi Court rejected her offer in March but ended up they accepted. (It was just 10 days ago!) We visited the orphanage that took care of the girl. The girl? She had already flown to London by the Madonna's jet.

There are 405,000 kids who lost both parents, plus 600,000 lost one parent by AIDS. About 50 orphanages in this country. We visited just 12 orphanages and saw less than 1,000 orphans.

It means the orphans who are living in these facilities are only a few % and all others are living in villages or towns.

Here are the pictures.

1. The kids living in one of the orphanages.
2. Teenage boys who used be street kids, living in the facility helped unloading vita meals from the truck.
3. The boy left at near an airport 2 days ago. The police still looking for his family.