Browsing all posts in Feature.
Silent Outrage
The water is clean, but the container is not. Piped in by gravity flow from over 20 miles away, this water has traveled far to get here only to be recontaminated in the very final stage before drinking. Containers like these were championed by government and large aid agencies as being better than open containers [...]
World AIDS Day
Article by Dan Haseltine for Blood:Water Mission
I was not really prepared. As I turned the corner, my eyes took it in, and I felt my lungs fill with air, and let it all go, as if I had just beheld a great waterfall, or a mountain vista. It was nothing of the sort. But it [...]
Native American Flute
A number of years ago I found myself inexorably drawn into the realm of woodwind crafting. A tangent of one of my lesser known, and much neglected skills – flute playing. I started off with classical flute in the 6th grade. No, scratch that… I started off with recorder when I was 7 years old. [...]
Marsabit
Marsabit. It’s a bit like Mars, but without the long trek across the solar system. Though after nine spine-rattling hours along a dusty, boulder strewn road, I staggered out of the 4×4 Land Rover looking as if I’d just spent a month in space. The landscape was an incredible mix of red volcanic rock and [...]
Helpless
Water flows out of the well and onto the dusty hands of 50 or so laughing school children who crowd in to get a drink during a break between classes. The school is a cinder-block shell along a sandy road deep in the bush of southern Mozambique and the very fact that it exists at [...]
Surviving 32…
I’ve been 32 years old for about a month now and I have to admit to being a bit disappointed. I expected that somehow being 32 would have imparted a bit more maturity into my life; a little more temperance. And yet having spent the better part of 6 hours the other week hiking a [...]
Purchase with… Prudence
If you haven’t been in on the latest trends in charity PR moves of the last 5 years, you may have missed out on “Product (Red)” and other similar concepts. (Red) products are an attempt to get our consumer-driven society to aid impoverished nations without actually having to sacrifice our consumeristic lifestyle. The basic [...]
Water Is Life
The human body is 70% water. A 3% loss of water can reduce a person’s ability work by 20%. For your average 60lb school-age child, that amounts to a standard nalgene-bottle full of water. Under exertion, the human body can sweat twice that in an hour. Now imagine sub-Saharan Africa, 90 [...]
Of Course…
Late last year when traveling through a village in central Kenya Jena and I came across a 4-year old orphan girl suffering from club foot syndrome. For those of you not familiar with club foot, it is a birth defect that affects the feet, typically causing the feet to turn inwards and sideways. [...]
Communities of Hope
The following is a post from the Blood:Water Mission blog which I wrote while in Africa this past May:
I’m in Africa. It’s been 9 years since I last set foot on this continent and I must confess that I have missed it greatly. There is a certain rhythm that pulses through this continent; a [...]
