As a board member of Aid Africa, Im pleased to see Jeff Sach's share how African is making progress. Connecting local people to health care is just one of the things Aid Africa does as part of its part in this journey. Read this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/breakthrough-in-saving-li_b_12102...

Got an email from our Ex Director Peter Keller the other day sharing with the board that we received over $5000 in year end donations and that more than 3 times of what came in last year for the same events. This is really exciting because the work is growing and poorest of the poor in Uganda are really being helped. Im proud to be part of this organization And thanks to any of you who helped us reach this goal. Job well done Peter. 

Aid Africa was created after we went to Lira with Ken Goyer in May 2005. Most of our supporters and contributors were from Eugene where Ken lived and from Los angeles where Peter Keller lives. We've expanded geographically since then.

This photo is of Donghyeon Park, an engineering student at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA. He and the members of his team at school created the improved well drilling bit he is holding. But he's not in Claremont in this photo. He's in Gulu! Donghyeon was in Uganda with me last September to see if his design worked well. It did and it was very successful at digging a well about twenty feet deep. We're having some more made with just a few modifications.

Dong is from South Korea, studying in the U.S. and volunteering in Uganda. And we have another volunteer, Erika, working with us for a year who is from Germany. Laurence was volunteering with us a while ago - from Great Britain. Over the last four years we've had over forty people come to visit us in Gulu from all over the world. People come, they see what we're doing and they take home wonderful stories about our work.

I see in reports from our e-mails and blog posts that people in Armenia, Turkey, Russia, Lebanon, Australia and New Zealand, among other countries are interested in our work.

Now that's a World Wide Web – and it includes you!

Thanks to people from all over the world for caring for the very poor people in Africa.

Five nurses from the U.S. with the organization Sustianable Health Abroad will be arriving in Gulu,Uganda around January 23rd. During their last visit, the rural Ugandan community they work with requested that they return with the knowledge and funds to build fuel-efficient and smoke-reducing stoves.

They will connect with Aid Africa, staying for three days with us and then they'll take a truckload of our bricks to the village they work at near Masindi. They come to Uganda once a year to do projects in this one village. They'll assemble about 175 of our Six Brick Rocket Stoves in all with our help. These stoves are designed to burn cleanly, thereby leaving Ugandan homes with cleaner, healthier air. One of the things Aid Africa does well. More info on our website at www.aidafrica.net. 

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2011-12-20/clean-water-matt-damon...

Well, this isn't exactly a Christmas time greeting. Do you know where your clothing donations to Goodwill Industries wind up? The stores receive many times more goods than they can sell.

Most of our used clothing is baled and sent to the ports of third world nations around the world. Then they are trucked to major trading centers – like Kampala. They are about five feet tall and probably two and a half feet wide, packed tight with every kind of clothing. Merchants can buy them and take them to their stores in the smaller cities to sell.

There are three grades. First there are bales of infant and juvenile clothing. Then there is "regular" wear clothing. And then there is the upscale stuff. I don't know what the criteria are. Actually, much of the clothing arriving in East Africa is coming from China. They have lots of good used clothing there, too.

What you see these children wearing is the "regular" grade. I see t-shirts from every university and promoting every commercial product you can think of. Once in a while I see something very inappropriate, but I can't say anything about it. It would just embarrass them no end. What you see on these children is probably the only clothing they have. They'll wear it until it is way too small or just in shreds. 

There is an effect on the local economy with all these cheap foreign goods flooding in. It has put many of the local tailors out of business. They can't compete with the low prices merchants charge. I'm not making a judgement here. It's a trade off – lots of cheap clothes that people really need versus jobs that people really need. What's best? I don't know.

Off the subject, but... You might also notice these kids show signs of ringworm. It spreads so fast!

 

People in the rural villages have little to give to their friends and family, but they share what they have. 

 

Our field representative, Freda, was interviewing a very poor woman with five children to find out how she and her family were doing. Freda noticed there were several children from other families hanging around to play. Freda asked her what she would do if these children were there at dinnertime. “Oh, I’d feed them, too!” she said. That is a remarkable spirit of sharing and community for someone who has so little. She is unsure she will have enough food to feed her own family, but she is willing to share whatever she has with her neighbors’ children.

That’s the Christmas spirit all year ‘round.

Merry Christmas and a brighter New Year to you from our Ugandan staff, our U.S. board of directors and our volunteers spread across the globe.

We all need water – clean water.

This woman has walked to the local spring to fill her jerry can. In her village of Cet Kana, she may have walked a half hour or more  to get here. In other communities it may take a lot longer.

You can see the water is not clean, but is the best available without taking all day. In the background are the people waiting to get their water and it is mostly children. Women and children do most of the physical labor.

There are lot of places in Uganda where the water level is high enough where people can dig a hole like this one and and it will fill with water. The water is clean – at first. But maybe the outside of her jerry can isn't very clean. Or children playing around the edge pollute it. In just a couple of days the water is not okay to drink anymore.

It's likely that as many as fifteen people or more live in her family compound and she is taking two five-gallon containers back. That's not nearly enough for the three generations she is living with. But more water means another trip taking an hour or more from her already busy, burdened day – and another jerry can.

Aid Africa is working to provide clean water. We sheltered this very spring. and now it looks like this.

Yes, they can drink that!

There are so many things to talk about in this photograph.

The bicycle is a sign of wealth. Few people in the hinterlands can afford one. The huts are typical homes for everyone living in rural Uganda, and even for many families inside the cities. The door to the hut is metal! It is made from the cans of oil distributed by the U.N. when these were IDP camps. The orange fruit on the ground are from palm trees and aren't really edible. Kids like to chew on the fibrous, slightly sweet inside. That kid with the big belly isn't fat. And he probably doesn't have Kwashiorkor, a dietary problem caused by lack of protein. His belly is probably full of worms. Look at the trees in the background. There are few of them and they are mostly palms – not good for cooking fuel. See how that ground with the grass is higher? The women keep their family compounds clean and like to define their yards, just like we have flower beds. The two women sitting in the background are Aid Africa staff, Gloria Amaranch and Priscilla Apio. One girl is holding a bottle of water, a gift from Priscilla. Even empty bottles are prizes for the children. 

The big stack of grass is what I want to talk about. Grass grows to be eight to ten feet high in the countryside. Walking though it is just about impossible because it is so dense and it has sharp edges. Maybe that's why we call them "blades of grass." Ouch! Take just a step or two into them and you disappear. Women and children have to be very careful when they are alone. There may be someone lurking in the grass, waiting to harm them.

When the dry season comes in November, the grass dies out and turns brown. That's when it is ready to harvest. It's not planted as a crop, because it grows everywhere – it's a weed in the planted fields. Some shorter grass is used as fuel to start cooking fires, but this tall stuff is worth a lot more. If you look at the hut in the background, you see its roof is a little ragged. The bundles of grass will re-roof that hut. It provides a waterproof barrier and it hangs over the mud brick walls just the right distance. If the eaves are too short or the walls too tall, rain will hit the walls and erode them. 

Carrying those bundles into the city will bring lots of money. Locals can sell a bundle for about two dollars. But take that on your bicycle to Gulu and you can get maybe six dollars! Money is not common in the villages. There are no paying jobs and no stores that accept money. It can be a two day walk or more to the city, so that's a big trip. If they sell something and have money, they can buy clothes or a jerry can or other essentials. There's nothing frivolous in these people's lives.

Thank you for your support of Aid Africa.