Today we had an open forum for people from the community to come and see the site and discuss ideas for development. The boat brought about 20 people from Otuocha in the morning. After a tour of the fish farm and brick factory, which are the first of the two seed projects that are underway, we broke up into groups to discuss various topics.
As part of the health group, we discussed our visions for the overall health of the future Anam City and asked people what they believed were the most pressing health concerns and their hopes for the future health centre. I was grateful to have such a strong group of presenters and moderators with me: Nuzrat, Nkiru, Fidelis, and Michael. They each explained their understandings and contributions and translated between Igbo and English. I was very inspired and took some wonderful video clips that hopefully I will be able to post when I return. After rotating through the three different groups, we all gathered to plant an Iroko tree and take group photos. Then, it was lunch time. Everyone returned to the Chife estate where we drank malta, ate jollof rice and fried chicken, and generally mingled. Afterwards, we watched a video and then broke into small groups to again focus on various activities. In the health group, we acted out the most important features of going to a clinic: 'what does it look like to get loving, personal care from a practitioner?' It was funny to see people act like they had malaria, and they did a convincing job that mimicked almost exact presentations we had seen earlier.
Overall, the event went well and it was really inspiring to get such great input from the community.
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