Living in wealthy nations, with all of our conveniences and opportunities, it is often very easy for us to forget that over one billion people in our world live in mud huts or cardboard shacks.  Daily thoughts center not on the latest fashions, the performance of a favorite sports team, or what is on TV tonight, but rather on, “what can I do today to find a little food for my family”.  This reality came into focus for me yesterday as I took a whirlwind tour of the villages surrounding Hanang mountain in Tanzania. 

With my time rapidly disappearing in Tanzania, a quick, last minute trip was put together for me and two girls who are here volunteering at Cradle of  Love.  Gabriel, our driver pointed the ADRA vehicle on the road that leads south of Arusha, for what he said would be a three hour journey to Hanang. Five hours later, after being jostled over the dusty, bumpy roads, we pulled into the ADRA office for Hanang. “The roads were bad today”, Gabriel said   It was 10:00PM, but we were greeted warmly by the ADRA regional director and others of his staff, who had been alerted of our arrival.  They remembered me from a previous visit to the area about two years ago and welcomed me as though I was a long lost friend.  They also asked about my daughter Sarah, who had visited the district a year and a half ago when she was doing a volunteer stint in Tanzania to prepare web sites for Cradle of Love and ADRA Tanzania.  They all remembered what a good football (soccer) player she was, from the game that she had joined in on when she was there.  It was family.  Even though it was late, they took us to a local restaurant where food had been prepared.  As we shared a meal of chapattis, vegetables, soup and chicken we talked about the plan for the next day’s tour.  We would visit schools, villages, water taps and a friend that I had made on my last visit to the area. 

Even though there is a large population of Muslims living in the Hanang area, and the biggest news story of the day was how the Danish embassies were being sacked in various parts of the world by Muslims who were angry over a cartoon that had been published in a Danish newspaper, there was no apparent animosity towards Denmark in the District of Hanang.  Over the last four years, an ADRA program, funded by the government of Denmark has transformed the daily lives of the people of Hanang.  Tapping in to a strong source of  water Hanang mountain, ADRA has, with the cooperation and participation of the villagers, built water storage tanks all over the region that fill up each night to distribute water to hundreds of taps placed strategically to villages, schools and cattle watering troughs around the mountain in a wonderful gravity- fed system. The water project has been followed up with pit latrines at all of the schools in the area as well as intensive health education and HIV/AIDS awareness.  Amazing as it may seem, a large portion of the local villagers are completely unaware of how malaria, and other killer diseases are acquired.  In some villages in Africa, NGO’s have tried to breeze through with their western teachings of how disease transmission happens with little success.  Belief systems, that have been passed down for centuries and are interwoven with culture and tradition are not easily set aside.   However, with the confidence and trust that ADRA has established with the people by bringing life-giving, pure water to their villages, the new information about health and disease has been  received with belief and acceptance.  It is another prime example of the importance of integrated development programs where the NGO stays in the region for an extended time helping with a variety of poverty-reduction strategies. 

Our day started in the ADRA office where a group of about 25 ADRA workers gathered together for worship and the day’s announcements.  All of the staff were Tanzanians.  Some were working on the water and sanitation program, others were health workers.  All seemed enthusiastic and eager to get out for a day of work in the villages.  Our first stop was to be one of the schools where ADRA was teaching the students about HIV and AIDS as well as other issues about health and disease.  But as we made our way out to the school, the photographer in me had to have our driver stop so that I could take a a few shots of farmers in the fields.  This is planting time in Tanzania.  While there are large farms in the country that do use modern machinery, the vast majority of the land is cultivated using the ox and plow.  After gaining permission, I spent a delightful 5 minutes in the field documenting the ancient method of tilling the soil.  I discovered later in the day that many farmers are too poor to even have oxen and they must contract with oxen owners to plow the field for them.  The fee? Half the harvest.  If they could only get past the hurdle of owning a pair of oxen, a cost of about $200, most Tanzanian farmers could double the food production for their families.

At the school, we visited a number of classrooms where students were getting a review of how HIV is transmitted.  Most already know, but a repeat of the information keeps a constant reminder in front of the minds of the children.  Most of the students in the upper grades will soon reach the age where they may become sexually active.  The more they hear about HIV/AIDS, the more likely they are to be careful.  ADRA Tanzania promotes abstinence and faithfulness to one partner, rather then handing out condoms.  Many NGO’s have discovered that in many parts of Africa, condom programs do little to prevent the spread of the disease.  Even if they are used, they may not be used properly, or may be reused or shared and the virus still spreads.  Voluntary counseling and testing, and then abstinence and faithfulness have proven to be the better program.  Still, behavioral change, and village customs remain the biggest challenge to overcome.  In many rural areas of Africa there is a sexual freedom that is not often talked about.  The approach that ADRA is taking that teaches women their rights, and the absolute necessity to remain faithful to one partner who you know to be HIV negative because of the VCT that you have done together, is the only real way that infection rates are going to be reversed. 

The next school that we visited touched my heart deeply.  Besides being a day school for the local town, it was also a boarding school for about 100 students.  Growing out of a burden that one of the teachers has for the physically disabled, the school had done a survey of the surrounding area and encouraged families to send their blind and other physically challenged children to become integrated into the school, as boarding students.  Up until just a few decades ago, physically disabled children were not likely to survive infancy in many parts of Africa.  Even today, the stigma that is attached to having a disabled child often means that a family will keep the child hidden away from society.  This school is a real breakthrough for the area and a real blessing for the students who have been given the opportunity to attend. 

As we entered the classroom for the blind students, they all stood and greeted us.  The walls were covered with hand made posters that used protruding edges, grooves, and bumps to teach the students math, science and geography.  We got a first hand demonstration of how the students did their school work using plastic grids that contained small frames each with six small impressions to help guide the students to make the various dots that make up the Braille system for the alphabet, punctuation, and numbers.  Some of the new students worked cautiously and slow.  Those that were in grade six were able to “write” amazingly fast!

The classroom had one Braille typing machine that was shared by all of the older students.  After a good demonstration of how it worked, the teacher asked if there was any way that ADRA might be able to help out with getting more machines for the students so that more students could do their homework and class work using the machines, rather then the plastic grids.  It is a very common thing, wherever I go to be asked if ADRA could help with this or that.  Sometimes it becomes so common that you find yourself giving a standard answer that is hopeful, but non-committal.  But, seeing these enthusiastic students so eager to learn, made me encourage the ADRA staff several times throughout the day to prepare a small proposal to ADRA Canada for some Braille machines for these kids, trying to make their way to self-sufficiency.  Stepping into some of the other classrooms, we saw that self-sufficiency in action as we witnessed blind teachers who had graduated from the program, who had gone on for further training, and were now back at the school teaching the sighted students!

ADRA had come to this school to build pit latrines and do health training.  But all of the ADRA staff have been so impressed by the excellent work that the school is doing for the disabled kids that they want to do more.  I hope that we will be able to help.

Our next stop was in a village where an ADRA health team were giving health and HIV education, right under a tree.  Four teams go out from the ADRA office each day for this type of instruction.  One of the things that they are teaching the people is about malaria.  It came as a shock to me to find out that many of the people they are working with have no idea how people get malaria.   Malaria is an evil disease that not only makes people too ill to work their fields or take care of their families, but also causes about three million deaths each year, mostly young children, with about 90% of the deaths occurring in Africa. Education, and treated mosquito nets would drastically reduce that number.  But even though the nets only cost about 5 dollars, they are too expensive for a large percentage of the population.  I tried to imagine how I would feel as a father, living in a mud hut in Africa, knowing that I could protect my children from death with a bed net that only costs 5 dollars and yet not be able to provide that because everything that I make must go toward food.  The ADRA program in Hanang will soon be providing subsidized nets to the people in their district.  The bed nets from ADRA will only cost about 50 cents and that should make it more available.  For those that cannot even afford even the 50 cents, ADRA will simply give them.  How valuable is a life?  What expense would we go to save one of our own?  Five dollars is a small price to pay to save a life!   

Our next stop took us to the construction site of a new water tank that will service several surrounding villages.  I was amazed to see how far this tank was away from the mountain source and took a photo of one of the workers, with Hanang mountain in the background to show just how far the underground tubing had been laid.  While ADRA provides the materials and expertise, the local people have provided the labor.  This helps them build ownership of the system and will ensure that they will keep it maintained, long after ADRA leaves.  Over the years critics have tried to claim that Africa is in the mess that it is because the people are, “just lazy”.  The amazing dedication that the local people of Hanang have put into this project proves the fallacy of such claims!  The back breaking work under the hot sun in the fields that I witnessed wherever we drove, is more then  many of us might be willing to do!

From the construction site we drove to one of the taps where villagers were filling their buckets from the gravity-fed system.  Only a short time ago these people had to walk several kilometers every day to fill their buckets with murky, contaminated water.  Now  pure drinking water is just a few steps from their huts.  It always amazes me to see how such a small investment in people can revolutionize their lives.  Now, not only do they have better health, they are able to water their animals, irrigate their vegetable gardens, have more time to work their fields, go to school, and engage in income generating activities.   

For our last stop of the day, they took me out to visit Catherine and her three children.  I had met her last time I was in Hanang and had interviewed her about how the water taps had changed her life.  My heart was touched as she told me about how she used to walk the three kilometers to the closest source of water every day, and walk back with the water on her head.  Many of the others in her area had a donkey and were able to at least use the donkey to carry the water.  But Catherine’s  husband had abandoned her and her children a couple of years ago and left her with nothing. She had moved back to her family’s plot of land and had built a small hut made with mud, plastered to sticks.  She invited me inside the hut to see what it was like on the inside.  I was very impressed with how neat, clean and organized she had made her mud home.  We gave her some small gifts of cash as we were leaving to help her with her struggles, but as we drove back to Arusha, I felt impressed to do more.  In discussion with the local ADRA leaders, it was determined that the thing that may help her the most would be to buy her a cow.  This would not only give her milk products for her family but a source of income as she sold some of the excess.  Over the years as calves came along, she would have more to sell, or could also sell one of the calves each year for more income. 

I liked the idea, and as I left Tanzania I gave Max Church, the ADRA Tanzania director, enough funds to buy Catherine a cow.  It felt great to be able to help someone in need, in a way that would be an ongoing help.  Some months latter, when my daughter Sarah was in Tanzania, I asked her try and stop in and visit with the “lady with the cow”, as I had come to call her, having forgot her name. Even though her name had slipped my mind, she had not.  When you help someone, you make a connection with them.  You think of them, you wonder how they are making out.  I wondered how the cow was doing and how much help it had been to her and the children.  I told Sarah that if she found the woman, and if the little project had worked and she had made good use of the first gift, that I wanted to follow through and give her some more help.  Sarah found the “cow lady” and visited with her for an hour or so and took pictures of her, her children and the cow.  All was going well, but she of course still had so many needs.  We gave her some more support and with the assistance of the ADRA Hanang office, had used the funds to purchase ten sheets of  roofing material which she had used to build a new mud house, this time one that would stay dry during the rainy season.  


Now I was back in Hanang, and was excited to be able to visit her again and check on her progress and perhaps help her some more.  As we drove up to her place I tried to imagine what the new house would look like. 

Catherine was home.  She had gotten word that I was coming and had stayed close to the house.  She had been sick for the last three days with what she believed to be Malaria.  Today had been her worst day. Without taking the blood test she had purchased the medicine for malaria from a small stand in her village, and had taken the pills.  The problem with purchasing medicine from your neighbor, rather then a pharmacist, for an illness that has not been diagnosed by a trained medical person or at least some type of test, is that often people do not get the right medicine or good advice on the dosage to take.  As the ADRA health worker who was with us, unwrapped the small newspaper package of pills, he asked Catherine how many she had taken.  Based on the advice of the shopkeeper, she had taken twice the amount of the very strong pills that she was supposed to take.  She had been vomiting all day, which may have actually saved her life, as it prevented her from fully absorbing the overdose.  She asked if we could take her into the hospital for proper tests and we were happy to do that.  Before leaving we had a chance to visit with her three children. 

The oldest girl, Pascalina, had caught my attention on my last visit.  Even though she spoke no English, she had been able to communicate with me well.  While most children in Africa bob and weave in front of my camera, she had stood before me with calmness and dignity.  A beautiful smile and a brightness in her eyes spoke of a keen intelligence that I was somehow able to make a connection with.  I had used her photograph in several projects and had become familiar with her face.  It was nice to see her again.  She had grown some, but still quite small.  I was pleased to hear that she was in grade 6 and doing well in school. It was something that I was concerned about.  Did her mother have enough money to buy the uniforms and school supplies? I took her photograph again as well as a shot of her brother and sister, and the new house.

What can I say about the house?  While it was much better then what she was in before, and I am sure that the tin roof was a big improvement, especially on cold rainy nights, it still looked small and poor.  I wished that I had been able to give her a larger gift so that she could have had a nicer home.  Once again I was impressed with just how little some people have.  Back at home, we may sometimes feel frustrated with our situation in life.  We may have our little crises and worries.  We may feel sad when someone gets the promotion or opportunity that we were looking for.  We may f eel anxious about our relationships, our accomplishments, our goals.  With each little setback and disappointment our cynicism and despondency may grow. We may look longingly at our neighbor’s car, house or latest gadgets, and may even go into debt to keep up.  And as we age we may become depressed that we have not been able to do more, experience more, have more.  But when you stand before a small mud hut and realize that this is a home for four people, and that there are one billion people out there that are in the same situation, it becomes hard to justify our petty little problems! 

As we made our way back to town, I talked to Catherine through a translator.  I told her that I wanted to help her and her family some more.  What would be the best thing that would help her be able to make a good income.  After thinking about it she said that if she could just buy a couple of acres of land, that she would be able to raise enough crops to have a good income for her children.  My heart sank a little.  I wanted to see her be able to rise to full self sufficiency, but I was not sure I was able to buy her a couple of acres of land!  If only there was something else that I could help her with that would fit into the budget of a photographer.  I asked, "how much does an acre cost, near her house".  “Eighty thousand shillings an acre”, came the reply in Swahili.  I was stunned!  Eighty thousand shillings for an acre of land?  I couldn’t believe it!  While it may sound like a lot of money, eighty thousand shillings works out to be only about eighty US dollars. In California, and many parts of the Western world, an acre of land with a view like Catherine has from her house, would easily sell for $100,000 US, and here the going price was $80.  It has been my experience that some of the poorest people in the world, have the best view!

Even though the sun was about to set, we were to make one more stop.   Last Christmas as I sat around the banquet table, I was telling my extended family about some of my travels and the story of the “cow lady”.  They new I was going to be soon making another trip to Africa and some at the table decided that they wanted “in on the action”.  They wanted to help someone like the “cow lady”.  Money flowed across the Christmas table and it was now my mission to find three more ladies to help. There would not be time left in our day to find all three, but one of the ADRA workers in my vehicle knew of a widow lady with five children that was having a difficult time.  Her house was on the way back to town and so her hut would be our last stop.  We found her in her yard and she greeted us warmly.  The two children that played around her feet were thin and malnourished.  With darkness coming on we asked her questions about her life, and what would be the thing that could help her the most to make enough income to feed her family.  She already had a cow, and hardly had anywhere it could graze and so another cow was not the best solution for her.  She said, “a friend of mine is doing a good business selling tea, chapattis  and donuts at a stall in the market place.  If I could just somehow get a little business like that started I believe that I could make enough money to feed my family”.  We talked with her some more, took her photo and told her we would see what we could do to help her start her little business.  

Before leaving Hanang the next morning I left the ADRA office with enough money to buy Catherine her two acres and some more for bed nets, clothes for the children, and some seeds for her new farm. The wonderful people at the ADRA office assured me that they would work closely with the counsel members in Catherine’s  village to make sure that she would get a proper deed in her name.   

I also gave them enough money to get the widow lady some emergency food for her starving children and all of the materials and supplies that she would need to start her new tea shop.  Knowing that it would be put to excellent use here in Hanang, I also left them with enough money to help two other single mothers with something that would be appropriate for them and help them make money to feed their children.  I appreciated their  willingness to volunteer their time to my family’s small projects, when they are so busy with their large Denmark project.  They said that it would bring them happiness to participate.  They promised to email me with the stories and photographs.

As we drove away from the village my heart was full with good feelings.  It was nice to make new friends and play a small role in helping a few vulnerable families become more self sufficient.  There are over six billion people on this earth. About one billion people living in rich nations with good incomes.  Remarkably, that is the same figure as those, who like Catherine and the widow lady, live in extreme poverty.  If each one from the wealthy nations would only partner with one in extreme poverty, we could end this madness!

A book that I am reading, called “The End of Poverty”, by Jeffery Sachs, an economic genius who has been working with the problems of the poor for the last 25 years, lays out a plan of how it is possible to eliminate extreme poverty in our generation.  It calls for some very specific actions that need to be taken by rich governments, and the very wealthy of our societies.  As easy as it would be for rich nations to pull off this plan, so far it is not happening.  The worst offender of the plan is the United States. 

As we drove past one of the water storage tanks my thoughts drifted to the kindness of the country of Denmark who have been so generous to the people of this region, and how their were no protests going on in these streets of Hanang against the country of Denmark.  How I wished that the country that I lived in was as smart and generous as the people of Denmark.  How much better it is to make friends rather then enemies!  Silently I wondered how different our world would be right now, if the $500+ billion that has been spent in unprovoked military actions against  the people of Iraq in the last three years, would have been spent instead on making friends with people like Catherine and her neighbors.  Do friends lay road-side bombs for your vehicle?  Do they drive suicide missions into your structures?  How much more secure we would be today against terrorist threats, if we would have helped them overcome their problems, then by occupying their lands and killing their citizens!

Somehow, we must join together to, as called for in the book that I am reading, end poverty in our generation.  In doing so we might loose sight of some of the petty little problems in our lives and at the same time, make some great new friends!

If you would like to read more about the work that ADRA is doing in Tanzania, you can visit the website that Sarah made when she was here. It is at www.adratz.org