Tired Road Warrior

Time recently listed Will Allen as one their 100 Most Influential (10 May 2010).  His kudos were written by Van Jones (founder of Green for All and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress):

“At one time, the term urban farm sounded like an oxymormon.  No longer.  A new movement is sprouting up in America’s low-income neighborhoods.  Some urban residents, sick of fast food and the scarcity of grocery stores, have decided to grow good food for themselves.

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The following short notice by Mark Jenkins appeared in NG (Apr 2010) concerning an easily, low-tech water treatment procedure:

“Retrieve a discarded water bottle.  Tear off the label and fill with any water that’s not too murky from a creek, standpipe, or puddle.  Place the bottle on a piece of metal in full sun.  In six hours the UVA radiation will kill viruses, bacteria, and parasites in the water, making it safe to drink.

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The following is an quoted from the book “Mountain Beyond Mountains:”

“Farmer (Paul) was learning about the great importance of water to public health, and he was conceiving a great fondness for technology in general, also scorn for ‘the Luddite trap.’  He liked to illustrate the meaning of that phrase with the story of the time when he came back to Cange (Haiti) from Harvard and found that Pere Lafontant had overseen the construction of thirty fine-looking concrete latrines, scattered through the village.  ‘But,’ Farmer asked, ‘are they appropriate technology?’  He’d picked up the term in a class at the Harvard School of Public Health.  As a rule, it meant that one should use only the simplest technologies required to do a job.

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I left Provo on Friday.  Luckily, I didn’t have to drive.  I was physically and emotionally beat.  I needed a break.

After I crashed in Page AZ for 36 hours, the crew from Engineers Without Borders (EWB) headed out to the lands of the Navajo Reservation.  The first day we spent with tribal members living in the very isolated Navajo Canyon.   The area is a Garden of Eden, blessed with several springs (of living water).  The families living there ned help with further developing their water resources.  In the past, there had been water development, but much of the infrastructure is now deteriorated.  The old orchards need pruning.

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I just got back from a whirlwind tour of orphanage/schools, technical secondary schools, and several villages in rural Uganda.  We saw much of country in a little over two weeks.  Between traveling and visiting, we put in 12-hour days, visiting Masaka, Kabale, Bubwa Island (in Lake Victoria), Katosi, Iganga, Tororo, Kaberamaido, Lira, Gulu, and Karuma Falls.  The poverty is overwelming, but the Ugandan spirit endures.

School children near Tororo

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