Barak Bruerd

Victoria Falls

Posted on September 11, 2009 by Barak in Africa | No Comments

Here’s a few clips from Wikipedia on the falls: Victoria falls is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. David Livingstone, the Scottish explorer, is believed to have been the first European to view the Victoria Falls. While it is neither the highest nor the widest waterfall in the world, it is claimed to be the largest. This claim is based on a width of 1,708 metres (5,600 ft)and height of 108 meters (360 ft), forming the largest sheet of falling water in the world.  The recent geological history of Victoria Falls can be seen in the form of the gorges below the falls. The basalt plateau over which the Upper Zambezi flows has many large cracks filled with weaker sandstone.Over at least 100,000 years, the falls have been receding upstream through the Batoka Gorges, eroding the sandstone-filled cracks to form the gorges. The falls have already started cutting back the next major gorge, at the dip in one side of the “Devil’s Cataract” (also known as “Leaping Waters”) section of the falls.

Respite

Posted on September 11, 2009 by Barak in Africa | No Comments

Debriefing at the Zambezi Sun resort in Livingstone, Zambia – named after the famous explorer and missionary who was the first European to see Victoria Falls, now named among the top Natural Wonders of the World.  Resort hotels are not the usual fair of my frequent visits to the Continent, however, when taking visitors unused to the rigors imposed by culture and rough living, they provide a necessary respite and allow us to debrief amid hot showers and familiar food.

1st Award Photo

Posted on September 11, 2009 by Barak in Africa, Asia | No Comments

Community Training

Posted on September 09, 2009 by Barak in Africa | No Comments

There are simple things we take for granted, and things we are taught from a young age that we never even think about.  Here, community members have been taught basic things about hygiene and how diseases are transmitted – ideas we consider common sense, but in terms of the global majority, actually aren’t all that common.  In a place where families expect to lose at least one or two children to sickness, these people for the first time understand how to keep themselves healthy.  This elderly gentleman is repeating back a portion of the lesson on disease transmission.  When he finished, there was applause.

Small Miracles

Posted on September 09, 2009 by Barak in Africa | No Comments

Sorry, I can’t help it.  These kids are awesome.  This little girl was laughing at me from across the drill site and then laughing at my friend who was goofing off beside her.  Believe it on not, for as young as she is, she was carrying around her baby brother on her back earlier in the day.  Responsibility comes at a young age in this part of the world and children are expected to play key roles in daily life.  Earlier today we carried water in 5-gallon jerry cans from a river half a mile away; the same place where this community goes in the dry season when their hand-dug wells run dry.  It was exhausting.  Putting my own daughter in this girl’s shoes, carrying containers of water several hours a day from river to home, with no way to purify it before drinking, helps me realize the real miracle this well represents in the eyes of this little girl.

In Their Shoes

Posted on September 08, 2009 by Barak in Africa | No Comments

The statistics vary, but most seem to agree that women and children in Africa walk somewhere between 2 and 5 miles a day to get water – a task that can take up to 70% of the day. Though words can be used to describe a 5 gallon jerry can weighing 40lbs there’s nothing quite like trying to carry one yourself – an activity we often use to help first-time visitors to the continent gain perspective on exactly how impacting a well can be in a community. We drew quite a crowd as we carried jerry cans through this village in Zambia and one local woman asked why we were carrying water. When told it was so we could better understand the challenges of living without running water her laughing response was “but they are only carrying one bucket?!”

1 of 1000 Smiles

Posted on September 07, 2009 by Barak in Africa | No Comments

There are a thousand smiles that could be photographed in a single community.  Today there were even more.  A new well is being drilled.

Blending

Posted on September 07, 2009 by Barak in Africa | No Comments

I love watching kids playing together.  Perhaps your experience is different, but in mine, young children do not conceptualize differences in race until later in life, and usually the concept has to be taught.  Differences in skin color are taken in the same stride as differences in hair color or height or favorite flavor of ice cream.  Even language seems to pose little  barrier as children easily slip into gestures or simply drag one another around by the hand from one game to another.  The conflicts of childhood are, of course, ever present, but they remain isolated to those things that historically plague humankind; learning to share, say sorry, and act in consideration for one another.

Presence

Posted on September 07, 2009 by Barak in Africa | No Comments

It is amazing to consider that over the last 50 years over $2.3 trillion dollars in Aid money has been poured into Africa.  Most of us can’t even conceptualize what a trillion looks like.  To put it into perspective, a trillion seconds is just over 31,000 years.  That’s a lot of money; a lot of activity; and yet progress seems inexplicably slow.  We American’s tend to define poverty according to the measure we use to quantify wealth – i.e. the presence of material goods.  Therefore poverty must be the absence thereof.  Yet poverty is so much more complex, so much deeper than the just the material; even as wealth can be defined by stuff much deeper than money.  As my Rwandan friend and director of AEE Rwanda says so pointedly ”We don’t need a ministry of projects.  We need a ministry of presence.” ~ Antoine Rutayisire

Curiosity

Posted on September 05, 2009 by Barak in Africa | No Comments

A group of kids in Twapia, another peri-urban community in Ndola, Zambia. They were gathered around a pump that had just been installed on a new borehole. This is 1 of 17 wells, and while a well with a hand pump can technically provide water for a couple thousand people, long lines and wear and tear on the pump dictate a functional maximum of 750 to 1000 people per well. With 65,000 people living in Twapia, there’s a lot that still needs to be done.