What's Woody Doing Now

Visit to Pastor Charles' Parents

Today, I met Pastor Charles' parents here in Kananga.
I met Pastor Charle last October. He is a Congolese pastor leaving in Canada. And he ask that I visit his parents he had not seen in 20 years.
His parents were glad to hear from him. I took video and pictures. I will send the video to him when I return. They insisted that I stay for lunch of bidia and chicken.

Violent Thunderstorm

Hey Chris Wright! They have battoned down the hatches (window shatters). It's the must violent thunderstorm, I have seen in Congo. There must be a tornado watch out! Being from Indiana, I expect preempted weather coverage.

Happy World Water Day (#water2011)

Did you know:
Over 800 million people lack access to safe drinking water, 2.4 billion to adequate sanitation.
Each day almost 10,000 children under the age of 5 in Third World countries die as a result of illnesses contracted by use of impure water.
African and Asian women walk an average of 6 kilometres each trip in order to fetch water.
The world is on track to reach the Millennium Development Goal re water, but is woefully behind its targets for the MDG re sanitation.  
Rotarians have contributed over $89 million in water & sanitation projects over the last ten years. 
The Water & Sanitation Rotarian Action Group is a group of Rotarians whose purpose is to support Rotary clubs to effectively plan, finance, implement, monitor and evaluate water, sanitation, and hygiene programs, where they are most needed in a collaborative, cost-effective, timely, and sustainable manner, true to the principles of Rotary International. Wasrag operates in accordance with Rotary International policy but is not an agency of, or controlled by, Rotary International.

My Method to Conserve Water

When you lack access to running water (#water2011), you can change your practices and conserve water. After using the toilet, normally, I flush then wash my hands. In Congo, I wash my hands then I used the waste water to flush. Over the period of a few days, I have saved a girl a trip to the water source.

If It's Brown, Flush

The lack of access to water (#water2011) affects your sanitation practices. You don't wash your hands as frequently as you should. And you don't flush unless absolute necessary.
Shortly after 8am we got our deliver of near potable water. It's used on the kitchen for dishes and cooking. But it's boiled for our personal consumption like drinking.
I forgot to ask if the girls who delivered our water attended school. One if them appeared to have on a school uniform.
Today is World Water Day.

First Encounter with Water

My first encounter and use of water today is to take my anti-malaria medication. I take my required meds early and on an empty stomach. Plus, it's a convenient time to help to remember taking them.
That was really my first, although I had went to the bath room at least twice since midnight. I will explain later if you have not already guessed.

Every thing is done by hand

Today, Moise and I are building the sieves to sift the rocks and sand.
The battery is charging to power the water quality tester.
So it has taken a week to get to this point. There is no one-stop shopping here. For example to buy the battery required a trip to each vendor to determine quality and price. Then we had to purchase battery acid and pick it up 24 hours later.

Every thing is done by hand which takes a long time. That's Congo.

Searching for Clean White Sand

We searched several creek beds but found no clean white sand. The creeks in the town are mostly filled with clay sediments. We need clean white sand for the bio sand filter project.

Today, Moise is going to the one the rivers about five miles out of Kananga.

Getting There

Congo is a stuff place. But, getting there is enjoyable at least from Brussels to Kinshasa.
The leg from Chicago to Brussels was boring. It was seven hours of pain. In contrast, after only an hour and a half, I don't want to the flight to end. 
I asked for diet coke on both flights. The first was a cold can and a flimsy plastic of ice as she asked the next passenger, what he wanted. Again in contrast, a poured diet coke while asking me, with or without ice, and with or without a lemon slice in a hard plastic glass embossed with the airlines symbol.

The food choices are equally distanced. A choice of the (last available) chicken with mashed potatoes or a cheesy pasta. Versus beef or fish, with mashed potatoes and vegetables. And the salads, a regular tossed salad versus a pasta salad with tomatoes and goat cheese.

To end, I had a real after-dinner drink instead of another coke. If it was not for Libya, I would asked that we circled north Africa for a while.

Fighting poverty and balancing budgets

The political landscape in Congress shifted with the November election when the Republicans took control of the house, while the Senate is still narrowly held by the Democrats. Aside from our public outreach, we are all trying to convince new "freshmen" in the house of the need to sustain robust foreign assistance. The Obama administration – from the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, to the defence secretary, Robert Gates – stressed in congressional hearings this week that cuts in these accounts will damage US national security and credibility.

"There have always been moments of temptation in our country to resist obligations beyond our borders, but each time we shrink from global leadership, events summon us back to reality," said Clinton in testimony to the Senate appropriations committee this week.

Many of the budget cuts proposed by the house would have a dramatic effect on development work abroad and could make it hard to respond to crises such as the earthquake that occurred in Haiti in January last year. A troubling cut is a 41% reduction in emergency food-relief programmes and a 67% drop in the international disaster assistance account, which funds clean water, emergency shelters, health services, and protection from rape and exploitation for people driven from their homes by natural disasters and conflict. The harsh arithmetic here is that when humanitarian accounts are slashed, people die, whether in Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Britain's coalition government appears to be standing by the previous Labour party administration's goal of raising foreign aid to the UN target of 0.7% of gross national income by 2013 – even though some opinion polls show many Britons disagree with this. This is a welcome commitment, and we applaud the fact that the UK government appears to have kept its promise to help the world's poorest people at a time when food prices are at record levels. We hope the Obama administration and Congress will do the right thing and sustain a robust US foreign assistance package on this side of the Atlantic too.

via www.guardian.co.uk

So how Congress is going to have to three, four, or five things at once. Job/Economy, Deficit, Education, Poverty/Development, and ....