Sunday, October 24, 2010

A day on the water

Yesterday Tom, Blayne, Ronald, John Baptiste and I headed up to the village. We met at Christophe's house where we began our descent down the steep mountain to get to the shores of Lake Burera.
Our village family!

Bernard in his new pink shirt!

Baby carrying baby.

Walking down the mountain singing, "I am a soldier...because of education!" The kids all helped me because I kept falling. They would say, "Sorry! Sorry!" as I would be laughing at myself.

On the wooden boat about to cross the lake to go to the island.

Christophe and John Baptise on the boat.
A view of the village from the lake.

A woman and her child in their canoe made from a tree.

Muhurabura Volcano

The Island and a rainbow.

Christophe and I on top of the island.

200 people used to live on the island. Now there are 18.

That face holds so many stories.

Arkansas River Valley kids

Family portrait.


Children of the island. The boy in the middle wearing the yellow shirt is in charge of taking the children by boat to school and home every day.

Dreaming about kayaking and camping...

Our trusty boat which we had to scoop the water out of.


The climb back up the mountain to the village. Christophe referred to me as his daughter and helped me up the steep and slippery rocks.
Our friends waiting for us to get back.


Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Amazi...Maji...Mazzi...Water

“Water is life, and because we have no water, life is miserable.”
- a voice from Kenya

Today is Blog Action Day 2010 (blogactionday.change.org) and the topic is water. 1 Billion people do not have access to clean drinking water...that is 1 in 8 of us. This can lead to many challenges in a persons every day life. 5 million people die every year from water-related illnesses. There are about 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and unsanitary living conditions. 90% of these deaths are to children under 5 years old. These 4,000 water related deaths per day are the biggest killer of young children taking more lives than malaria, HIV/AIDS and measles. At any point, half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from a water-based illness.

In Africa, women and children are typically in charge of collecting the water. More than 40 billion hours are spent a year just walking for water. Most of the sources are miles away which prevents the women from holding a job and the children from attending school. To make matters worse, the water that they spend all day collecting will most likely make them sick. Around 1.8 million of the water-related deaths are because of diarrhoea. This lack of water and sanitation causes a parasitic disease called schistosomiasis. This disease is caused by a worm found in irrigation ditches and river/lake water that has been urinated or defecated in. Schistosomiasis causes 280,000 deaths to 88 million children under the age of 15 per year. This causes them to miss school due to illness and a total of 443 million school days each year are missed by children due to diseases. Attending to the family's water needs leaves little time for education which is vital to changing the future of developing countries.
The jerry cans that they carry weigh about 40 pounds. Imagine an 80 pound child carrying 40 pounds of water at least 3 miles per day. I have attempted to help a child carry their water jug and I hate to admit it, but it was extremely heavy and I wasn't able to carry it that far. Imagine again a woman with a child on her back, a 40 pound jerry can of water on her head and bunches of banana's under her arms for hours.

Different organizations are committed to building safe water wells closer to villages. This way, children can pursue their education instead of spending 6 hours en route to the clean well and women have more time to pursue opportunities to improve the quality of life of their family.

"We are also working to empower women around the world, because women who gain access to sanitation, who are freed from the burden of walking for hours each day just to locate and carry water, will find it easier to invest time and energy in their families and communities." U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said last March at the National Geographic Society for World Water Day.

The world's water crisis is something that we can all work together, around the world, to tackle. There is no reason why children are dying each day because they are thirsty or why a woman cannot get a quality education because she spends her whole day walking to and from a water well.

Most of this information was found on the following websites. For more information and ways to help, go to:
www.charitywater.org/whywater
www.endwaterpoverty.org/the_issue
www.stopchildpoverty.org/learn/bigpicture/health/water.php
www.unicef.org/support/index.html
www.blogactionday.change.org

“What if there are children who will suffer somehow because I failed to obey God? What if my cowardice costs even one child somewhere in the world his or her life?”
- Richard Stearns