change the truth

There is a lot of excitement in the Change the Truth part of my house these days. (You have to picture this: the CTT office is in my kitchen, the storage room for jewelry, crafts, CDs and t-shirts has become the TV room, the photographs are printed in the digital darkroom and then kept in frames in the basement!) Besides all that, we just received a shipment of forty-five toy balls made by the children. These are toys the kids make because they have few options when it comes to finding something to play with.

They use found plastic bags, wrap them up tightly into a ball, then wrap/weave banana fiber tightly around them. Once the ball is covered in fiber and tied off, usually a little extra fiber is tied onto it like a string. The kids then use the balls for kicking, holding the string in front of them as it moves about. Others have no string; these are used for tossing around with friends.


These balls are little works of art. When Michael (orphanage manager) was in Kansas City, friends of Change the Truth were here in the CTT entertainment section of my house (dining room) and saw a couple of these balls Michael had brought to me as gifts. They thought it would be a great idea to get more. My friend Mary came up with lots of wonderful ideas for packaging them and offering them to folks who’d like to make a donation. She herself is planning to give them to her children and grandchildren with a note explaining how they were made and why. She will then explain that money has been donated in honor of her kids/grandkids so that the lives of orphans in Kajjansi, Uganda may be improved.

Mary feels that the ball itself could serve as a stark reminder to her family that the excess with which most of us Americans live is really something to think about. The ball, in all its beautiful and primitive simplicity, becomes IPOD, X-Box, computer, TV and cell phone all rolled up into one beloved pastime for these children at St. Mary Kevin Orphanage.

So… this brings me to the STORE! Not that the balls have made it to the website storefront yet, but other goodies have. If you have not shopped there yet, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find the beaded paper jewelry made by the teachers and kids at St. Mary Kevin’s. We also have CDs of their angelic voices singing traditional African songs. Oh yes, and Change the Truth t-shirts!

You can go shopping here.

The other exciting news deals with the upcoming trip to Uganda. I can’t fill you in on it yet, but just know that I probably won’t be traveling alone and that a very generous friend of Change the Truth is helping make that happen. I promise to explain all when the details are worked out