Want to help? Some thoughts ...

So what do I do if I want to help?

GO. If you can go, do it.   
Plan it now and do it this year. We understand so little, watching from our comfortable living room. Go see for yourself. Go to learn. Go with others who know the people and can help you make your way into the community. You might wisely decide in advance that your purpose is just to meet folks and learn from them. Go with the expectation of being changed by those you'll meet. They know so much more about life and poverty and coping than we do.

GIVE. If you can give, please do, generously and regularly. 

Our generosity is the supply pipeline for competent folks doing the work long-term, and there is great need. We discovered again with the recent Haiti crisis that you can't just send stuff. If you fill a box with clothes, it costs more to handle the one box perhaps than the clothes are worth. Giving money to the organizations that do the work, on the other hand, helps fund an efficient logistics and supply management process that brings the right kind of help to the point where it's currently needed.

LEARN. The hardest task, understanding the real need.
I'm often asked if I have room to take children's clothes in my luggage. Friends see the pictures of kids in raggedy clothes and are heart-moved to meet the need. Clothes are good, and I've taken a bunch mostly as friendship fun gifts. A colorful t-shirt with a nice logo brings a smile, but clothes aren't the real need where I travel. Malnutrition, on the other hand, is a tough problem. Between 10% and 40% of the kids I meet will have protein deficient diets. They'll be under height for age and under weight for height (stunted). Some will have a reddish tint to hair that is a possible indicator, too. The deficiency will affect the way their bodies and internal organs develop. Their lives will be complicated and shortened by the lack. Sponsoring a nutrition program takes more to accomplish but addresses a real need. Agricultural assistance, or maybe a pair of goats can be a big help. Helping without hurting takes thoughtful effort. Instead of $20 for T-shirts, $20 worth of fish and beans might balance a household's diet for the month or two.

A precious mother and daughter (left) invited me in for a brief visit; nicer than most of the people in my world. Just being hospitable, they seemed to appreciate the chance to talk a bit with a visitor. They have very little but are not hungry at the moment. If you want to lend them a hand, you'll want to understand what would serve them. Help them protect their fishing areas so they can feed themselves, help the community develop clean water and sanitation, schools, health education ...

Things that help: the most difficult task is not getting goods to Africa, although that's daunting enough. It's figuring out what you can do that actually helps without being an insensitive, arrogant foreigner in the process.


Kids in the difficult areas of Africa don't need teddy bears. Families don't need our instruction or pity and are as offended by such foolishness as we would be. The presence of tourists is often an insult as they take pictures of 'the poor Africans'. Families could use a brother's hand in the labors of life along the way, just like anyone else would. So what can we do that actually helps?

Like most folks, Africans appreciate you stopping to shake hands, meet mom & dad, sit with them awhile, and listen. Give the moms a ride back from doing laundry at the river, maybe. Help them load the baskets in the truck and unload at the village. It's an apparently unusual gesture by a foreigner and much appreciated. Ask questions about whatever. Ask before taking their picture. Good manners and caring go a long way, but it costs a lot in terms of time, resources, and personal pain. After leaving a meeting at the hospital, I've had to stop beside the road and wait for the pain to quit before driving further. The reality of life in Africa will wound your heart deeply.

The Navy SeaBees leave an impressive mark in Africa with their construction efforts; they're famous for giving something that lasts. They're on my short list of heroes for serving others. What can we offer that lasts?

Organizations like World Vision do a magnificent job of the stuff that matters. They invest a couple of decades in a village, build schools and houses, dig reliable wells, teach agriculture, do health care, and after a decade or three, a generation of children are educated and the village is changed for the better. That's real help. The key to their effectiveness is that they go and live there. It's a long-term commitment to be alongside.

In the fifteen or so trips I've made to Africa so far, I've made a few mistakes and stumbled onto a few winners. I've spent money on kid trinkets, I forget what they were now, but it was a loser. No matter what you have, there are probably more kids than you can equip. On the other hand, working with a school or an organization on the ground means you have skilled adults with whom you can pitch in and try to help.
Balloons for a Children's Day event (at the school) were great fun, as was the candy which colored a lot of tongues purple, if I recall. We added those little things to their celebration, and it was appreciated. Printed photos are a nicety enjoyed by pretty much everyone. 

Books were a home run. There's no bookstore in the country. In Lisbon, I picked up a few (expensive, unfortunately, or I'd have bought more) books for elementary school aged kids. Well received; the school has just a few books, I discovered.

 

I'd picked up a couple of Portuguese Bibles, I forget why; another home run; the principal asked for more for the teachers to use in the classroom. We shipped a case to them last fall.

In conversation with the principal and teachers, they tell me their regular need is supplies like pencils and paper. I carry pencils every trip in, whatever my baggage weight allowance will stand, and we buy paper and notebooks from a store there. We have an in-country agent who purchases things locally on our behalf when we can raise money to send. 

Sending a box from the states by mail (flat rate, 20 lbs., $42) makes sense only for items worth the expense. 

But what helps, really? In Sao Tome & Principe, for instance. They have a wonderful community and culture, are not likely to go hungry for extended periods, little violence, little crime. Children are more likely to grow up safe and happy in Sao Tome than they might in Chicago. Health care is inadequate. A balanced diet is uncommon. The Taiwanese Medical Mission has made real inroads against malaria, but more is needed for basic health care. Education receives little public funding and is resource constrained. The children's world is narrowed by the lack of literature and instructional texts.   
Community infrastructural elements are minimal. Water is often from open stream sources, electricity is often not available or reliable, most homes don't have TV (probably a good thing), and home internet access is only for the wealthy. There's only one internet cafe in the city that I know about; expensive. The educational resources of the web could be a benefit to schools, perhaps. Or would they be better off if they remained somewhat insulated from the rest of the world?

Expensive lessons from the Peace Corps: In conversations with Ned Seligman, the director of Step Up Sao Tome, I learned a bit about what works. He began with the Peace Corps decades ago and through the difficult years of tremendous effort, he understands the work that has to happen in the field. He spoke with insight about the 'save the children' approach to making a difference. For a family in need, sponsoring a child's education is a big help, but there are many needs. Families rarely have just one child needing help for school. A better friend (as opposed to an uninvolved benefactor) will try to understand what needs are critical and immediate. Long term concerns might include issues like malaria or HIV/AIDS education and prevention, or help in starting a small business, or home gardening, or water purification and community sanitation, or maybe adult literacy.

Government top-down programs often siphon off funds, reducing the impact at the point of need. The needs of a community in poorer countries are daunting, but small organizations like Step Up Sao Tome are focused at the village and family level to tackle them. World Vision is perhaps the most capable of the large organizations.

24 JAN '10 - Sao Tome & Principe

UPDATE: we had a chance to assist with the Navy Seabee's site survey at Almas Elementary. They spent time with the principal, Valentim (in the photo, green shirt), determining what was needed most. They're going to fix the windows, improve the wall, repair water and electrical problems, and paint the classrooms. In the photo, the kids gather between classes to meet the team and see what's up. The Navy construction team will be here later in the year for the project's completion.

UPDATE: In Sao Tome, STeP UP is the NGO I've been working with, recommended to me by US embassy staffers who know them well.  (photos right).  They manage a number of projects including an effective scholarship program. They've agreed to open the program for a couple of kids I know at Almas Elementary. Education is a tough road for kids in Africa. Here, a lot of them drop out around the 4th grade because their families cant afford it. A few hundred dollars will cover the cost of a life-changing year for a family. For the kids, it includes school uniforms, shoes, tutors, books and supplies, food to help achieve some balance in their diet, transportation, and health education covering malaria, HIV/AIDS, and more. STeP UP is taking a couple of five families into the program for us. Donate here,if you like. It goes to the NGO in Sao Tome for education assistance. People will like you better if you give.
________________________________________________________

Djibouti:
A small country of a half-million people, 50% unemployment, nomadic hinterlands, a legacy French influence, and a fair amount of U.S. activity. We've been on the ground there several times doing construction in preparation for installation work. Having just returned from my first trip there in APR '09, I've seen more than I can easily grasp. Having ventured into the refugee slum area, a father expressed to me his simple concerns, an education for his children and a chance for them to have a better life. He'd brought his family (wife, mother, and children) from Somalia in hopes of giving his kids a better future. Perhaps we'll be able to sponsor his children through school; his oldest son is a student at the University of Djibouti and could use a little help. NOTE: his mother died recently; I haven't been able to get the details. The youngest member of the family, photo, left.
UPDATE:  
Our attempts at making our way into the community in Djibouti were hampered by misrepresentation, fraud, and theft. A younger member of the family whom we befriended used the tenuous new relationship to extort money. Truly minor, but disappointing and counterproductive. Later, we were in the neighborhood (a known and dangerous refugee area, we later discovered) to visit and drop off simple gifts, a member of the community stole a backpack from our vehicle while we were just inches away. The community made the individual turn himself in to the police, but we lost time and opportunity in the process. The theft is understandable given the desperate circumstances of their lives.


I'll post more info when I understand it better. We'll try again, probably in 2011.


Kenya:

On the horizon for 2010/11. We'll be there off and on for at least a couple of years, and we have contacts via churches in both Nairobi and Mombasa. We'll see.

Update: Kenya is incredibleFour trips to Kenya this year... 39 kids on school assistance now, including the three precious orphans here who live with grandma. We're working through a local church pastor and board for the programmatics.

More updates in the travel narratives at Africa Tales.

So what are we going to do with what we know?

Tell the rich folks to quit being so full of themselves and so impressed with their own possessions, which are here today and gone tomorrow.  It's not their merit that made them wealthy and others less so. Tell them to go after God who is generous to us all - and tell them to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they'll build a treasure that will last, gaining life that is truly life.

          1 Timothy 6:17-19 

JUN '11 - Home again, Africa

It had been nearly a year since I'd been in Sao Tome.  The world had become larger in that brief time. 

With a year's work behind me, it was such a joy to visit the wonderful folks in Sao Tome.  With Kenya's drought in my mind and our struggles to be helpful there, it was nice to be in Sao Tome where hunger isn't a pressing problem. To make things even better, it wasn't a work-related trip.  Accumulated airline miles paid for the ticket and simple accommodations kept the costs down for a personal trip with no work agenda.  It's familiar enough to feel a bit like home when I'm there.

We've been trying to be helpful, my friends and and family have.  We've been working through STeP UP, an NGO based in the city there.  Four families and a dozen-plus kids are the beneficiaries.  We've been focused on keeping the kids in school and getting a good education, but we've tried hard to intelligently address some assistance to the families as a whole.  Good success all around this year.  All our kids are doing well and school and the families have done well.

The best of the trip was in spending time with friends.  I visited each household, spent time with moms and dads, and got the grand tour of the year's efforts with pride and cheerful explanations.  Parents have been working hard, and it shows.

Our hope is to avoid being a blind benefit program without any relationship or feedback.  When we began, we offered to partner with the families, to help them do well by their children, specifically for their education.  We've learned a bit and expanded a bit since then.

This year, we got to see one family's big improvement; they have water by their house now!  We funded the materials; dad and the oldest son did the manual labor of digging the trench across the road and laying pipe from the mountain water main. 

Here's the road dad had to dig up to lay the pipe.  Permissions took awhile, but he has a water spigot in the yard in front of his house and a washing table so they don't have to go to the river to do laundry.

  It gives them water for the house and for the pair of pigs they use for breeding.

They proudly took me through the couple of acres they have for crops, too.  Corn, beans, unrecognizable African vegetables, and okra!  They get a small yield of okra pretty much every week.  They feed themselves and have a little to sell in the kiosk we helped them build.

Most recently, they've bought a little generator and a TV for the kiosk.  No one in the neighborhood has electricity, so now they can watch the local channel and maybe buy something from the kiosk.  It's a common gimmick in Africa.  I know a couple of neighborhoods where the kiosk with a TV is where folks congregate in the evenings.  Good business idea.

We helped a family buy their house this year.  They no longer pay rent, so things are much easier.  They beamed as they told me about their lives.  We helped another family buy a little plot of land so they can begin building a home.  Exciting stuff all around.

The most fun this trip was dinner at grandma's house.  In preparation, I took the daughters to the market; they dragged me around carrying bags of stuff for three hours.  Bananas, fish, breadfruit, more bananas.  The day of the dinner, I guess twenty or so family members showed up. 

Grandma's boys are linebacker sized fellows, all goodhearted and tons of fun, especially with kids around.  We had nearly a dozen kids in attendance.  Laugh, dance, sing, eat, laugh some more.  Kids singing using carrots for microphones was cute.  It was a great afternoon.

I often wonder at the impressive sense of community and family I see here.  They seem so much better than we at some of the important parts of caring for each other.  Don't misunderstand; they're African and tough as nails.  An in-your-face kind of love.  They're good church-going folks; I wonder what the sermons are about here, but my Portuguese isn't really good enough to tell.

MAY '11 - Kenya Again

Forth trip to Africa this year; third one to Kenya.  Still willing if a bit worn.

Work was just work.  Time with local folks was worth having made the trip to me.  Among the truly nice people of the world, my friends welcome me back and make a place for me in their homes and lives despite truly difficult circumstances.
Three more kids for a little help getting in school.  Uniforms and fees to start.  A trip to the hospital for one of them.  They bring our group to 37 kids this semester.
Ever notice how folks who have the least are often the most giving?  Or that folks who have the most difficult lives are the most likely to stop and land a hand?
After making the trek across Africa - Sao Tome & Principe, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya - I wonder why the wealthy are so often full of themselves while the poor encompass nobility and generosity.  It's not just in Africa, of course.  It was the same all those years when we lived in Spain and wandered across Europe. 

Japan may have been an exception; they were all pretty nice folks, everywhere we went. 
The phone rang this morning as I sat at my office in Maryland.  It was dear Salma.  It costs just pennies to call the States from Kenya.  She'd called just to say hello and thank you.  She's become like a sister to me.  The times we've had to sit and talk have been family time. 
OK so minutes later, the phone rings again, and it's Salma again and you can hear her family laughing in the background; she says, "Anderson wants to say hello to his friend."  Ha!  So 3-year old Anderson gets on the phone and laughs and says something incomprehensible in Swahili, perhaps, and I ask him if he's being a good boy and he laughs and you can hear Salma and her sister and mom and grandmother laughing along with him.  Marilyn says I got a grandpa call from Kenya!

In Kenya, the rains of April and May 'make the animals happy', my friends tell me.  It's been a long dry season, and the rains are appreciated.
SUMMER '11 UPDATE:  The rainy season was inadequate.  The drought has set in.  Millions face starvation in the region.  Our friends and their children there are at risk, and we have little effective access to their community.

Scrambling for funds for the access we do have.  Keeping them in school gets them one meal a day at the government school.  It's just maize meal, but it'll keep them alive. 

FEB '11 - Off to Kenya

Three hurry-up trips to Kenya this year. Chance of a lifetime, of course.


Off to Kenya for the first time on just a day's notice. Difficult to put things together that quickly, but we managed. Landed in Nairobi in the middle of the night, and even later in Mombasa; got to see Kenya for the first time at sunrise. Beautiful place sometimes, as the photo shows.


Tourism is a major segment in the economy. Seasonal and fluctuating, vulnerable to rumors of pirates, the business is difficult for all but the largest organizations.

It's now the off-season for tourists here in Kenya, though; several hotels are closed and their employees laid off until after the rainy season. With a monthly income while working of maybe $50 - $75, supporting one person is difficult, a family nearly impossible, and devastating when laid off. It's a difficult world.

Unskilled labor tasks pay little and demand much. Here (above, right) a team of young fellows struggle with a heavy cart-load of produce, I think. We saw hundreds like it making their way through traffic in Mombasa carrying potatoes, jugs of water, building materials, you name it.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of shops like the one here (below, left) hope for business but find little. A young beautician wannabe tries the second-hand clothing business, too. The only one making money is probably the landlord.



On the street, you're frequently offered goods or services, (haircut, manicure, taxi, safari, etc.). They're all out there hustling because they can go for several days without selling anything. "Make me small business, Mister. Just hundred shillings?" A hundred shillings, about a buck and a quarter, may be their total income for a day's work. With living costs being similar to the western world, it won't go far.



(Right) His name is Anderson; he's 3 and a sweet kid. Momma's name is Salma . She sells things that she makes or buys to feed the family. A young widow and paraplegic, life is pretty hard. They live with her mom and grandmother. They invited me to visit their village. Nice folks.

I went back to their village to visit on the weekend. Joseph is here (below) with his sister, Salma. They live quite simply in a little village a short distance back from the ocean. 

The family is gracious, articulate, and well mannered. They were thankful to have a chance to sit and talk to someone a bit. So was I. Joseph explained the intricacies of house construction and maintenance. We laughed as we shared leaky roof stories. His roof will be made of palm fronds and be refreshed each year just before the rainy season.

... work, work, work, blah, blah, blah. You're not interested in my work.



Friday before departure - I went out in town to say goodbye to my friends this afternoon. Walter is a sweet fellow, early polio victim and severely limited, lives in a wheel chair. He remembers my name when we meet. He asked me to take his picture so I'd remember him and tell my friends about him and his country.

Florence was malnourished as a child and suffers from some structural deformation; her ankles aren't built quite right and she's painfully thin; narrow at hips and shoulders. Unfailingly polite.

Jonathan is the oldest in his household of 6, I think. In this off season, he has no work and no real options but begging. We've funded his charcoal business and roof repair for the rainy season. He brought a necklace gift for my wife.

Salma (with Anderson) whom I met early on was on the street in her wheel chair, selling her hand made items. Her brother Joseph came and got me and told me she had a gift for me; she'd had my name carved in a piece of ebony as a thank you gift for our friendship.

Lillian tracked me down to show me that her burn was healing; she'd burned herself on a motor scooter taxi and the wound had swelled and reddened. I bought some antiseptic spray for her which seems to have helped matters.

Others called me by name and asked for one last gift before I left. Pretty intense. Oh, and Joseph hinted that if I had any laundry I didn't want to take home... I gave him the shirt I was wearing; we both laughed and I walked back to the hotel in my undershirt.

UPDATE: Arriving home on Sunday, unpack everything into the washing machine, then at work on Monday, got a call midday asking if I'd be willing to go back to Kenya. Of course. :) My heart is willing; my backside is tired of airplanes, though. Second Time in Kenya: after 4 days at home. Good grief!

Back in Kenya for less than 12 hours; I went across the street to have a coke at the restaurant; "Mr. Brian, Mr. Brian, I heard you had returned!" Greeted by perhaps half a dozen of the local beggars whom I had befriended my first time here, I gave away my day's per diem before lunch. :) Walter, the polio/wheelchair fellow I was so taken with last week, heard I was back and hand-pedaled his way down the street to greet me. Sweet fellow.

My Masaai friend Isaac; he works as
a night-watchman, lives outside and
sends the money, about $60/mo,
up north to his family.

Work, work, work, blah, blah, blah.

P.S. I gave contact info to a few, nice folks. They've called me on the phone from Kenya (it's super cheap) just for the fun of talking to a friend halfway around the world. Maybe 8 or 10 calls now, since I left last month.

Want to know why I was willing to go back?

05/11 - On my way back to Kenya next week for the third time this year. Gladly.

Then home again and back at work. It's almost normal until ...

At the office, my phone rings ...

It's little Anderson from Kenya!

JAN '11 Djiboutui again!

A short-notice requirement sent us back to Djibouti.  I was pleased for the opportunity to reconnect with friends there, but stunned when on arrival was told that my friend Muhammad had died and his family had disappeared.  Inquiry over several days produced no more information or confirmation.  My correspondence with the oldest son has gone unanswered since October.  Their house (left, with a tree in the yard) is occupied by another family now.

The fellows I work with and I went to lunch in the city.  When we parked, this little girl offered to watch our vehicle for us.  It's a common practice kids do in hopes of a little money.

When we came out, she was there with her mother and brother, waiting.  Cheerful enough, all of them, and polite.

We gave them a generous amount, and the little girl asked for more before she even saw what we'd given her.  :)  Gave her more, of course.  With 60% unemployment in the city and 80+% unemployment in rural areas, they've got a tough and frightening future.  Neither rude nor demanding, they politely let us know that they could use the help.  It's easy to give to such a gracious request.

With gaps in our work day, I took the opportunity to wander the countryside, hoping to see and understand.  Several encounters with surprisingly nice people added bits of insight here and there.  I picked up one young fellow beside the road with a couple of his friends.  Recently graduated from business school, he had been looking for work for awhile with no luck.  We talked about where jobs might be emerging in the country's economy.  Perhaps at the expanding oil terminal or at the new port facilities.

Farther out still, literally at the end of the road, these two precious children watched me for awhile and tentatively made their way out to where I was photographing the countryside.  Actually, I was just waiting for them to get comfortable with my being there.  The boy brought his school notebook with him, perhaps so I could see he was a young man of substance and ambition.  We chatted briefly before I asked if I could take their picture.  He instructed his little sister to ask for money (which I was glad to give) and say thank you politely.  Sweet kids.  The cinder block structure in the distance, left, is their home, I think.  The next buildings are restaurants that have failed.

On a subsequent visit to the same spot, I met this young man (in blue, left) and his family.  Nice folks.  The kind of people you'd be pleased to live next door to, walk to school with, maybe hang out together on weekends.  On the hilltop behind them, their simple house.  There are 12 folks in the family.  None are employed full time.  It's a tough world for them, there in Djibouti.

A friendship gift from one spicey food lover to another; Tabasco speaks for itself.  I brought some grocery gifts for the family; stuff they might not buy for themselves very often; and the Tabasco (came all the way from the states) which goes with absolutely everything.  It's one of our favorite excuses to start a conversation about things we like.  Chicken pepper soup, fish pepper soup, pepper pasta, pepper sardines, beans and pepper sauce, eggs with pepper sauce, bread with pepper sauce, the list (and the conversation) goes on for awhile.  Even more fun when we don't speak French and they don't speak English.

On a subsequent day, I met poppa and the rest of the men in the family. Fine fellows, all.  Gracious and hospitable, they made me welcome and endured my horrible French.

---

On the way home, I stopped in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a place with a lot of history.  This statue, for instance, called the Lion of Judah, has a tale to tell. Erected in 1930 just before Emperor Haile Selassie's coronation, it was stolen by the Italian occupiers in 1935 and taken to Rome, where it was erected next to the Vittorio Emanuelle Monument. During the 4th anniversary celebrations of the proclamation of the Itlian Empire, Adolf Hitler chose to visit Rome, and attended the celebratory parades along side the Fascist Dictator Musollini and King Victor Emanuelle III. In the parade were numerous subjects of Italy's African Empire, including a young Eritrean named Zerai Deres. Zerai Deres was marching with other parade members carrying a ceremonial sword with which to salute the King, the Fuhrer, and el Duce, at the grandstand. As the parade marched past the Vittorio Emauelle monument, Zerai looked up and saw to his shock, the golden Lion of Judah, the symbol of the ancient monarchy to which his ancestors had long owed aliegence, erected as war booty in the heart of Rome. It was too much for him to bear, and he promptly drew his sword and with tears of anger running down his face he fell on the first Italian officer he could find. He killed and wounded numerous Italian military officers before he was killed. Zerai Deres is lionized to this day as a brave Ethiopian patriot.

The monument remained in Rome for decades, and was finally returned to Addis Ababa in the 1960's. When it was re-erected in it's square, the Emperor was present in military uniform to salute, and to pay tribute to Zerai Deres. Following the revolution in 1974, the new regime decided to remove the statue once more as it was a monarchist symbol. However, the elderly war veterans association members appealed to the new government to consider the memory of Zerai Deres and his sacrifice that was inspired by this very symbol. The statue was saved and remains today.

---

I came to Addis just to visit a family there.  The older son with whom I've corresponded for the last year is away in college.  I'd told him I was coming, and he told them, so they were prepared. 

Momma (with help from little grand-daughter) prepares coffee and popcorn for me as her guest.  She'd roasted the coffee beans and they'd ground them on the spot with a mortar and pestle.  Traditional Ethiopian coffee, she explains, is made that way.

Momma was completely blind when I was here a year ago, and had a leg problem that left her crippled as well.  Her husband died several years ago, so the children had cared for her on their own.  The oldest at home, a fourteen-year old fellow, worked as a shoe shine boy in front of the hotel where I stayed.  That's where we first met.  Momma's sight is restored now, thanks to getting some help from the public health-care system, and she got treatment for her leg, so she's able to walk a bit.  The kids (who speak a little English) tell me she may get to have an operation on her leg in the next year or so that they hope will restore her mobility.  It's been a hard couple of years.  They thanked me for visiting and for the gifts I brought and promised to pray for me and my family.  Fine folks.

I hope to return, perhaps this summer.