Ya herd? Using Micro-Loans to Raise Goats and Climb out of Poverty

Much has been written about the benefits of micro-finance recently, especially since Bangaldeshi Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank, won the Pulitzer Peace Prize in
2006. To briefly summarize, micro-finance is the provision of financial services to poor people in developing countries who lack access to the commercial banking system. For those unfamiliar with this world-changing concept, please allow me to explain in a personalized example.

David is a strong and intelligent 25 year-old Cape Verdean. He finished high school, but like most people on this small volcanic island of Fogo (“Fire”), there is limited opportunity for him to work or pursue his studies. Though he would like to start his own business, he does not have the capital needed to make the initial investment to get anything started. As a result, he picks up work with a small company that mines stone from the hard earth. But even this grueling work is infrequent, leaving David without a dependable means of income. He and his wife have started to build a house, but up to this point, they have not gotten beyond building a tiny room of concrete blocks; running water and electricity are still a dream away.

The nine inhabited islands of Cape Verde are small, barren and isolated. With very limited rainfall, few natural resources and little arable land, Cape Verde is experiencing hard times, especially during the current drought, which explains why there are more Cape Verdeans living abroad that on the islands themselves. It is a sad, but telling commentary on the depths of this drought to see such beautiful islands abandoned by nearly anyone that has the means to immigrate.

Unlike many of the islanders of Fogo, David does not have family members abroad that can send him money. He would like to earn a stable income and knows that he could earn a living by raising goats, as the goat milk provides an essential source of vitamins and the cheese can be sold to the local community. Once the goats mature and reproduce, the cheese production increases and the young goats can be sold off for a profit. There is land near David’s house that is perfect for grazing animals, but there is a problem: like many people in the developing world, David lacks the start-up capital needed to finance the initial investment. In order to buy 6 or 7 goats, he would need $900. For someone with David’s financial standing, taking out a traditional bank loan in Cape Verde (as is the case in most developing countries) is impossible, as the banks do not offer credit to the poor, many of which cannot provide the collateral required.

For millions, the only source of credit is the local pawnshop or a loan shark that charges exorbitant interest rates, sometimes as high as 1,000%! I have personally seen people in the favelas of Rio that have been threatened and beat up by these loan sharks when they fall behind on their payments. So this leaves David (and MILLIONS like him) in a precarious position, but thankfully micro-credit institutions have stepped in to address the needs of these local entrepreneurs by providing poor people with low-interest loans to start their own business and climb their way out of poverty.

While in Cape Verde , I discovered one such institution OMCV that is doing amazing work with micro-loans, as they were recommended to me by Peace Corps volunteers and local development workers. While visiting David on the slopes of the enormous volcano that towers over the islanders like a sleeping giant, I met Senora Isabel and her husband, who live next door. Three years ago, Isabel took out a $400 micro-loan with OMCV for the same purpose. With the profits from her cheese-making industry, she repaid the loan month-by-month, took out another $400 loan and then last year, due to her credit worthiness, was awarded a larger $800 loan. Today, she and her husband have a flock of 80 goats and a thriving cottage industry of making cheese! With the help of OMCV, they now sell their cheese ($2 a wheel) in bulk to large hotels on neighboring islands with more tourism and have expanded their cramped family shack into a more comfortable 3-bedroom home with a stove and electricity. They are now also raising chickens and can afford small luxuries like a radio, a bedspread and a set of dishes. As she happily recounted to me over a plate of delicious goat cheese, “When I first heard about micro-credit, I had no idea what it was!” She is proud to tell me how she repaid every penny of her loans on time and she and her husband are overjoyed to have found a means to work together to provide income for their family. As they told me, they are able to put some money into a small savings account that acts as an emergency fund, should the need arise.

Visiting David next door, I felt like I was glimpsing into the future. He has witnessed Isabel’s success and knows that micro-loans are the answer to his prayers. He is committed to applying his tireless work ethic to creating his own goat herd and cheese business and knows that by repaying his loans on time, he will be able to take out additional loans to further increase his success. Thanks to the donations of people like you, 100 Friends was able to finance David’s $900 micro-loan.

David, ecstatic upon hearing the news, pledged to dutifully look after his goats with the utmost attention, “as though they are my own babies,” he told me with a smile. This was especially touching to me as I have heard about the human-like qualities of goats: goats milk is said to be very similar to human breast milk, the bleats of many goats sound like crying babies and the eyes strongly resemble humans. Interestingly enough, goats were among the first animals domesticated by humans over 10,000 years ago in present-day Turkey and Iran; the domestication of goats allowed humans to move to more arid lowland regions, marking the transition to the modern era. As humans began to harness the stable food supply that goats provided, they were able to expand into new ecological areas and grow in communal size, which constitutes one of the most fundamental changes on human history. The worship of the half-goat Greek god Pan is further evidence of the goat’s influence on human history. Hopefully, the seven goats David purchases and raises with this micro-loan will allow he and his family to evolve to a more comfortable lifestyle, one free of hunger and hardship.

Best of all, when the money is repaid back into the OMCV fund, it will then be lent out to another local entrepreneur, allowing ANOTHER family to pull themselves out of poverty and create a better life for themselves. This magical, yet simple formula of micro-credit is changing lives all over the world and thanks to your help, the wheels will keep turning.

Attacking Malaria by Saving Lives With $2 Bednets

Malaria kills over a million people a year, yes one million! Last month, I walked out of my hotel and saw my local friend Steven lying under a palm tree, wracked in sweat and shaking violently. I didn’t have to ask him what the problem was; it was obvious he was in the midst of a malaria attack. Watching someone in the throes of an attack is a gruesome experience. Fortunately for Steven, I was able to help, but millions of others are not so lucky. After the one-celled malaria plasmodia have entered the body through the probiscus of a female mosquito, they travel to the victim’s liver, where they burrow themselves into liver cells. Over the course of a week, these parasites eat and multiply until they burst out of the cells and enter the bloodstream. Soon, the victim is gripped by anxiety, as though the body knows its immune system has been attacked. A sever fever and violent shivering are the body’s attempts to increase body temperature, in an attempt to kill off the parasites with heat. A sudden onset of chills quickly morphs into an intense sensation of bitter cold, even more traumatic for Africans that have never felt a cold winter’s chill before. They shake so hard and are so cold they often beg to be covered or smothered. Those without anyone to care for them or wrap them in blankets or coats simply collapse onto the ground, where they lie in a half-conscious state of convulsion. Hours later, when these painful, rhythmic waves of cold and pain have passed, the victim enters a debilitating period of exhaustion and weakness. After the attack has ended, the person is wracked by sweat, fever, pain and nausea – sometimes for days on end. Children not strong enough to withstand this battle (especially those without access to water or medical care) often perish at this point. Malnourished people are especially vulnerable to the ravages of malaria, as the disease slowly wears them down to nothing.

Preventing Unwanted Pregnancy and Environmental Degradation in Senegal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK9dU_scooQ
“It’s so hard to feed all of these hungry bellies,” I am told by Adama, a Senegalese mother of seven. We hear about the problems posed by overpopulation, but often cannot comprehend how this issue effects people on an individual level. Coming face-to-face with a malnourished family of nine is heart-wrenching. Due to the absence of reproductive health clinics, a lack of low-cost contraceptives and high infant-mortality rates, parents here are giving birth to very large families (here in Senegal the average is about six). Large family sizes place unnecessary burden on the parents to provide food and the environment to provide firewood and water.

By 2050, world population is projected to reach nine billion, a 38% jump from today's 6.5 billion; most of this global explosion will be heavily concentrated in Latin America, Africa and South Asia. The threat is especially serious here in Africa, where the population is expected to surge from 900 million to almost two billion.

In the developing nations that have effectively promoted contraception, the key to success has been the empowerment of women. Mothers need to be educated to make informed decisions, as research proves that even a few years of education has a great impact on controlling fertility rates. In fact, hundreds of millions of couples around the world want – but do not have access to – family planning practices; it is estimated that one third of the population growth in the world is the result of incidental or unwanted pregnancies. Over the past few months in West Africa, I have witnessed these realities first-hand, so I mobilized my resources, found an incredible local partner organization and created a plan to tackle both issues simultaneously.

The first step was enlisting the help of Tostan (http://www.tostan.org), an amazingly-effective NGO (non-governmental organization) here in Senegal. What drew me to them, besides the accolades they have earned from the international community, is the success they have had in creating community-based development councils. As many know, too much of international development is conducted in a top-down manner, with planners in Western capitals deciding what people in the developing world need to improve their lives. This approach is fraught with peril, as cultural realities and local customs are often overlooked or ignored altogether, resulting in failed projects and a growing mistrust from the locals of the very organizations that were created to help them. Fortunately, Molly Melching, founder of Tostan (and native Chicagoan), recognized this fact and decided to base her development approach around the training and mobilization of Senegalese women to become pro-active agents of change in their communities. Each village adopted into Tostan’s network undergo a 30-month Community Empowerment Program (CEP) wherein local women undergo a rigorous training session to improve their reading skills and are then instilled with strategies for leadership, decision-making, income-generation, communication, budgeting, social mobilization, etc. Upon completion, each village’s Community Management Committee (CMC) meets to assess their community’s needs and then seeks an effective means to affect the positive change. After the creation of these CMC’s, local communities have mobilized to build latrines (drastically reducing the occurrence of infectious disease), dug wells (to improve water access and quality) and built local health clinics (to provide health care in regions that previously had no such access). Tostan has also facilitated the creation of a 1,500 village-wide Tostan’s Empowered Communities Network (ECN) which allows these small communities to work together, pass along lessons of success and share their knowledge and fresh ideas with each other. Utilizing this network to launch a project ensures that the innovative ideas will be effectively spread on a regional basis.

As many know, addressing population control is a touchy subject, as there are many religious overtones involved. Unfortunately, these taboos have prevented the dissemination of contraceptives as well as ideas that would seriously help control the population explosion many countries are saddled with.

In addition, millions of women are seriously injured or die during childbirth, a statistic particularly troubling here in sub-Saharan Africa, where one in sixteen mothers will die giving birth in their lifetime.

Fortunately, there is an innovative new approach that is proving to yield results: CycleBeads, which is a pregnancy prevention methods using the Standard Days Method. Basically, these beads, in the shape of a necklace, provide a tool for women to keep track of their menstrual cycle and avoid unprotected sex during their fertile 6-day period of the month. The United Nations Family Planning Association describes it as “a portable, durable, and renewable calendar, the ring contains 32 coloured beads that represent each day in a woman’s monthly reproductive cycle. For a woman with a regular menstrual cycle that falls between 26 and 32 days in length, CycleBeads can identify when she is most likely to conceive. During that time, she and her partner either abstain from sex or use another form of protection.” More effective than a diaphragm and nearly as effective as condoms, this tool was developed by the Institute of Reproductive Health at Georgetown University and has been distributed worldwide to address over-population.

What really excites me about the use of these beads (except for the fact that they glow-in-the-dark for those dark intimate moments) is the fact that there is no religious objection to their use here. Senegal is 95% Muslim, but everyone here, including the imams, have given their support. This is especially important, as birth control pills and contraceptive injections have (erroneously or not) been blamed for health complications among local women, but there is no mistrust towards the beads, as the women understand this is simply a way for them to become familiar with the natural cycle of their bodies. To see a video featuring Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers in Haiti demonstrating how these beads work: http://www.4real.com/tv/details.asp?pageid=12

After speaking with the regional directors of Tostan, 100 Friends has donated $500 for the purchase and distribution of 500 of these CycleBeads to be distributed to fifty women in ten separate villages. From there, the techniques will be passed along to even more communities through Tostan’s Empowered Communities Network (ECN).
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Another issue that demands action is global warming and deforestation. One of the most simple and effective means of dealing with these twin issues is improving the wood stoves that people in West Africa use to cook with. Open fires cause many burns and health problems: over 1.6 million people die every year from respiratory diseases caused by smoke from wood stoves. On an environmental scale, wood fires are very inefficient in terms of energy and the soot from these fires contributes greatly to global warming, as the black noxious particles in the smoke increase the atmospheric temperature. Coupled with overpopulation, the collection of firewood is stripping the local environment of its trees and resources, which leads to desertification and infertile soil which in turn makes these families’ situations even more precarious.
Fortunately, there is a very simple and cost-effective way to address these problems: the installation of more efficient woodstoves. Instead of cooking over an open fire, round one foot-tall shelters (shaped perfectly for the pots the families cook with) are easily built from local materials. By surrounding the flame to reduce heat loss and the effect of wind, these stoves become much more effective.

Working through Tostan, 100 Friends is providing $500 to fund a training session for ten villages. Two community leaders from each village will be given a 2-day training session to provide the instruction and materials needed to install these improved stoves in their communities. Each of these twenty leaders will then train ten other community leaders within Tostan’s Empowered Communities Network (ECN) to build and maintain the stoves.

So in less than a year, this $500 investment will have resulted in the construction of 200 of these improved woodstoves. Every family utilizing these new stoves will use 66% less firewood, from 6 to 2 logs a day. They will also save about 2 hours in meal preparation due to the greater heat efficiency generated by the improved stoves. To put that into context, if each family uses 4 less logs per day, multiplied by 200 stoves, and 365 days, that equals 292,000 logs of wood saved per year! This will ease the deforestation threatening these villages´ survival. As for the time saved with these more heat-efficient stoves, 200 families x 2 hours per day x 365 work days is an extra 146,000 extra hours of time that can be devoted to farming or other income-generating activities, and that´s not even counting the time saved from foraging for firewood , an activity that is especially time-consuming in this part of the world.

It is amazing to see just how easy it is to stretch $1,000 into such a far-reaching initiative to tackle the issues of overpopulation, deforestation and global warming all at once. Your contributions are making the difference in these peoples’ lives, so keep the donations coming!

Addressing Guinea's Educational Shortfall: Operation Schoolbook Complete!

OPERATION SCHOOLBOOK COMPLETE!

Though there are a few government-commissioned billboards commemorating Guinea ’s 50 year anniversary of independence, people here do not seem to be in much of a celebratory mood. Though it is true that Guinea ’s independence from France united many tribes behind a strong feeling of nationalism back in 1958, the reality here today is not one of national glory, as this West African country ranks amongst the world’s lowest in terms of health, economic and educational indicators.

Another persistent worry preventing jubilant celebrations is the endemic political unrest here; in the five decades since independence, Guineans have endured coups d’etat, political purges, a repressive period known as ‘The Terror,’ guerilla wars, food shortages, mass violations of human rights, a ban on all private trade and a wide range of social unrest. There is pervasive fear that the widespread riots and street protests of 2008 will intensify in the coming months, leading perhaps to another coup.

Perhaps the greatest deficiency plaguing Guinea is the under-funded and woefully-inadequate educational system. Less than half of Guineans between the ages of 15 and 24 can read and secondary school enrollment here is only 39% for boys and 21% for girls (due to 75% rate of child marriage among the rural girls here). Guinea has never enjoyed a decent school system, which goes back to the days of French colonial rule. When the independence leader Sekou Toure rebuffed Charles de Gaulle’s offer to enter into a free federation with France in 1958, famously declaring, “We prefer poverty in freedom to riches in slavery,” the French departed, but not before looting the country of its resources, sabotaging its meager infrastructure, burning all of their files and canceling all investment and cooperation. As a result, upon independence, Guinea had almost no technical expertise and only 6 college graduates, which may be why their planned economy (without planners) was such a failure.

Besides the depressing educational indicators mentioned above, teachers are extremely underpaid, with some of the best being paid only $80 a month. Teachers I spoke with complained about extremely high class sizes– up to 150 students for an elementary school classroom, with kids squeezed in 4 to a desk. Many schools are not equipped with any textbooks; teachers are given chalk and a lesson plan and expected to “teach” the 100 kids in front of them. Without textbooks, rote memorization is emphasized, which stunts any critical-thinking skills and causes students to lose interest in their schooling.

The horrible state of the country’s educational system is directly linked to many of the social, economic and political problems here, as a population that has not received a basic education or developed any critical thinking skills cannot be expected to rationally address their problems or seek well thought-out solutions. After hearing about the challenges faced by a high-school math and science a teacher from a rural village called Wonkifong, I decided to apply the resources of 100 Friends to help address the shortage of textbooks and supplies. After getting a wish list from the principal, Operation Schoolbook was officially underway. I went to the textbook supply store in the capitol of Conakry and purchased 60 French textbooks (the country’s official language that most rural Guineans cannot speak due to educational shortcomings), as well as 200 textbooks for 9th and 10th grade physical science. In addition, we bought 200 notebooks, 200 pens, 200 rulers, 2 globes and 2 compasses for the teachers to use on the chalkboard. After schlepping the goods three hours to this little village, I spent the night on a mattress with lizards living inside (no joke, I could feel them squirming underneath me) and at the crack of dawn, I enlisted the help of a few students and a wheelbarrow to help me haul the supplies through the village to the school. The grand total for these supplies came to about $600 and upon delivery, I could see just how valued the donation was by teachers and students alike. The principal, a gentle man named Boubacar, handled each new book like a treasure and assured me that this contribution would make a lasting difference upon the quality of education at the school. As he told me himself, “Few things in this world have the lasting power of schoolbooks.” Words of wisdom indeed.

From the 9thand 10th grade students and teachers of Wonkifong that can actually learn science and French from a textbook, thanks to all of my donors. Your generous contributions are touching lives and it’s a profound pleasure to act as your dutiful conduit, even if I did pull a muscle in my back lifting the boxes of books!

African Field Report #2: Alleviating Infant Mortality in Guinea-Bissau

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-AbzvIxr88
(VIDEO UPDATE)
AFRICAN FIELD REPORT #2: Alleviating Infant Mortality in Guinea-Bissau
The Milkman Cometh!

You ever wonder what ever happened to the baby in the bed next to you at the
nursery?  Did he go on to become a doctor? Is she a race-car driver? 
It wasn’t until I landed here in Guinea-Bissau, a tiny impoverished
nation in West Africa that I pondered this question.  You see, Guinea-Bissau and
I share a common bond, but I didn’t discover this until I scoured the streets
of the capitol city Bissau for an affordable hotel room.  Since there are no
tourists whatsoever in this undeveloped country of one and a half million
people, the only hotels exist to cater to foreign development workers whose
organizations pay their expensive hotel bills.  After trudging through the dusty
streets for an hour with my backpack getting heavier by the minute, I was told
about a somewhat-affordable place on Avenida 12 de Setembro.  Ecstatic to
finally speak Portuguese in Africa, I asked the importance of this date, for I
assumed it had not been named in honor of my birthday.  I was told that September 12, 1974 is Guinea-Bissau’s
independence was recognized by Portugal.

But despite our common birthday, our destinies could not be more different.  I
was conceived out of the pure love of two wonderful parents.  Sure, I had a bit
of a tumultuous delivery; my mother still complains about my two-week late
arrival, but in the midst of placental bliss, I must not have gotten the memo
telling me my nine months were up. But upon my arrival, I received excellent
medical care, nourishing breast milk and a happy home.

Guinea-Bissau, on the other hand, was born out of centuries of conflict.  For
two hundred years, this region was home to the torturous slave trade between the
Portuguese empire and the African tribes that thrived from this shameful
practice.  This human commerce was so profitable that the region was coined
“The Slave Coast” and colonized by the Portuguese in the eighteenth century.
After hundreds of years under the yoke of colonialism, an independence movement
was born in 1956, but nearly twenty years of armed conflict would take place
before independence was granted. Shortly before its birth, its founding father
Amilcar Cabral was assassinated.  When Guinea-Bissau was officially born, the
Portuguese left the country en masse, and what remained was a struggling economy
beset with political instability and under-funded and inefficient health and
educational systems.

Since our shared birthday, while I have received nourishing food, wonderful
schooling and a healthy upbringing, Guinea-Bissau has been wracked by uprisings,
coups and a crippling civil war in 1998.  (As a sidenote: I visited a British
organization that is still clearing undetonated ammunition from the countryside
here that has remains from the civil war; farmers and children still lose
limbs and lives to these unexploded weapons). While many countries have enjoyed
economic expansion, Guinea-Bissau has been plagued by debt and a lack of social
services; today, roughly a quarter of kids here complete the sixth grade and
it’s per capita income hovers around $600 a year.  To make matters worse, this
country has become a transit point for South American cocaine shipments to
Europe, with many government officials involved in the trafficking, which
generates ten times the country’s national income.

Arriving in complete darkness in the absence of streetlights while crammed into
a station-wagon with nine other passengers, it was immediately obvious this
country is beset with problems.  Besides the fact there was a failed coup
attempt six days before my arrival when a military faction invaded the
presidential palace, there is virtually no running water in the entire country
and only electricity in the capitol city of Bissau.  Even here though, power is
spotty at best, as I learned while trying in vain to sleep in a sweaty bed.
While in the country’s second largest city, Bafata, I learned there is no
internet available in town - anywhere.  Imagine Los Angeles without a single
internet connection. 

But what is especially troubling about this country are the horrific health
conditions. The male life expectancy in the US is 75 years, but only 45 here in
Guinea-Bissau, so while I consider myself enjoying the prime of my life, that
baby in the crib next to me, if he were from Guinea-Bissau, would be only ten
years from his grave. 

That got me thinking about the babies here in Bissau that are born into such a
fragile existence.  In fact, Guinea-Bissau’s infant mortality rate ranks as
one of the highest in the world.  Over eleven percent of babies born here do not
survive their first year of life and twenty percent of babies do not live to
celebrate their 5th birthday.  Just think about that a second; imagine if every
child you gave birth to or knew had a 11% chance of dying before it’s first
birthday.  It’s a startling statistic.  As a result, many babies here are not
even named until six months after their birth, so as to avoid an emotional
attachment with a child with such a tenuous lease on life.  While funerals for
old members of the community are very somber events, the deaths of young babies
do not warrant big ceremonies.  The main causes of infant mortality are malaria,
acute respiratory infections, malnutrition and water-borne diseases.  

Another related health problem for babies and the entire population is AIDS.
While the nation’s HIV rate is much lower than many other African countries,
what is especially troubling is the “vertical transmission” rate from HIV+
mothers to their babies, a figure that stands at about 25%.  After researching
this problem, I learned that by treating the mother with a drug called Retrovir
during pregnancy and delivery and then administering the newborn with the same
drug for the first six months of its life can reduce to rate of transmission to
2.5%! 

In the process of searching out a local project that addresses this need, I
visited with officials from international health organizations, the European
Commission and the Maternity Ward at the government hospital (which was a very
troubling experience). Several people I spoke with in Bissau
raved about the same project: Clinica Ceu e Terra, which was founded in 2001 by
a Cuban doctor who has been working here for twenty years.  This clinic (which
translates to Sky and Earth Clinic) offers free services to more than 2,000 HIV+
women in order to prevent the vertical transmission of the virus to their
babies.  Without this clinic, there is no chance these women would be able to
afford the Retrovir or the powdered milk to feed their babies.  25% of these
children (500 babies) would be sentenced to a life with HIV, but thanks to the
wonderful work of Ceu e Terra, only 2.5% (50 of them) will inherit the virus.
That’s 450 prosperous lives spared.  Those are the kind of results I look for
before supporting a project!

Speaking with the director of the clinic, I offered to help on behalf of 100
Friends, at which point she let out a huge sigh of relief as she explained that
one of the clinic’s foreign donors had recently re-allocated its resources,
leaving her with a shortage of the fortified powdered milk the mothers feed
their babies.  I went directly to the supplier and purchased $600 worth of
product, tossed it in the trunk of a taxi and returned an hour later as the
Milkman Extraordinaire.  I also sought out two mothers that are in especially
dire straits and provided each with $60(over a months wages here) to spend on food for their babies, as
they are currently facing malnutrition.  

As I held baby Mamadou in my arms, it saddened me to reflect the uphill battle she faces.
I thought back to my own days as a newborn and more than ever, I realize just how blessed I have been.  I only hope that
with the help of clinics like this and through the generous donations of people
like you, Mamadou will live a happy, productive life in this challenging land of
limited opportunity.

Adam Carter's AFRICA AID #1: Sweetness Helps Low Blood Sugar

Welcome to Africa!

This is my first field report from my humanitarian trip to West Africa.
Here is a video intro:
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=3UgrWX0UJqg

AFRICAN AID #1: Sweetness Helps Low Blood Sugar

On the eve of my recent birthday, #34, my thoughts centered on my child hood hero, Walter Payton, the record-breaking Running Back for the Chicago Bears. As a child, I idolized #34 for his amazing blend of agility, speed and power, but what really impressed me as I matured were his off-field attributes: grace, dignity and compassion. Though involved in local charities for years, he became a spokesperson for organ donors after contracting a rare liver disease in 1999. On that day when “Sweetness” was laid to rest, thousands flocked to Chicago's football stadium to watch, while countless others, watching from afar on TV felt touched by his spirit.

In honor of his legacy, as I tururned 34, I christened this “The Year of Sweetness.”

Soon after my arrival here in West Africa, wandering Senegal's bustling and overcrowded capital Dakar, I attended a UN-sponsored information session about diabetes, which is growing at an alarming rate in Africa. Though the disease was never seen on this continent a century ago, there are now over ten million people suffering from the disease today and estimated to be twice that by 2025! Though millions suffer from consequences of the disease, such as amputations and blindness, countless others die of diabetes before even being diagnosed with the disease. Around here, insulin is a health cost many cannot afford.

As I stood looking on, I watched a man frantically begging the officials for insulin. Much to his chagrin, the workers told him they were only dispensing information, not insulin. Dejected, he sat on a bench with his head in his hands. That is when the spirit of Sweetness swooped in; call it deus ex machina, NFL style. As a Type 1 diabetic, the most serious form of the disease, Komla's survival depends on injections of insulin to avoid life-threatening hypoglycemic reactions. As he pricked his finger to test his dangerous blood sugar level, I could see that we did not have much time to lose. Komla and I then embarked on a seven-hour journey through the city in search of his special insulin. Since it was Saturday, many of the hospital wings were closed, though one of Komla's nurses that has treated him in the past directed us to a pharmacy that might have it in stock. But at all of the five pharmacies we visited, spread out throughout this hectic city, we were told the same thing: due to the limited shelf-life of the insulin, they only ordered it when personally requested. We were able to order some but relied on temporary injections to keep Komla's blood sugar levels from reaching a critical stage.

Watching the insulin enter his weakened body reminded me of a withered plant that suddenly comes back to life after a nourishing rain. Suddenly, this worried man who minutes earlier had nearly been hit by a car due to his weakened eye sight and desperation looked up at me and smiled.

“Thank you my friend. You have no how much better I feel. Just when I think God is finished with me, he places help in my path to restore me.”

Komla's story is laden with difficulty. As a teenager, he started suffering from a melange of maladies, such as drowsiness, heavy breathing and bloody gums. Since his diagnosis seventeen years ago, his sight has worsened, twenty-two of his teeth have fallen out and he suffers from skin and foot problems. In 2005, he fled his native Togo after his political violence swept the country after his president's death. He traveled to Mali and then to Dakar in order to study tele-communication and is set to graduate from Chiekh Anita Diop University in three months. Sadly though, there is no government help for diabetics in Senegal (or Togo) and no health insurance companies will cover him based on his condition. This puts Komla in a perilous situation until he can graduate from university and look for work. He has relied on the help of a few individual foreign expatriates in Dakar to help him buy his insulin (and buy dentures for his teeth), but the American military officer that has helped him the most is back in the states for a few months. I am currently researching projects that provide insulin to needy patients in Africa, and have found a program sponsored by the International Diabetes Federation to see if Komla might qualify for assistance. But for the time being, in the name of 100 Friends and my generous donors, I was able to buy our suffering friend a supply of insulin to last him until his graduation and/or the return of his benefactor.

The next day, when Komla was back to his usual jovial self, we shed our benefactor/recipient role and spent the day as friends. As we sat on the nearby N'Gor Island eating fresh grilled fish, I told him about how my favorite childhood teacher had recently undergone an amazing recovery from diabetes after undergoing a kidney transplant. We also spoke about the new African hero Barack Obama and my childhood idol Walter Payton. Komla wisely reflected that these three men, each in their own way, provided him hope for the future.

“But Adam, I have one question for you? How did you know that I am also 34 years old?”

Laughing, I assured him I had no idea. Must be Sweetness' spirit looking down, I said.

Thanks for Making the African Fundraiser a huge success!

VIVA AFRICA!! Many thanks to all of you who came out to enjoy the Afro-Cuban Rumba Fundraiser at Las Tablas in Chicago! The fundraiser was a great success, with over $600 raised for my looming humanitarian trip to Africa. It was wonderful to bring so many great people (including some of my childhood friends such as this motley crew pictured above) together for such a worthy cause.

African Musical Legend Habib Koite and I

AFRICAN MUSICAL LEGEND HABIB KOITE RECENTLY INVITED ME TO COLLABORATE WITH HIM WHEN I VISIT HIS HOME COUNTRY OF MALI, IN WEST AFRICA. CHECK OUT OUR BACKSTAGE VIDEO:

Water is the Gift of Life [Maasai Mara, Kenya]

Water is the gift of life. We hear that often - but ask anyone who has suffered months of drought and they will tell you, indeed, this truth is more powerful than we might ever imagine.

Every day we are bombarded with statistics about how many people in the world are experiencing certain hardships; twelve million are refugees, over a billion live below the poverty line and countless others are deprived of adequate health care. But without putting a face to the statistic, we often experience a sense of resignation in the face of such unsettling facts.

I used to feel that way about the water shortages plaguing so many people in the world. I had read about how nearly 450 million people in 29 countries currently face severe water shortages today and by 2025 (when the world’s population increases by another 3 billion), as much as two-thirds of the world population could be water-stressed. But here in America, homeowners water their lawns for hours at a time, fire hydrants spray plentiful water onto the street and people leave faucets running because they are too lazy to turn them off. Americans may know that somehow water is important, but many certainly don’t treat it as the most valuable natural resources in the world. I have witnessed the perils of water shortages on previous trips to Africa; once while hitch-hiking through the sun-baked country of Namibia, I was dropped off for the night at a river where I could purify some water and set up camp. I walked to the sign that promised Red Gorge River, but arrived to find a dry riverbed. Suddenly deprived of this precious water source and saddled with a dehydration headache, I empathized with those that face this daily struggle. While in graduate school, my interest in water issues continued, as I wrote a major research paper on the future prospect of water-related wars, an especially dangerous possibility in the Middle East and East Africa, but it wasn’t until I met Jonathan Shuraki Koshal, a Maasai warrior from Kenya, that this water emergency hit home and inspired me to make a difference.

Late last year, my mother heard a report on NPR about a Chicago woman who while on a safari in Kenya with her family, was taken to visit a local Maasai community. The horrid conditions of the public school, coupled with the existence of a wonderful nearby charter school, inspired her to create her own foundation, Matanya’s Hope, which aims to improve the educational opportunities for these Maasai children. My mother befriended the founder and upon my return to Chicago this spring, we all worked together to organize fundraisers and traditional dance performances for Jonathan the five other Maasai tribesmen who were coming to Chicago to publicize their cause.

Though tall, dark and lanky like his Maasai brethren, what sets Jonathan apart is his disarming smile and playful nature. The time I spent with Jonathan over the course of a month was wonderful; we visited the aquarium (much to his child-like fascination), listened to music (he was enamored with my reggae collection), went out for ice cream and cooked big dinners here at home (Mexican was his cuisine of choice). At one point, while the cooking their native chapati bread in our kitchen, he and his friends confided that they only make these breads on special occasions because they cannot afford the flour. Bread, our most basic staple, is saved for “special occasions” due to the cost of flour? It is moments like that when the desperation of these peoples’ living conditions really hits home.

The Maasai are an indigenous pastoral tribe from the Great Rift Valley of Eastern Africa who are trying desperately to hold on to their rich cultural heritage while guaranteeing their own survival. Though communal in nature, they have been forced to embrace a market economy, which has made them dependent on market forces often out of their control. But the single existential threat facing the Maasai today is the scarcity of water. As a semi-nomadic peoples, the Maasai always moved based on the availability of water; in addition to their personal needs, water is crucially important to maintain their cattle, the Maasai’s only treasured possession. But the English colonial government and the current Kenyan and Tanzanian governments have tried to settle the Maasai by introducing “group ranches” and individual ownership, which has disrupted their traditional water-based migration pattern. As Jonathan tells me, this has had disastrous implications. The Maasai, he explains, have always believed water to be a community resource, with access guaranteed regardless of social status. They have a strong conservation ethic, as everyone is responsible in keeping water clean and herdsmen traditionally move from one wetland to another to allow the land to recover. But recent modernization in Kenya has made the wetlands a prime location for large-scale commercial agriculture projects, which is pushing the Maasai off of their traditional lands onto more arid landscape. Being confined to smaller areas of land with their livestock leads to over-grazing and land erosion which in turn results in desertification. The results, in many cases, have been deadly. When the small communal lake that the Koshal family has been confined to dried up last year, they were forced to travel over twelve miles to fetch water. Needless to say, trekking such a long distance through desert-like conditions makes everyday survival a tough task. Jonathan himself nearly died of thirst last year and at one point, was forced to drink cow urine to stay alive.

Finding myself face-to-face with a friend who nearly succumbed to death by dehydration, I felt ashamed for all of the times I had used the expression, “Man, I am dying of thirst!” Then and there, I pledged two things: first, never to use that expression and second, to assure that Jonathan won’t either.

With the help of my donors, I have contributed 20,000 Kenyan Shillings (US $300) to build a family-size rainwater storage tank for the Koshal family. This tank will guarantee a steady water supply for Jonathan and his extended family, ensuring their survival through the upcoming dry season, as water becomes more and more scarce. I am planning a trip to Africa in the fall and while there, I will look for local NGOs that are finding sustainable ways of increasing the water access for those in need, but until then I aim to support Jonathan’s family and other families in the Maasai Mara that are faced with life-threatening water shortages. Once again, a profound thank you goes out to all of my donors from Jonathan, his family and mine.