Water Like Gold

Ole Kukan sat on our porch yesterday morning and, in the process of chewing the news, let us know that women in his village are walking 2 hours each direction for water these days. They fill jerry cans on the backs of donkeys then begin the 2 hour journey home again. Over the next couple of days, the water is doled out like the precious commodity it is. Not a drop is wasted.

Have you ever seen how dirty your hands get milking a cow? Or handling a goat? Or just living life in a place where water doesn't flow out of taps on-demand?

I wonder how many times I wash my hands in the course of a day...

I'd like to think I'm pretty careful with water. I consider myself aware. I'd like to believe I'm good about electricity, as well. We don't leave lights on that don't actually need to be on. We've changed most of our bulbs to energy-savers.

Still, I've never walked 2 minutes for water, let alone 2 hours. It's there. I take it for granted. It's a basic human right, right?

Actually, no.

These days, when I'm brushing my teeth, I'm more aware than ever about not letting the water gush down the drain as I stand there luxuriously working on oral hygiene. I turn the water off quickly, not just because billions of people are without the basic provision of clean water. I turn the water off quickly because I know these women. I know their names, not just their faces...

I turn my tap off as an act of respect.

Young Concerns (or May Her Tribe Increase)

Heather and I read her science and history lessons together daily. I'm happy to do this rather than have her watch the teaching on DVD like she did last year because we get to stop along the way and talk about the things that interest us... particularly the things that interest her.

Now, as I learn with Heather, I am really quite surprised by the little revelations of what makes her tick.

As it turns out...

Topsoil being washed away breaks Heather's heart. Rain forests felled wantonly make her cry. Loss of wilderness and unchecked development make her angry and/or terribly grief-stricken. Pollution makes her crazy.

I am stunned by this 10 year old's heart for Creation.

I pray blessings and blessings and blessings and hope big hopes that her generation will do so much better than mine.

Watching Africa Blow Away

We drive across the East African plains and wonder at the moonscape they have become. Along the roadside, the trees stand brittle and covered in a heavy coat of dust. The faces of the little shacks along the way are the same. Fine, powdery dust has lifted easily in the dry wind and painted everything a lifeless brown. The monotony of color is strange and disturbing.

Even from my desk by the window in my bedroom at our house set in a watered garden, I can see the dust. Carried on the tired wind, it billows against Mt. Meru, the quiet volcanic mountain that our city sprawls at the base of. Instead of misty blankets of moisture, Meru is shrouded in a gritty cloud of dust. Though I don't see it coming through my window, I feel the build up on my keyboard and stop to wipe it often.

Africa, it seems, is blowing away.

Even the elephants are skinny. We passed four or five herds as we traveled last month and I was saddened by their sunken contours. BBC reports that livestock and wildlife alike are dying in droves. We pray, asking God to protect them and to not allow human life to be lost.

"The worst drought in ten years." That's what they're saying.

Now, everyone knows that East Africa experiences cyclical droughts, but this is different. A combination of man-made and natural factors have collided to set up the perfect non-storm. No rain of significance over the last couple of years and 2 harvests in a row have failed now.

"And, what will happen?" I wonder to myself. Will East Africans stop felling the trees that draw their rains? Will the farmers finally learn to protect their topsoil by ploughing with the contour of the land instead of up and down the hillside? Will the pastoralists who have lost so much grazing land reduce their herds and stop stripping the fragile environment right down to bare earth?

And will the world notice?

The middle aged folks in wealthy western countries are the kids who passionately attended or at least watched the Live Aid concerts back in the mid-eighties. Stirred by famine in Ethiopia, Bob Geldof's dream event raised about 150 million pounds in financial assistance. Those who hold the world's discretionary funds have been here when they were young and unstoppable.

But what came next? HIV/AIDS followed on the heals of famine and while it spread quietly at first, it spread quickly. By the end of the nineties, Africa was in full blown crisis and Bono was asking that we drop the debt. In a staggeringly massive effort of evil, Rwanda invited her citizens to kill each other and, en mass, they did. Since then, that bastion of stability, Kenya, has shown the real shape of her heart by dividing along tribal lines and killing several thousand of her own during elections. And Zimbabwe... What a mess. Corruption of all sorts all over the continent? Yes. All the while, global warming and global economic crisis have piled their burdens of destruction onto this continent that should be plenty able to feed herself.

Geldof's concert-going activists are tired and in financial crisis. They've grown up and have all the mortgages and car loans to prove it. They have kids with expensive education bills and many of them have lost their jobs, their homes and/or their retirement funds. Their sure foundations have crumbled underneath them and there is fear in its stead.

BBC can tell us this is the worst drought in East Africa's last decade, but does anyone out there have the stamina to help her face it?

I sit at my desk, watching Africa blow away, and pray mercy.

laundry line meditations

wendell and i commune outside the laundry door
my feet planted softly in the dewey grass
back warming in the gentle morning sun

i move up and down by the basket
stretching wide sheets and
smoothing faded t-shirts
across the sagging lines

from some part of my memory
wendell speaks
lilting lines
songs of earth and sun and field

in the rhythm of my work
i take pleasure
and feel joy

these damp garments
smell beautiful
(like redemption)

the shiny dryer sits
abandoned

and I worship you
with this small kiss for creation
hanging my laundry
in your good sunshine

Caring for the Lovely Land

(I posted this yesterday over at Wild Hope's blog...)

Out on Wild Hope's land, large areas have been plowed improperly in the past. A big rant about the damage done all over Africa by poor plowing practices won't help here and the question remains as to why small farm owners plow up and down the slope? Don't they know that the topsoil is being stripped off their farms? Don't they realize it is eroded by wind and water, poured into the streams and eventually dumped into the ocean where it kills the coral reef and puts all other marine life at risk?

Possibly there is no concern for marine life so far away. Few local inland farmers would have had resources available to travel to the coast and be impressed by the warm Indian Ocean. Understandably then, there may be little regard for her, but aren't they driven sufficiently by their own desire for successful farming to keep their topsoil?

But it's just not always as simply as that.

Plowing properly requires that you move horizontally across hilly areas instead of creating furrows that run straight down. And while this seems obvious, the actual size and shape of your farm plays a big role in whether this is an easy task to accomplish. To plow along the contour and not up and down may seem like a simple task. But if your farm, like all your neighbors' farms, is a skinny strip of land that was divided out for you by family, it's quite possible that your skinny strip is short on horizontal and long on sloping hill.

To plow properly you will have to manuever the tractor in tight turns that are difficult to accomplish while pulling a plow. It's so difficult that the whole idea starts to feel way too complicated to be worth it.

"Topsoil shmopsoil. Reef? What's that? My kids need maize and beans NOW."

This weekend, Wild Hope is taking a few friends to a seminar that teaches biblical care for the earth as applied to farming. God's heart for the earth is big and passionate and we are thankful that we can begin planting the seeds of that heart among some of our friends here.

We're also thankful that we can be a blessing to the Wild Hope property.

Last week, Byron sat on a tractor with a local neighbor and corrected past damage that was done through improper plowing of land on the land we now oversee. He just didn't want to watch another rainy season come and channel any more of the topsoil away. So Byron and our Tanzanian neighbor worked together to re-shape the land, restoring her natural lines as best they could.

They were pretty satisfied with the result.

And here's a little secret: when the job was done and the land was returned to her naturally protective shape, Byron says he thinks he heard the earth that he was standing on let out a soft sigh of relief.

It's just a small start, but it feels good to bless the very ground of Africa.

Christmas Eve

It's a warm and somewhat humid afternoon here in Tanzania and we are looking forward to our evening together.

Christmas Eve. So nice!

Sufjan is playing in our living room. Yes, we've been spinning the discs of the Sufjan Stevens "Songs for Christmas" cd. I blogged 2 years ago about this album and how much it pretty much saved my Christmas of 2006 :-)

We've also been listening to a mix of stuff that the boys brought home. They keep putting Tallest Man on Earth on and asking me how I like it. I like it a lot. Sounds quite a lot like my Irish friend, Brian Houston. The boys tell me that this is because Tallest and Brian both sound like Bob Dylan. Ok.

When the boys arrived safely on Monday afternoon, we officially had all we needed/wanted for Christmas. We are content and joyful and that's a rich thing.

I've posted a photo of one of Heather's wrapped gifts to highlight, as I did last year, my recycled wrap. I love using up everything we have on hand as we wrap our little presents. This year we didn't have so many plastic bags and I've been SUCH a good girl about remembering to carry my own bags to the shops. But we've used all we did have, as well as the pretty picture pages from an old calendar and other such things.

That reminds me that Jesse is reading "Serve God: Save the Planet" by J. Matthew Sleeth. He says it's really good so now I want to read it after him.

This post is just meandering around so I will close for now with wishes that this Holiday will be meaningful and sweet for all.

xx

Questions as We Approach Elections

Is it ok to kill babies if they aren't wanted?

I don't really think so.

But that's not the only question I have as I consider the up-coming elections.

I don’t know but... Do you that think that slashing forests and mutilating mountains and killing oceans is ok with the one who carefully created them?

I sometimes wonder if unilateral decisions to go to war might possibly feel to the Prince of Peace a little like rebellion?

And when we keep our neighbors in inner cities trapped in cycles of under privilege and lack of hope, does this feel to the Father of the Fatherless like an overt ignoring of Biblical mandates, not to mention a brazenly revealing flash of hearts of stone?

Personally, I’m against abortion. I’m particularly appalled by partial birth abortion, which is just a tidy term for “Kill the baby as she comes out but before we look into her face.”

Yet to say I will kill other people’s mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and other people’s babies with the bombs I drop, or to agree to knowingly ravage Creation to support my lifestyle, or to leave my neighbors in drastic want-- this doesn’t actually strike me as a more righteous stand.

To pillage the earth, ignore the poor and willingly go into war are issues that, along with the killing of unborn babies, I have to take very, very seriously. I just cannot pretend that this is a one issue election.

Maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe these issues don't all need equally careful consideration. I don’t pretend to have a brilliant mind.

I would, however, aspire to have a brilliant heart.

Our Stuff

The Story of Stuff is a cleverly made and very well done little video that helps us understand where our stuff comes from and where it goes. More importantly, it points out how our stuff impacts people, economies and the environment along the way.

Please, please take an earth friendly break and watch it. The video is 20 minutes long so make a cup of something you like and pull up a chair. The pause in your day will be good for you :-)

Watch it HERE

PS It's going to be easy to watch where there is fast internet. It was a bit more of challenge here in TZ.

Intelligent, Fairly Traded, Eco Sensitive Beauty

Just a big shout out to my friends at Anti-Body. Check out their new site and order away!

Recycled Wrap

I thought you might like to see my recycled wrapping paper. I've done this before because I feel so bad about all that paper being used when I have other things that will do. Even though I use baskets and my Trader Joe's bags at the shops and the market, I do end up with overflow at times that requires I bring home plastic bags. So this year we have a lot of blue plastic grocery bags on our gifts under the tree. They are double bagged so you can't see through them and tied off with a ribbon made from whatever I have on hand. Some have the tops chopped off (like the package in the photo) and some still have handle tops sprouting out above. (That way I can use them again when I return to the market.)

You might not agree, but I think they look cute :-)

Plastic Bags are from Hell

Honestly, plastic bags have got to be the scumiest scum of the earth. They block drains, plug rivers, hang in trees, blow across the plains and, (this one was new to me,) they poison the earth! There are so many of them ground down into the layers of soil here in Africa that they are actually souring the beautiful earth and inhibiting the ground from bringing forth to her fullest potential.

I first moved to East Africa in 1984 and most everything we bought came in a tin or was wrapped in paper. Very few items were wrapped in plastic. Many things you simply carried in your own basket. Like fruit and vegetables. We carried baskets to the market for those.

The good thing about tins is that they were used over and over. Re-cylced, they were. A tin of margarine or tomato paste, when emptied, was made into a little oil burning lamp for someone's house. The paper was burned, or it biodegraded into the earth.

It wasn't perfect. But it seemed manageable.

Slowly by slowly, as my Kenyan friends say, the slippery plastic bag grew in popularity and power.

Now, 23 years later, I find East Africa covered in the slimy things. It's really GROSS!

"No, no, no!" The governments of East Africa are saying "NO!" They have decided that these plastic bags are ruining the land at many levels and they are actually legislating against them. I'm happy about it, though I wonder to myself how they will enforce it. Like getting the cafes in southern Europe to enforce the no smoking in public places rule. Good luck!

I guess they can move toward the closure of factories that make them. I don't know about how all that works and I do hope that families don't get run out of business by it. But I am rejoicing in the idea of baskets, jute and cloth bags enjoying a resurgance of chic.

On a positive note: There are cottage industries in Africa and India that harvest plastic bag litter and fashion them into lovely articles that sell for a helpful profit. We have even been looking at what we could do with them in an income generating project here though if they are going to get scarce it may not be viable.

True confession--Even in my righteous indignation I am a regular forgetter of my basket when I go to the shops :-( Grrrr! I'm trying to be better.

Laundry in the Sun

It's 91 F right now in Pasadena. That's 33 C.

I feel like I should apologize to those who are enduring real winter weather.

The good thing about the heat is that I can put our laundry on the line.

Though I love the way these big gas dryers work so quickly here in the States, I get the most satisfied feeling when I see the laundry drying in the sun.

Shocked at the Pump

Every time I fill the tank here in LA, I get so shocked!

$40! How can that be??

I look at the numbers displayed on the pump and I'm sure it's not right. I try to get the pump going again. I'm sure it cut off by mistake. This leads to me topping it off, which I'm not supposed to do. But it's the shock that makes me do it.

Whenever I filled the tank in Portugal, it always came to $100. And that was using diesel, which is the cheapest way to go there.

So, yea, I'm shocked at the pump. It's nice to have pleasant shocks from time to time. But I'm not going to let this "cheaper" fuel lull me into thinking I don't have to be careful about how much I drive. It's not just about my money spent, is it? The state of the environment is a whole different shock.