It's a Small World After All

Friday night I went to a charity auction benefiting W.E.I. – a group that empowers women in third world countries like Bolivia and Kenya. It’s a pretty interesting model; they’re big on fiscal responsibility. In these places women spend hours a day just fetching water, leaving very little time to tend crops, raise cattle, or work on any other means of raising money. They teach the women to stash a few coins away here and there, then, periodically, they will pool their cash and buy a huge plastic cistern that is subsidized by W.E.I.. The free time they now can use to raise money and send their kids to school. They also are into micro-loans to women’s cooperatives to help get them off the ground. As far as Non-government Organizations (NGO’s) it seems to be a good one. Mrs. Fishpimp, the Peace Corps veteran, who is very critical of development groups, seemed ok with this one.

The really interesting part was that I kept running into people I hadn’t seen in years. First I saw a woman I went to high school with. I never see anyone from high school, which is weird in itself, because the school is right in the middle of town, one would think I’d see more folk, but I don’t. Then we ran into a woman Mrs. F.P. served with in “The Corps”, and her girlfriend – which was also weird, since last time we saw her she was chasing boys not girls. While queued up for the buffet we met a friend from college. Seconds later we bumped into the former Miss Washington who is engaged to an acquaintance of mine; she’s an amazing woman (as most Miss America candidates are), and I was pleased to see we were seated at the same table. When we arrived at the table we found seated there a woman that I met 12 years ago while building houses in Tijuana with the old youth group. On top of all that, my old youth pastor was the evening’s M.C.!

The most ironic thing about seeing all these people is that this was Mrs. Fishpimp’s event! She was the one invited, not me, and I didn’t even want to go! HA!

In other news: While packing up the house we emptied all the change jars into a box and took them to our local CoinStar machine. It turns out we were sitting on $138 and change. Mrs. F.P. asked what we should to with this unexpected windfall, I told her to buy me something cool for my upcoming birthday.