Coats

This past week we spent a lot of our time working on our project to donate winter coats for disabled children. The project was approved for 50 children and almost $5,000. However, with the expert help of the charitable organization we are working with for this project we have been able to buy coats for over 100 children with some boots and warm stockings. I could have used a warmer coat and boots while we did the shopping because most of it was done at the outdoor central bazaar in -8 F weather. The process of negotiating for a good price was interesting and we, of course, only understood bit and pieces of it since it was done in a mixture of Russian and Kazakh but since 60% or more of communication is facial and body language we got some good chuckles out of it. Here are some of the pictures from our experience.

Viviane and Alina ,who translated for us, modeling some coats.

Kamka and her husband, Ramazon, negotiating prices and the bags of coats from our first stop.

Kamka barganing for coats. This man is an ex-school teacher and so he gave us a good deal and threw in an extra coat as a gift for the children. A picture of the outdoor bazaar. I was amazed at how cheerful the people were who work their 'stores' in all types of weather conditions.

Viviane and Alina in a little 'store' at the bazaar trying to get warm while Kamka bargains for more coats. The second picture is the start of our second day of shopping. We started on Thursday and then went again on Saturday. Meanwhile, phone negotiations took place a a lady who was in Almaty, a city about 600 miles south, went to the bazaar there and bought as many coats as she could afford (18) and brought them back to sell to us.

Everywhere we went the word got out that Americans were buying coats. Vendors came from all parts of the bazaar trying to entice us to buy coats from them.

Back at the outdoor bazaar the second day we bought a big bag of coats form one vendor and the picture shows him throwing in an extra coat for the kids. There were some great pictures to take as we went to other vendors in the outdoor bazaar but it was too cold for the camera and its operator to function!

Next Kamka took us to a building (I was very glad it was indoors) where she knew a vendor that would sell us some boots. The inside of the building is like a maze with little shops of vendors and barely an aisle to walk. We bought some boots and then they gave some extras that may or may not be useful ... but they were free so we took them.

By this time we were all very hungry so we went to a restaurant to eat. It was soooooo good.

We plan to distribute the coats this week. All of the children have been 'pre-approved' by Kamka's organization as they collected the children's measurements and worked with the parents to determine the child's needs.

We are so blessed to be a part of this work!! And it is WORK!