Happy World Water Day 2010

'Tis the season... for a bunch of links. World Water Day 2010.

World Water Day is also know in some circles as World Whiskey Day. But honestly, the logic is a bit questionable...After you drink whiskey in order to save water, you are going to need a lot of water to get over your de-hydrating hangover.

Seriously... I won't quote you statistics (but I will link to some) but let me make 2 points:
People die from diseases linked to water.
People die fighting over water.

So again, I remind you that to save the world you need to focus.

Who doesn't love national geographic? I sure do...
National Geographic special issue on freshwater (March 2010)
I have been waiting for this issue on the edge of my seat... (yes, I am a dork.)

If you feel the need for statistics and sound bites:
Numbers Galore from Water.org
(I do not endorse Water.org for donations - of course I do not NOT endorse them - I just have no idea if they are reputable in terms of serving people with your money. They just have a nice list of numbers. If you want recommendations on where to donate money then ask me - but that is not my point here.)

I will write something more personal on water, but that will not appear here today, on World Water Day.

El Nino

And what of this... absence? I take no responsibilty, whatsoever. Though I have no excuses.
Past months in suspended animation, I should have made that time somehow.

Remember a comment on kidnapping? (On kidnapping) eh well. Phrophetic of course... An entry I started back in July: "I love my job. But there are days it makes me speachless and this weekend has been one. 3 collegues were kidnapped, to join others somewhere in Somalia. You get in the habit of sarcastic emails, farts and animal noises. You get used to disagreements with warmth."

I never finished the entry. A little scared of being sentimental, which is fine over a beer when the guys got out in October, but not so entertaining here. Frustrating this time has been. Stiffled, yet somehow free eventually.

***

Passing time is inevitably seen
blowing past a window screen
ostrich plumes and elephant tracks
crocodile teeth and camel backs
flat red roads run to rocky hills
drying rivers tests a mother's will
Got out to walk on black craggy stone
sometimes salt white, dust alone
water from rock where donkeys drink
blinding desert, pupils shrink
skinny man, his wives wash grime
parched and poor, not pressed for time

***

Drying Ewaso Nyrio River in January.
Today it flooded it's banks.
Precocious little bastard.

Spring in the middle of nowhere.
This photo does not justice.

Thirsty cows.
'Nough said.

Typical scene at a drying earth pan.
Little bit of everything.

animals

****

take a deep breath and clear your mind
but i'm in a smokey room here
i'm afraid of respiration
i can't make it to the door

not long to see the moon
through dust storms without lightning
i have lived through one or two
and i think ill see another

at the river bend
the water keeps its way down
keeps the wind clear from the smoke
keeps the mind from knots

***
Camels share a single cup.
***
Giraffes glide through trees with grace.

***
I walk the line.

The Marriage

Apologies. I have linked here from some other places, so I took off this most personal entry. Anyway, it was not so poetic or interesting unless you know me, same with the photos, and I think everyone who missed the marriage has seen the posting so, no loss. I have saved the photos and posting, so if you missed them, send me an email and I can share.

Thanks for understanding.

Kenya Kataclysm

Back in November, I took a little trip to Takaba. That is up in Northeastern Kenya where we have some cool programs running. It was in the rainy season and it was lovely... except the flat tires (that's the hook there, can't beat a little suspense).

***

On the road between Malkamari and Takaba:

There wasn’t much to see the second time round

Lightning still broke the wide skies, silent as the sun sank
We past this turn before, she thought
As roads became rivers, melting sand to glass pathways
without wind before but waves behind shifting beneath tires
Red to green muddled eyes climbed muddy trees
A wild grey cat in the shadows motionless watching waves
Rain and thunder joined the lighting and still no wind
Perhaps there is indeed some magic here to see
she thought the second time around


***

On Takaba by night:

Seems these days I don’t hear anything
Only silence and bullfrogs singing off the hills
Filled their ponds, their houseboats
Where are they in drought?

***

Takaba was cool (work wise) - except then it got hot (security wise) and we had to bolt out the back door to get back to Nairobi: via Moyale. Driving from Takaba to Moyale is only 5 hours usually, but it took us about 10. We braved the mud pits! Then we smartened up and just drove through the brush to avoid the mud pits, the drivers keeping top speed as not to sink... Then the epic of the flats began.

Two at a time - with only one spare (which is half flat, so really only a quarter of what we need)!

What to do? What to do?
(.... interlude under the only shade tree for several hours, talking human resources....)

Ah - Ha! What is coming over the horizon? That's a Matatu (local public transport, see photo below)! And oh what luck, the driver of this truck is a friend of our driver and he lends us his spare tire. And we are off again, with the matatu spare that is too big for our car and rubs at every turn. And our original spare is low on air, but it'll have to do... Ah - Ha! What is that bumping down the road? It is a BIG truck, and a nice one! They have an air compressor and are very nice and fill up our half flat spare... And we are off again...

As we roll into Moyale (a boarder town with Ethiopia that hasn't much to offer) the spare from the matatu gets a leak! But we tax the tires and keep driving, leaking and all, to the hotel and park the car at the police station just as the tire becomes too flat to move.
We have dinner at the Prison Canteen "under da shades" and da stars.

(Just a note, the next day I fly back to Nairobi and having been in the bush eating goat meat for a week, Mario takes me out for Sushi. On the way to the restaurant ... you guessed it! We got a flat tire! 4 and a half flats in 36 hours. That's a pretty good record.)

Back to Moyale, the boarder town with not much to offer, as I mentioned. Moyale by night is not an exciting thing. But we let sleeping goats lie...

This is our hotel in the day time. The hills in the background might be Ethiopia. They might not be. Who knows.

Moyale Intenational Airport, Gate 3, Boarding for Nairobi
The pilot inspects the plane before takeoff and seems to spy a problem.
"Is it gonna fly?"

Not until we get the cows out of the landing gear!

Just kidding! That's not really our plane (and that's not the pilot, it's our watsan engineer). That's a dead plane on the airstrip (no African air strip, dare I say airport, is complete without a dead plane or two, see blog of "Welcome back Congo").
We made it back to Nairobi safe and sound.

***

On Kidnapping:

Each time it seems to get closer; hoping it's an illusion
like when the moon is on the horizon and it seems bigger.

*** *** ***

A few months ago I had a blog about “Kenyan Quickie” where I described my rapid adventure in toilet building in the camps that developed when people were displaced due to fighting and violence after the 2007 Kenyan elections.

So… 1 year later. Those political folks in the elections found a “power sharing deal.” There is a report into the violence on the table, with ultimatums of a Kenyan tribunal or the Hague. Personally, I can’t help but be skeptical. Is there real accountability, real responsibility, real closure? I can’t help but feel sad; those who were harmed, stay harmed and they are the ones who want this peace, who want reconciliation, who just want to live the life they have or had, who want their sons and cows and sheep and houses back. There’s a lot of fear and a lot of hope and my biased, skewed and skeptical view won’t really help fix the hurt either way. And neither will all the 378 latrines we built.

And yes, so 1 year later and we are closing our programs in that area (Nakuru) because it is time - the emergency is over, things are getting back to "normal" and the situation is outside our meager mandate. You can only save the world if you're focused, you know. But we built a lot of latrines and showers and water supply systems, some trash bins and distributed a lot of tools, jerry cans, soap, water filters, and other hygiene products and to top it off a lot of hygiene promotion (awareness raising). So what was the impact? Why do we do what we do? Well, we just did a survey to find out – and here is what we found. In areas where we worked people are twice as healthy (or half as many general illnesses); there is 3 times less diarrhea for children! People are 4 times more likely to drink potable water. So that’s nice.

Like I said, you can only save the world if you're focused.

Nairobi - not so bad

Well life isn't so bad in Nairobi. Nai-robbery. We live in a nice neighborhood, in a nice house that comes with a dog (nice german shepard who's called Leo). We have a normal life. We go to work and come home to be together and say "how was your day, honey?" I cook, I do the dishes, he does the rest of the cleaning and the finances. Sadly typical, yet comforting.

Don't worry anyone, this is our house, inside a walled and guarded compound. You can't see this from the road.



Welcome, as you come in the door (which is on the side of the house)- here is what you see.

Walk across the room and look back, you can see we have a sweeet loft upstairs area....

And looking down from the loft on the living room.
But just when you get tired of the normal life- jonsing for some camel meat, scarred donkeys, diarrhea, cold showers, and the wind in your hair - a field visit to bases saves the day... Mandera, Garissa or Nakuru (and Mario heads to Somalia), just enough to spice it up enough to remind us why we love our jobs: the dusty, bumpy roads, big camels (cute and tastey), dirty kids (cute and funny), land cruisers, cement mixes and sunburns.

Just a little publicity

I am settled in Nairobi now, quite lovely and simple time for me.
I promise that this weekend I will put up some photos of my house and work!

In other news, Science Magazine (only the coolest science geek magazine in the world!) did a little article on careers in hydrogeology. I was included cause I have a cool career! With a photo. Nice.

Science Magazine - Careers in Hydrogeology Article

Good publicity for the organization and cool for me and my ego!

my brain

Brain Lateralization Test Results

Right Brain (66%) The right hemisphere is the visual, figurative, artistic, and intuitive side of the brain. Left Brain (34%) The left hemisphere is the logical, articulate, assertive, and practical side of the brain

Overall I appear to be Right Brain Dominant!

Right brain dominant individuals are more visual and intuitive. They are better at summarizing multiple points, picking up on what's not said, visualizing things, and making things up. They can lack attention to detail, directness, organization, and the ability to explain their ideas verbally, leaving them unable to communicate effectively.

-----------------------------------------

According to Darwinian theory, optimal evolution takes place with random variation and selective retention. The evolution savvy individual will try many different approaches when faced with a problem and select the best of those approaches. Many historical intellectuals have confessed their advantage was simply considering/exploring/trying more approaches than others. The left brain dominant type suffers from limited approaches, narrow-mindedness. The right brain dominant type suffers from too many approaches, scatterbrained. To maintain balanced hemispheres, you need to exercise both variability and selection. Just as a company will have more chance of finding a great candidate by increasing their applicant pool, an individual who considers a wider set of options is more likely to make quality decisions.

-----------------------------------------
Are You Right or Left Brained?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Welcome back Congo

Bienvenue au Congo! Where the time flys better than planes. Where the solution to everything is a laugh, and if you forget that you'll end up in tears. Where everyone suffers - from the suffrance.
Where you can find views uninterrupted by mens hands or feet or cars or houses. Where the forest simply goes on and on and ... is just simply there and green. Where the forest is a jungle.
(The texture on the photo above are trees and trees and trees! The texture on the one below is termite mounds!)

Where termites rule. Spaced approximately 50m apart termite mounds made the plains dimply. (Googlearth Rocks! Which you may already know if you're on Facebook and are my friend. Which I scorned in the beginning, as I scorn Harry Potter, but am now addicted to, although I still scorn Harry Potter.)
Geeky side note: Termite mounds are facinating. The dirt in the mounds makes good bricks because it is fine particles that are well sorted. They say the mounds can often indicate water at some accessible depth (if i had some time and money i'd like to check this out and see if this is true).

Some things never change- like bad but beautiful roads. Like driving on barely a road, horn blasting to warn those up ahead to jump out of the way and you come through a wall of elephant grass to find five ladies blancing on the side, up off the road with fish in a plastic basin on their heads, or men scrambling with their bicyles. Like talking about the crops that are growing as we pass. Like kids swimming in the river in the rain with their mamas washing clothes on this rocks. Like bridges that are barely bridges on the barely roads. Like never getting stuck (at least for very long) despite the barely roads and bridges.
Like the ubiquitous humanitarian bumper sticker.
No arms on board.

No arms. No feet. No noses. No regrets for that matter. No radio (just the VHF for communication, where sometimes you find the BBC). No sense. A little non sense.

A short history of me and the magnificent Democratic Republic of Congo: After Peace Corps in Guinea I got my first job with this NGO in DRC, based between Shabunda and Baraka in the province of South Kivu in (see Flashback post) in 2005, where I worked for a year. At the end of 2005 I went to another region of Congo (because it is soooo huge and has such difficult logistics, no roads, we have 2 missions here) to help them out. That was South, in Katanga province, where I stayed only a month (but where I met Mario). Then I headed off to Mandera in Kenya, where I worked for another year, and again at the end of 2006 I came back to help out again in Baraka and Fizi - back in South Kivu. Somehow in 2007 I never made it here. Then in 2008 I have been here for 2 months doing an interim stint as the Coordinator. Whew. I just can't stay away, I don't know why... it drives me bananas! I don't like the music (Well I do dig JUPITER (see photo below)! I am tired of corruption (but it's getting better). But something here keeps bringing me back.... the jungle, the vrai bush, and the laughter perhaps.

Kenya Quickie

I was back in Kenya for the past 2 months (February and March) for a short mission being the WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) program manager of the emergency response programme for Kenyans displaced by the violence after the elections. (Mission in my job means "assignment" - I assure you it has nothing to do with "missionaries" nor "top secret" missions.)

What a great time. I have learned a lot and working in camps, which has been a new challenge. Here are some photos. I am a bit cautious to comment on generalities, as the situation is quite political. I guess what was important for my life was the pace of work, the lessons learned from colleagues, analysis, protection discussions. Most memorable were the smiles of those who'd lost everything or who brought it all with them, stories and laughs and wondering where the truth is...

........

One man hid in a well for 2 days to escape people who were trying to hack him up. Then one day I saw a crow on phone line and it was wobbling, on the wire, all ruffed up with feathers sticking out all which ways, back and forth, about to fall off, back and forth.... And I thought of this guy in the well.

So with their houses burned they ran with nothing, or from just a fear of burning, rumors of burning they packed up their things. Some with nothing. Some with everything.

It is easier to show you those that packed it all up ... their chairs beds tv antenna , literately the kitchen sink.

Still smiling.

Not exactly welcomed to the stadium in Nakuru, but also not refused.
The showground had more people, although this picture was taken before they moved into this section of the camp. A bit strange like a ghost town for ghosts that have never been.
Some didn't feel safe in places like the showground or the stadium.
Some settled at polices stations all around the country, like this tiny group of ramshakle shelters made as just a roof from plastic sheeting with dirt floors. They felt safer there, the police to protect them, but they had no tents and rarely food.
In this camp (shown above) a baby had been born with no medical care available, the photo below was taken inside one of these tents with the mother (behind) and her sister holding the baby.
...............................................................................
My work entailed building a lot of toilets. I have never built so many toilets and showers and clothes lines in so little time. Here is a view from a top the water tanks looking out over the showground upper site - as you can see the folks had moved in by this time.
These are the water tanks from which the previous photo was taken. We, with the Kenyan Red Cross built the tanks and water supply. Good collaboration thanks to some speical people.

Good bye Afghanistan

Last thoughts on Afghanistan:

Watched the snow road block and fall
smelled the river from far too far
while others rushed and resigned to crawl
and irrigate almond lands
burqua eyes blind to mine
i lived outside them all.

...........................

So I am a bit late (as always) but then that's fine. So I was so sad to leave Afghanistan,
but I think my dad was pretty happy that I am gone...

Mario too was happy to go, but I know it was bittersweet for him and parts of it he loved... like Ghor where we spent a romanic week. (As romantic as Taiwara can get).

Back in December - We flew out praying it wouldn't snow. And it did - but not enough to keep us down. Too many memories to tell you here....

But we had time for one good party.... actually i am cheating this picture is Ophelie, from quite a while ago...

A road trip... a bit belated

Back in March I took a cool trip to Hazerajat.
Yeah, yeah.... I posted the Hazerajat photos but here are some from the road trip.

Here I am at a stop on the road for a photo op. In the US this would be called a scenic outlook.
Bandi Amir... the coolest lake in the world. I guess it has built up these walls around with minerals and now it is an elevated lake. Cool huh? I wonder if any geologist has studied this. You can find on google earth.

There are a million russian tanks from here to there anywhere you go in Afghanistan.

Me and the budda hole in Bamian. The buddist built it (duh) and the Talebs destroyed it and finally it fell. UNESCO is rebuilding it and there was some rumors of it being replaced by a lazer show. . . . I may have mentioned that before. What a serious waste of money, when there is no electricity for the people there. Nor water, and only food for some of the year.

This is Ophelie and the trucks. As we was rollin' down the road. Our trip was hard and long....
But our ass didn't hurt as much as this guys ass.

Flashback to Shabunda

Every now and then we recieve here in Kabul the Gaurdian Weekly.

A few weeks ago I was flipping through, looking at the photos and I saw a bridge that I knew.
I looked again, and said yes indeed I have crossed this river many times on a motorbike and on foot (as I decended to cross on foot because sometimes the tires of the motorbike would fall through the decaying planks) during my time in Congo. This is in the middle of no where, the bush - so imagine my surprise. The bridge is the only part of the road wide enough for a truck to pass - not that it could support a truck at that time, so we all crossed on foot, the drivers pushing the motorbikes, sometimes pulling them out of holes in the planks. The photo shows that the planks on the bridge have been replaced since my time there.

We protected springs in the area and some of my most fond memories are of cruising through the jungle on a one lane path on the back of a motorbike with a 10 kg HF radio on my back. We paid men to carry over 200 50 kg sacs of cement, 1 and 2 at a time up this road on their bicycles. Wow. What lovely memories.

I read the article. It agreed with the stories told to me during my time there and had fantastic photos. The names of the towns are where I have spent nights with rats chewing on my toes or running across my pillow. Where I have tasted smoked monkey meat and porky pine (neither are recommeded). Where I have climbed down ravines with no trails to a mucky spring. Where I have eaten many many plates of foo-foo (manioc goo) with chicken and palm oil sauce with lots of hot peppers. Ahhh. what faboulous memories.

Please check it out.
Article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/congo/story/0,,2162182,00.html
Photo gallery: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2007/sep/01/congo?picture=330664279

It is worth the read and the photos - the roads, the people, the airstrip. Some of the folks hanging around the airstrip are ACF staff - or were at one time.

Taiwara

"On the road again,

goin' places that I've never been

Seein' things that I may never see again,

And I can't wait to get on the road again."

- Willie

Trayle is takin' ova!
Taiwara district is in Ghor province, in central Afghanistan. It is pronounced like you would say "whore." We have a great WASH program there, but no expats had visited for over a year. Matteo, the Head of Mission and I had the pleasure of going in June... And it was SUPER!
Hills are red and yellow and green!

We flew first to Chagcharan, the capitol of Ghor spelled Ghwor on Google Earth, by Beechcraft airplane and then we drove for 8 hours to Taiwara, a district in the south. We drove and drove and we reached the top of a big hill to get out and rest (and pee). This hill was in the middle of no where, nothing to see for miles and miles. Wahkil, the logistics and administrator for the Taiwara base and our guide, announced this was the last place there was phone coverage. So we all had fun making calls. I called my dad, said hi and chatted about investing money. Totally surreal at the end of the world.

Coming into "downtown" Taiwara. Oh the hills are alive with color.

Villages are small and filled with mud houses and compounds. River run through as this year is a good year in Ghor. Lot's of water after 8 years of draought.

I just love this photo, taken by Matteo. The men are the program manager, Taher, and a local elder. Of course nothing captures the biggness like being there.
Here's the team, Taher, Abdullah (with his hands in the well) and Matteo, fixing a broken pump we found as we surveyed the water points.
This may be the only forrest in Afghanistan. Not really, just the only one I have seen. That is Abdullah with me. It is so unbelievibly green for this raw country. The results of this good rain year. After a long walk through the only woods I've ever seen in Afghanistan, we ate some tasty apricots. Afghanistan grows a lot of apricots.
So there are some images of the last region in which we work here in Afgha! You have seen Kabul, Hazerajat and Ghor! what a beautiful place. Maybe some more creativity to come, but with this workload I just am getting by....