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Last year I made the mistake of watching Machine Gun Preacher. I had the privilege of seeing the movie before it came out, invited to the
showing in Nashville because of the work of Blood:Water Mission. I was honored by the invite and went to the showing because I knew I would
undoubtedly get questions about it from friends or future acquaintances. I was foolish.

Right now I am in Kitgum, Northern Uganda. I was just in Lira, Uganda. If you check out a map, you will see that these places are not far
from South Sudan, the focus of the movie. These places were also inhabited by the horrors of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Today I
have seen a building that was home to the night commuters (now a medical ward), talked about care and rehabilitation needed for the
girls and boys who were abducted and made wives and soldiers, respectively, and discussed the old people who cannot return to the
village as there is a missing generation and they are too old to build their own homes. For many in this area, they left home in 1989 and did
not return until 2008. The LRA has gone, but the recovery is ongoing, the pains still fresh.

I was foolish to watch Machine Gun Preacher because these are the stories of where I work, the horrors known to my friends. These are
not the stories of places far away, landscapes and people groups unknown. These are stories that have slowly knit their way into my
being. I never ask for the story of a friend, but I listen and remember when stories are shared; I cannot ask someone to relive their
nightmare, but will share the burden if it is offered. That is all the reality my body can handle. For someone else, such a movie is a wake
up call, an education of what has happened across the world from their clean reality. For me, I want my movies to be fantastical – I want to
know from the start that the good guys will win and that the lovers will live happily ever after. I do not want the possibility that the
horrors of the screen will mix with those of my friends in the back of my mind. The good guys – I want them to always win.

When I look at a space, I think about how it is decorated, how that space is (or could be) made to be full of life and welcoming to all who are there. I love spaces that invite long conversations over tea or a glass of wine, inspire the mind to create, and awaken the senses to the possibilities of life. As I write that, it makes me step back and wonder at the grandeur that I am asking of a space, but I know it is possible. Often it takes little more than open spaces, warm colors, and overflowing plants. With my move to Kigali, I have been working to do the same of my spaces here – large spaces where everything is painted off-white.

This is my office – the place I work from during the days when I am not on a plane or with a partner in the field. Inspired by a local coffee shop and being the African-based operations for Blood:Water Mission, I turned to the locally available African fabrics. (This decision was supported by the general lack of art or crafting supplies in the country…. creativity is required.) I bought wood frames normally used to stretch canvas from a local artist, scraps of fabric from a woman in the fabric market, hunted down some ribbon (only three colors to choose from), and a new friend blessed with use of a staple gun. That is how creativity is done here – dream up what you want, alter the dream when you find available tools, and smile at the outcomes. Then get a cup of chai and sigh at how much happier the space has become.

Although I moved to Rwanda nearly three months ago, I have yet to write about my life here. Moving is exhausting, and I was not sure what I wanted to say. My life was filled with trying to find a stove, a fridge, having furniture made, working on legal documents, trying to keep up with my job, meeting new people, trying to not get lost, and attempting to not let things spin out of control. Balance is tossed out the window in moves and routine is something only found in dreams.

As I am coming back to a place where there is a hope of balance and sometime-routines, I find I am ready to write and am hungry to create again. That statement alone makes me laugh. As humans, I believe we were made to create, and we all have our little area where we do so. For some this is in the kitchen, some on the computer, and others on paper. For me, it is not generally with excellence or with any training, but it lets my soul sing.

Right now I am traveling. Sometimes I think this season of life where travel is my companion will soon come to an end, but I become less and less sure when that time will be. For now, it is a part of my life that is here to stay. And I am determined to love it – in its glory and its pain.

The threads that weave between these are community – that which is and that which is being created. Friends near and scattered around the globe, each of which holds my smile and a piece of my heart. I simply love people. In all of their beauty and complexity, my introverted self cannot get enough of the wonder of friendship.

And so those are the things that I will be writing about this year. I am not putting development and Africa aside because that is so much a part of my life, but it is time to talk about these other things more; I work long hours and need more space to breathe, to sing, and to laugh. Goodness I love to laugh. I hope that you enjoy this journey with me.

Just a smile from the Marsabit desert for you on this first week of 2012.

Every year I write up a list of the books I have read – from biographies to beach trash. This year I decided to break it up so that you can at least know which books I recommend. I have provided links to the recommended books on Amazon (don’t get me wrong – I love beach trash at times, but it is so much harder to find good books than beach trash). Let me now if you have any questions and what your favorite books are as it is always good to have reading suggestions. Happy reading in 2012!

Recommended reads:

• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
• A Wind in the Door  by Madeleine L’Engle
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
• Brother, I’m Dying  by Edwidge Danticat
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks  by Rebecca Skloot
• Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance  by Barack Obama
• Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base  by Annie Jacobsen
• Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer
• Why We Can’t Wait  by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Beach trash for various reasons:

• The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve
• Atlantis Found  by Clive Cussler
• The Mediterranean Caper  by Clive Cussler
• Raise the Titanic!  by Clive Cussler
• I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron
• Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream  by David Platt

Business or development reads:

• The Male Factor: The Unwritten Rules, Misperceptions, and Secret Beliefs of Men in the Workplace  by Shaunti Feldhahn
• The One-Page Project Manager for Execution by Clark A. Campbell
• The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything  by Guy Kawasaki
• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations  by Clay Shirkly

On my last trip to Northern Kenya, I spent one night out in the desert and it changed my understanding of a story I have heard since I was a young child. We arrived at a small village not too far south of the Ethiopian border in the afternoon. In the local language, the town’s name means ‘windy’, and it could not have been more accurate. It was flat in all directions, volcanic rocks and thorny shrubs littered the landscape, and the wind was a constant presence.

After our meetings were done, we checked in at our hotel – one of two in this town on the main (though still dirt) road from the south to the north. The hotel was six simple rooms in a line, a latrine, and a shower room, all surrounded by a wire fence beyond the generous rock yard. Each room had two simple twin beds, each with a pillow, a towel, a bar of soap, and a portion of toilet paper. Simple, but clean and thoughtfully laid out. That night a feast of goat (100% free range and organic) was roasted over the open fire, which we shared from common plates with our hands. And then I turned in for the night, placing the stone behind my door to keep it closed since there was no latch.

Half of my hotel room. And this is with the wide-angle lens.

At 3:15 am, I suddenly awoke to the sound of voices and a rock scrapping on concrete. My door was being opened. Groggy but suddenly wide-eyed, I called out to the person pushing my door open.

“We heard there was a bed available in a room with a woman. There are two women who have just arrived and both hotels are full.”

Well, yes, there was a bed available. Not knowing quite what to do, I said as much and promptly cleared the bed of my things (I had been using as a make-shift dresser), and crawled back into my bed to await the arrival of my new roommates.

My groggy mind was filled with random thoughts. Did I not pay for this room? They must have come in on one of the cars that travels through the night – much cooler than during the day. Where had they come from and where were they going? Does the whole village know that there is exactly one mzungu (white person) woman and the exact room where she is staying?  If it was me, I would be so grateful to share a room with a stranger too. And, mostly, I was just stunned.

Twenty minutes later the two women arrived, closed the little window, curled up in the twin bed, and promptly fell asleep. The next morning I left before they woke, so I never actually met the women that were my roommates for four hours, but I doubt I will ever forget them.

Since I was a child, I have heard the stories of Mary, Joseph, and the birth of baby Jesus. When Mary was pregnant, they traveled to Bethlehem and there was no room in the inn. An innkeeper made room for them in the stables. By squeezing them in where there was a bit of space, he provided for a woman who labored and gave birth to a child. Although I have shared my home with many (beds and floors), I have never been woken by strangers in a hotel room. I cannot help but wonder if this was more like the story of Christmas than I had ever before imagined.

Strangers helping. Shared spaces. Confused thoughts. Unknown roommates. Midnight awakenings. Star-filled nights. 

This year, the Christmas story came alive for me, and as I await Epiphany, I keep wondering what it would have been like if I had stayed longer in that windy town in my shared room.

Earlier this week I was out in a village where people living with  HIV/AIDS and orphan caregivers were gathered. They come together to encourage one another, to learn, and to stand together. There was one particular woman, a grandma, who just loved to sing and dance her heart out. When I asked to take her photo, she smiled and laughed and made merry. Later, I caught her as she stood inside. Two sides of a woman. I love the second photo, but I wish you could have seen her dance.

Right now I am in a place that was experiencing a horrible drought. It had been dry for so long. Then the rains came and I keep hearing about blessings. Where there was loose soil, there is grass a foot high. Trees that looked like sticks in the sky are full of leaves. Tanks that were dry are full, and reservoirs that were nearly empty are full to overflowing. The sky is blue; there is not an ever-present haze from dust in the air. As we drove on Saturday, one of the staff from this region, looking out the window, quietly said, “We are so blessed.” On Sunday I visited a Game Park that is on top of the Marsabit mountain, which includes the water source for the town and a crater lake. Everywhere I looked, here were small butterflies in the thousands. They rarely stood still, but instead seemed as if they were dancing in a grand declaration of the blessing, the wonder of rain after drought.

This week it seems like the rains have stopped and everyone is holding their breath – will the rains come in April or will this year again skip the long rains? No one knows. So even as the people I am working with plan projects to help protect against future drought, we sit and marvel at today’s blessing of water. It seems perfect that the rains were here before Thanksgiving and that the land speaks of blessing as we prepare for Christmas. As I long for signs of Christmas, I think I have found it here in the green desert.

This blog post was written for Blood:Water Mission. The original post is found here.

On Friday I had the joy of visitings a water tank in Northern Rwanda that was just finished. It is now collecting water for 10 families to use during the dry season that is just about a month away. After talking with a few of the people this tank will serve, we began to walk down the path to our car (our little 4WD could not make it up the final bits of the mountain road/path). As we walked, there was happy talk that was eventually translated for me.

“That tank over there is the grandmother tank.”

“And that one is the mother tank.”

In this community, the tanks have been given family trees. When the first tanks were built, many families shared one tank, carefully rationing the water and hoping to make it through a dry season. As more tanks were built, fewer families shared a tank. And the community, in which children are prized, calls this process one tank giving birth to another. So, on Friday, I saw the grandmother, the mother, and the baby tank. Along with it, a lot of smiling women and children who no longer walk down a mountain to get water from a lake.

The goal for this project is to have each tank serve 10 families, and the last tanks are being built right now to make that possible -  a process that has taken several years. The community provides all the local materials – the stones and wood and labor – to make the project possible. But, they need a lot of cement for each tank – about 54 bags. Would you think about partnering with communities like these? Match their resources with yours to make water projects possible. In doing so, you will change lives this Christmas season. To take part in this campaign, go here.

The last week has been a great week for my twitter feed: so much talk about toilets and poop – literally (if you are a twitter follower do a search for #talkshit). Today is World Toilet Day and I could not be more thrilled that we are taking time to celebrate an invention that has such a dramatic impact on health around the world (not to mention dignity… see my post here about toilets and dignity). One of the books that I have been reading this year is The Last Taboo: Opening the Door on the Global Sanitation Crisis by Maggie Black and Ben Fawcett. For the most part, the writing is academic and stuffy, but the content is fabulous. My favorite part about this book is that they spend time looking back at history, at how sanitation coverage has changed through the years in both the developing world and the world that is now developed. So here are two excerpts for you… the discussion at this point is around Europe:

Finally came the impact for which everyone had waited. Mortality rates began seriously to drop. Between 1838 and 1854, the average age at death in England and Wales was 39.9; by the early 1880’s, it had reached 41.9 and, by 1890, 44….. The advance of medical science, improved incomes, greater democratic participation, and a reduction in corruption and inefficiency in public life all played an important part. But the state – and municipality-driven sanitary revolution – in sewerage, street clearance, effluent treatment and plentiful water supplies – was the backbone

For far too long, the extraordinary accomplishments of the 19th-century generation of sanitary heroes had succeeded in putting excreta, its hazards, and is removal from homes and streets out of sight and out of mind. But today, finally, burgeoning urban populations, high levels of water and soil pollution, squalor in slums and crowded settlements, municipal mismanagement and need for reform, and epidemics of diarrhea disease posing serious risks to thousands of lives are pushing these issues back up the agenda.

And sanitation is back on the agenda. The conversation is starting back up and will reach full swing before long. There are a lot of places I could point you towards but here are two I think worth checking out: Gates Foundation on Sanitation (including a great video on their current endeavor) and toiletday.org. I hope it can start to become something you are passionate about… and I will be working to add to that conversation in the coming year as I get more involved directly in some of Blood:Water Mission’s sanitation projects in the field. May the conversation and action begin.

For the last week, I was in the Central African Republic where I bounced and slid through an old and grand forest for several days. The trees were magnificent and large, the underbrush thick and impenetrable. It was grand in a way that is only possible in nature that is old, that combines ancient wisdom with new growth. It made me want to sit and stay for a while, to soak in the grandeur and the wisdom, and to learn from the people who have made their homes in the forest, but this was only to be a taste.

Sadly, this taste was not as perfect as it should have been. As we drove out of Bangui, everywhere I looked, there was wood – it had been cut and dried, and was waiting for, or being transported into the city. It was in piles and was being pushed for tens of kilometers by men with carts. More sad than all of that were the semi-trucks that drove by from time to time with truck beds filled with large, dead trees. My jaw dropped in awe when one truck bed was filled with only one tree – and only part of that tree. Not yet cut into planks or broken down, this was a piece of the largest tree I have seen to date. The rumor is that these trees are headed to China, a country hungry to grow and in need of wood, wood beautiful enough to transport across land and sea.

As we drove through the forest, it was dark, cool, and damp. Then we suddenly come across a small clearing where the sun beamed through: it was bright, dry, and hot. And that is how the drive went: dark and cool, then bright and hot, dark and cool, then bright and hot. Every place the large trees were gone stood naked and unprotected from the sun. I stood in awe and cried inside, I stood in awe and I cried inside. I wanted to shout to the truckers that they were destroying virgin forest – some of the last of it left on earth. That there are plants and medicines and insects to be discovered, that mankind is dependent on filtered air, and that people live in those forests. I wanted to shout that when a treasure like this is gone, it can never be rebuilt. And for the family cutting, selling, and pushing wood along the roadside, I wanted to give them an option that did not demand the destruction of their natural resource. It is not a simple story, but its complexity does not make it any less disheartening.

I hope to be back in this forest and others in the next years. I dream of being far enough in that it is all dark, cool, and humid. I want to soak in the grandness and wisdom that fills the place before it is gone forever. Maybe I will be able to hold onto a piece of it, and maybe you can hold onto that piece too.

At one of the many roadblocks I went through in the last week in the Central African Republic, I saw these two young boys making some of the most incredible lorries, or trucks, out of scrap wood. I jumped out of the car and was blessed when they agreed to let me take their photo. If you have a moment, take the time to admire the detail they have put into these lorries from the awning on the back (on the finished lorry rolling down the road) to the moving wheels to the lights and decoration on their front. These children were made to create beautiful things.

There has been so much going on and something has had to give in order for me to keep my sanity. Sadly, that has been the blog lately. I will be back soon to take you with me on my journey to Rwanda. It is all happening right now. I leave Nashville on Tuesday for 4 days at the Fetzer Institute where I have been asked to be an advisor on the Engineering Council. Then Friday to Atlanta and then Saturday on to Rwanda. Soon I will be able to carve out time to share more, maybe even using those plane rides…. but for now, check out the blog post I wrote on the Blood:Water blog announcing my move.