The video of Northern Kenya that I was talking about is now out. It is so exciting to see the first batch of video I took be molded into a short story about the village of Larachi in Northern Kenya. I will be back in Northern Kenya in a few weeks and am excited to be able to share more stories with you then. Anyway… check the video out HERE.
I have signed up to participate in the Clean Water Blogivation campaign. If my blog receives the most votes, I will win an opportunity to join Dr. Greg Allgood on a clean water expedition to Africa and a $15,000 donation to my favorite charity (Blood:Water Mission) tackling water issues.
Please vote - it just takes 10 seconds, but it is a 2 STEP PROCESS:
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When I ten years old, I lost 10 pounds in 10 days because I was incapable of keeping fluids in, compliments of giardia, a diarrheal disease. When I learned to camp on the Sinai, my family planned and packed every drop of water we would use.
I have long chosen to fight for water. I choose to do so because as a child it was a reality and I believed a place where I could make a difference. My passion first took me through three degrees and field academic research in Haiti and West Africa, all focused on water. I began to work alongside Africans – serving as a consultant and a friend rather than a leader or boss – something I continue to strive to do.
Now I fight for water through my work with Blood:Water Mission where I am the Africa Field Manager. We have amazing partners in Sub-Saharan Africa who address the water crisis through sustainable community development. I help them build out their programs, challenging them towards excellence in community development through many long conversations and field visits. I capture their stories through words, photos, and video for our fundraisers and advocates who give generously of their time, effort, and money to make it all possible.
If someone told you that nearly a billion people lack access to safe water, would you understand that number? I would not. The most recent number from the World Health Organization is actually 900 million people. I could try to help you understand what 900 million is, but it is too big and abstract. What is not too big and abstract is one person’s story. One story – through words or photo or video – and the number is real. This is what I do; the number becomes real and suddenly both you and I have a reason to fight.
This website is where I share my journey through life. It is the meeting place of where I fight for water, fight to make the numbers become people, and where I simply live. It is a journey that I hope you find enough value in to follow from time to time. I have not filled this post with stats and stories and photos. I do not need to because this whole blog is filled with them – in the context of people’s stories.
Between now and November I will be spending 8 weeks in Africa blogging all along the way. I invite you to join that journey. You will learn more along the way and, I hope, the numbers will become real through story.
Please vote for me so that I can give $15,000 to Blood:Water Mission’s water work in Africa. Why them you ask? Because they choose to walk alongside African partners and to dignify individuals through sharing stories of hope rather than despair. Because, through their African partners, people’s water situation is being changed every day – one person, one story at a time.
One of the things that I do as I travel is gather stories – through words, photos, and video – to be used in campaigns and project updates. Remember when I was in Zambia, Uganda, and Kenya? There are photos and videos you have not seen from that trip – most recently used in Blood:Water Mission’s summer campaign, Lemon:Aid.
The concept behind the campaign is simple: kids make lemonade stands – they tell people about water in Africa and raise money by selling lemonade – so that kids (and parents) in Africa can have water. It has been awesome to watch so many people get behind this campaign. There is still time before school starts, so if your kids need something to do, check out the website to download materials and take a stand for safe water in Africa. Whether or not you decide to do a Lemon:Aid stand, I hope you enjoy these photos & short stories.
I feel as if I have recently taken a breather from weightier books, and I am diving back in again. This poem comes at the beginning of the introduction to Paul Farmer’s Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, and it struck deep chords inside of me. It struck deep inside because I like to believe that I do not classify people as nobodies, but the truth is that it is a constant battle.
In my work I have to ask the questions: How many people will a certain project reach? What is this project’s cost per person? Are we meeting our numbers? Or even this… let’s expand the merchandise we sell to include local handicrafts made by some of our partners. Each question is well founded – we want to reach as many people, as many individuals, as many communities as we can with every dollar raised. We want to be responsible with our funding. We want to hear stories of people no longer skipping school to carry water or girls staying home because they are menstruating and have no private toilet facilities. We want to support local groups who use their art, their crafts, to create income and become self-sustaining. Behind each number and question is a story of a person who is not a nobody, but we must fight to make these bodies the driving force, not the numbers.
And so today I am excited to dive into heavier literature that forces me to think, to remember why I do what I do, and to re-examine and expand my own thought processes. To be challenged is a good thing.
That’s right. All it costs is $85. In terms of i-pods, it is a 3 for 1 deal: 3 biosand filters for families for the cost of 1 i-pod classic 160 gb. A few days from now is the famous ‘Black Friday’ in America when there are super sales and people get up at unbelievable hours to get that perfect deal. All for something that is, likely, disposable. A biosand filter is not disposable and will transform the life of a family by providing them clean water for 10-20 years. Consider ‘buying’ one as an alternative Christmas gift this year at: www.bloodwatermission.com/christmas.
A while back I made a smart ass sign to try and get people to load their dishes into the dishwasher at work. A few days ago a lawyer with whom we share the building asked for one of similar tone about washing of hands given that it is flu season. I hope this makes him happy.
This is the sign now hanging above the sink at work as a reminder that there is, in fact, not a fairy who moves dirty dishes from the sink to the dishwasher. Who would have guessed? LH and I rather proud of it.
To me, summer months mean that my weekends will begin to fill up with camping trips, picnics, and any other outing that will place me in nature surrounded by friends. Sadly, this equates to a lot of time on the road, and I will likely spend time waiting impatiently to pass sections of ongoing road work as construction crews fix roads damaged by winter frosts, summer rains, vehicles carrying heavy loads, and excessive traffic. Although I am impatient, I should not be as I have roads to travel.
Most of the communities where Blood:Water Mission supports work are not blessed by good roads and construction crews are rare. The roads are rough, some are not passable in the rainy season, and others do not have bridges to cross streams. In Ethiopia, there was no road, and the community used hand tools to build an additional 1.5 kilometers of road in order to transport a drill rig.
The day I went to visit the well that had been drilled, our car came to a place in the road that had been washed out the day before by heavy rains. The road was not marked with construction cones or signs, and there was no pile-up of vehicles waiting to pass. There was just us, and in front of us the community was already working to repair the road in the same way that they had built it – with their farm tools and their sweat. As we abandoned the vehicle to walk to the well, I realized that I was walking on a road literally built so that people could drink safe water. And they did so joyfully.
This summer when I pass construction crews on the road I will be reminded of these people who built their own road so that they could have water, and maybe, just maybe, I will not grow impatient as I wait.
~written for Blood:Water Mission’s June Newsletter
One of the great things about my current job is I am surrounded by people who have completely different backgrounds and skill sets than I do. While walking by the desk of our creative genius (aka graphic designer), he was doodling on one side of his massive screen. I loved the doodle, and a copy of it is now sitting on my desk. Eventually you will get to see his work on Blood:Water’s site, but until then, go here. Hope this makes you smile.
In Kanyonyera, a woman by the name of Pellina told us of the value of this water tap. She said that they used to get water at the lake, which was dirty and was a long way to walk. This problem was compounded by children collecting water who could only stand on the edge of the lake, where the water was the dirtiest. To top it off, every year children would die from drowning in the lake. Pellina was happy about the clean, flowing water at the tap. A little while later I noticed Pellina, deep in conversation, did not seem happy. I found out that the mud bricks near the water tap were hers. She planned to build a house, but the land she was going to use was taken to build the water tap. Now she had clean, flowing water, but no place to build her house. In such circumstances, the Rwandan government works to compensate the individual and provide alternate land. But, that was still in the process of happening, and today Pellina was stuck in the middle of the complexities of development. She had mud bricks to use, she had access to clean water, and she had no place build her home.
available. It would seem that the simple provision of clean water would solve so many problems. And yet we were told of a another village where a team (not funded by Blood:Water) came in and drilled a well. Fantastic…except the people never used the well. I don’t know if the water did not taste good, did not smell good, was in a politically poor location in the village, or if there was some other cultural issue. Bottom line is that a well was drilled but was not used; a ‘simple’ solution did not work. Sometimes I struggle when I know I should write about one thing and I feel uninspired. It is these times that I wish a writer would modify my words filling them with eloquence that would better express what is in my head and my heart. It is not that I am uninspired by what I should write about–quite the contrary. What I do not know is how to take such a fantastic and inspiring series of events and present them in an image that will portray a piece of what I experienced.
On Saturday the final game of a 13 team, 52 game, soccer tournament was held in the midst of a grand ceremony. This tournament was a dream of our partner in Northern Uganda who saw young men being idle in their villages unsure of how to fill their time and lacking hope after 10 years in IDP camps (internally displaced people camps). Yes, stability is returning to the region, safety is the norm rather than the sacred, and villages are being rebuilt. But the rebuilding of a village is easier on paper than in reality, and hope is a magical tool. And so our partner dreamt up and created a soccer tournament where they fund uniforms and soccer balls, and there are prizes of bulls and goats to eat, and a beautiful trophy for the winner to display. Participation requires the building of latrines and hand washing locations, and soccer scores include community transformation in terms of WASH (water, hygiene, and sanitation) and half-times are filled with song and dance about WASH created and performed by the players. I could never come up with a plan so brilliant–not in my most wild imagination.
The day of ceremonies included a parade of the players through town, demonstrations of latrines, washing stations, and hand pumps. Officials present included not only local and regional officials, but also the Minster of Water and Environment of Uganda; she was impressed by what she saw. The final soccer game was exciting and demonstrated the impressive skills of the players. The song and dance were both beautiful and inspiring.
As we visited communities in the two days following the ceremony, we saw transformation beginning in communities. We saw biosand filters and hand pumps and hand washing stations and dish racks. We saw hope and we saw soccer players filled with ownership of their program. One year. This program has only been running for one year and already the impact is tangible. In the coming years the program will grow–the hope is 60 teams within three years.
I wish I could capture these events for you. Smiling women. Laughing children. Welcoming men. Stories of triumph and a sense of pride. Over it all, hope. I am at a loss of how to share this, of how to construct this image, and so I close simply wishing that I could have transported you to a soccer field in Northern Uganda for a day of celebration.
Thank you. Apoyo matek. Thank you for coming to Uganda, and in particular, to Lira. Thank you for visiting. Thank you for breakfast. Thank you for lunch. Thank you for dinner. Thank you for water. I thank our God that we have been able to meet. Apoyo matek. Thank you for joining our celebration. Thank you for inviting us. Thank you for welcoming us. Thank you.
Those are the words that fill my ears and exit my mouth all day long. I am now in Uganda which, like much of Africa, is a thanking culture. Little can be assumed about any event–the starting time, how long it will last, what will occur, or what will be expected of me–except that I will say ‘Thank you’ and be told ‘Thank you.’ Sometimes it gets old and I begin to think that it would be great to hop skip and jump over the many thank you’s, effectively thinking, “Let’s move on and not spend more time on this.” And then I remember what it is like in America where we say “Hey” and “What’s up?” with more frequency than ”Thank you” and suddenly my patience increases. Apoyo matek.
day to day
lost in the mundane,
which is really the wild.
sometimes it takes unusual inspiration
to shake me out of the day to day.
inspiration from another’s sacrifice,
inspiration from america:
iron mike.
I hurriedly wrote the above after a staff meeting earlier this week. Mike is an average 55 year old man from Elizabethtown. He became ‘Iron Mike’ when he biked from coast to coast to raise funds for Blood:Water Mission. He found something worth fighting for, bought a bike a couple weeks before the ride began, joined the team, and rode his bike for the better part of 9 weeks telling people at gas stations, parks, churches and concerts about the men, women, and children who needed clean water in Africa. Iron Mike and his team raised a fairly impressive sum of money and impacted thousands. Beyond that, they were and continue to be inspiring. Iron Mike stopped in our office earlier this week and he encouraged our staff to continue our work and to work towards excellence.
I love what I do, and I love Africa. America is comfortable, but I let my guard down in Africa. The stories of hurt and happiness, of pain and perseverance, and of trials and triumphs of Africans are my day to day. In America it is in the pictures, proposals, and reports that I read daily, and in Africa it is all around me. It is wild and lovely, but is my day to day. In America I am surrounded by shiny windows, smooth roads, fast food, and blinking lights; consumerism. It is a constant sensory overload and yet it is uninspiring. And that is why I found Iron Mike so refreshing and incredibly inspiring. I am grateful to be in a place where I have the privilege to regularly be inspired and blessed by the Iron Mike’s of America.
