Update from Grace at Life in Africa

Cor here... in St. John's, Newfoundland, visiting friends Charlotte Reid, Carolyn Staple, and Ryan Davis. Charlotte has a clothing design studio ( ) at the back of Living Planet ( ) silk screen print shop. I've spent most of the past week in the studio making luxury hammocks on her industrial sewing machine and printing Action Hero Network labels for hammocks. The logo I created is pictured above. I silk screened the labels myself, which is something I've been wanting to learn a long time. Dave, who owns Living Planet, traded the labels for a hammock. He said, "I love trades!" ...works for me.

Last Saturday, I sold hammocks at the farmer's market, and will be there again this week. Friday at noon I'll be interviewed on CBC radio to talk about the project and direct people to the farmers market. NTV, Newfoundland Television, will meet me at the market for an on-camera interview.

Today, I meet with Nicky and Stephan at Hempware to settle a deal to retail hammocks in their store.

Below is an email I received this morning from Grace at Life in Africa in Kampala, Uganda, the artist collective we are supporting that will soon be making hammocks to sell and give to orphans.

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I am so sorry that i could not get back to you immediately. It's so hard to deal with somethings, because I have just received money for the same this week from Evvy and yesterday we bought the materials, and the total amount was $ 352, which I think is meant for the hammocks and the boy's fees. she also forwarded a bank charge which totaled $148 and am sure that's why the amount is less. I have also confirmed where the boy studies from. He is at Grace primary school in Gulu . I have some person whom I still trust there and will be able to work with. So am intending to send the money for fees for him. I think we shall make less hammocks now that the money has gone down. I am really so sorry that things have been very slow on our side but hope to make up for that. I am going to try and contact a lady who has come from Canada and is here if she will be able to bring back the hammocks. We shall try and make at least 15 of them.

I also received $1000 from Evvy for the beads and we were waiting from you to know if the money was for the beads that you took from the gallery or the ones sent directly by Norman which directly belongs to the ladies, I still have this money with me and will need a confirmation from you before i take any steps. So please let me know.

Corry am so excited that at long last work will begin. I shall get the pictures up immediately we begin the sewing.

Thanks and lots of love from,

Grace

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Grace.... that's great to hear that you are ready. When I was in Kampala, I purchaced a roll of fabric for $90, which made 20 hammocks. These were child-size hammocks, but you should be able to make 15 hammocks per roll of fabric. $350 could make 45 hammocks, which includes thread and needles. I'll add the ropes here.

As for the bead money, I don't have anything to do with the beads Norman took. The $1000 is for the beads I took, and I'll send more when I sell the rest. Contact Norman and ask him about what he owes.

I'll email Ben Koot and work on shipping the hammocks here.

I just printed a bunch of labels for the hammocks, with the action hero network logo. I'm also setting up stores here to sell them.

Perfect... keep me posted!

Great work.

-Cor

We are in busy-ness!!!

I had a great summer festival tour, and lately, Mr. Funbags has been selling hammocks on the boardwalk at home in Saint John when cruise ships are in harbor. Yesterday, Queen Mary, one of the largest ships in the world came to visit. I didn't sell any hammocks, but one of the tourists I met, Joe, works for CVS Pharmacy and donates drugs to those in need all over the world. He gave me his contact info to talk more about sending meds to Uganda and Mexico.

Sterling Rope company donated a pallet of webbing for the project, which could be worth as much as $30,000 and tonight I got this email from Grace at Life in Africa in Uganda.... so we are in busy-ness!!!



Hi Cory,

Hope you are still doing well. I am sure now we are ready to go on from there..

We have been discussing with Evvy and Christina the possibility of doing the hammocks here in Kampala since for now it's Kampala who is the custody of everything from Gulu including the sewing machines. We have hope that if you do agree with our idea , then we shall bring Santa down to Kampala to help the ladies here get started. Our main concern though is how to get the hammocks to you when they are ready, because my fear is that we may not get somebody to take them back and we may get stuck with them. I was of the opinion that if we could get some provision for shipping them, then this would be more reliable, this is just an idea, you possibly may be having something different.

Thanks Cory so much for your continuous assistance towards our cause.Hope we shall continue to work together for the betterment of more people's lives.

I am working on the info about the boy you are sponsoring, and I will be in Gulu hopefully next week and get you all the details.

Thanks Cory,
Grace

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from Ben Koot:

Hi Cory,

As to the excess baggage & cargo space idea, if we come up with a clear picture we can contact my friend Thomas Steinmetz.at http://www.eturbonews.com/ and explain your ideas. thomas@etn.travel eTurbonews http://eturbopr.com/about/ has close ties with development initiatives, UN and others and has a readership of over 500.000 travel trade professionals and journalists. All we need to do is draft one good press release and publish it on this network which should basically solve the distribution issue.

Can we work on that together? You know the local conditions and you have a clear picture. I have a vision to set up a distribution platform for more than just hammocks (the VT box Norman told you about. This has the potential to be turned into a real valuable distribution concept


Cheers
Ben Koot