F A I T H & S P I R I T
The Trash Where People Live Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
When I was a little kid my dad used to take me with him to the garbage dump. From building houses he would always have lots of stuff in his truck that he would have to get rid of. I remember lots of dust flying around in the air and feeling dirty every time I got home. I remember it smelled, even from the front seat with the windows closed, it smelled. And then dad would buy me a Slurpy from a 7-11 and we’d go home never realizing that all over the world people spend their lives living in garbage dumps.
I’m currently back in Ethiopia and a few days ago I went to a place in Addis that they call the trash city…the sky went from being blue to dark grey as I walked further into the dump. Immediately I was overwhelmed with one of the worst smells I’ve ever experienced, it was nothing like I remembered from the dump in California.
The thick smoke was everywhere from some of the trash being burned and the combinations of smells made me want to gag. Every step was carefully maneuvered in order not to step into leftover food, used toilet paper, wads of hair, goat feet, animal bones, IV bags and lots of other things I never want to step in. Vultures and other types of birds swarm around hunting for things salvageable to eat in the trash.
There are stray dogs and pigs running around everywhere. In the midst of it all you find two stone walls holding up some kind of steel roof. And here, among all the trash, is a community of people living. They weed through the garbage looking for items they can recycle and food for their empty stomachs. Their ages range from eight to twenty three and most have been abandoned or orphaned, leaving the dump as the only place for them to go. There are around fifteen guys and twenty girls. Some of the girls have families and don’t actually live in the trash but spend all day there, looking for recyclables in order to bring home some kind of food and possibly pocket change.
The oldest guy is a natural leader and really tries to take care of the others. The youngest is an eight year-old who has only known the trash as his home, moving around his cardboard home as the trash piles move. They all wear smiles on their faces despite their circumstances. They don’t struggle with finding joy but the lack of hope is heart-breaking...aren’t children supposed to have the most hope? It shook me to the core; there is so much poverty in this world and I’ve seen a lot of it. But there is something about total poverty, living in trash with no family and no hope, that hit me harder then normal.
Of course there’s a part where you come in. So the plan right now is to find a house that we can rent and after about six months, they can take the rent over. To find them jobs or to begin a chicken farm which they would all be able to have a hand in and bring in enough money for rent and school. Other ideas are still in the process but this is what we’ve come up with so far. We’re hoping to get them to a point where they are fully sufficient on their own but for now we need finances to give them that start. We want to create an environment that helps them grow, with clean clothes, school uniforms and food that someone else didn’t eat first. And we want to see them dreaming again of what they could do with their future. As with every project, we need prayer. Pray that these guys develop hope for their lives, that we find the perfect house, that churches in the area will help support them and people who care about them. And anything else you can think of to pray for children without a home. Just like Drawn From Water, Pick a Pocket is supporting this project.
The Music DTS, who is on outreach right now in Addis, is the reason I went to the dump while visiting Ethiopia this time. Ulla and I came down to talk with the people directly involved with Drawn From Water (children’s home). We’ve been staying with the Music DTS in the meantime and have gained a heart for the people they are working with. The Music DTS is in the process of moving these guys out of the trash. They are finding them a home, and are seeking avenues in which they can begin the process of sustainability and financial independence.
The Music DTS spent a night with them in the trash eating what they ate and sleeping where they slept and because of that they trust us. Before that they were pretty sure we were just another group who wanted to take photos of them and then walk away but they have seen otherwise and are ready to have a different life. We want to see these kids bathed, clothed, safe, warm, fed, and educated. Please help us do that in any way you can. Tell others about it, join us on Facebook, pray, donate, or share knowledge with us you may have about garbage dumps.
"Funny the way it is, if you think about it, somebody’s going hungry and someone else is eating out...Funny the way it is, if you think about it, one kid walks ten miles to school while another’s dropping out…" -Dave Matthew You can learn how to donate or what to pray for by emailing myself or Josiah.
Pick a Pocket’s Website: http://pickapocket.showitsite.com Leader of the music dts’s email: Josiah Teft-jjteft@yahoo.com or Kristen at: kris.schwan@gmail.com
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Women Farmers Feed the World
Nowhere is it more apparent that women feed the world than in the largest slum in Kenya. Packed full of people, Kibera slum in Nairobi is populated by anywhere from 700,000 to a million people. In an area of of about 225 hectares, the equivalent of just over half the size of Central Park in Manhattan, the women we met are growing food not just to feed their families, but to also to generate income.
Some of the women we met earlier this month are raising vegetables on what they call "vertical farms." Instead of skyscrapers, however, these farms are contained in tall sacks, filled with dirt. The women received training from the French NGO Soladarites to start their sack gardens and now grow a variety of vegetables, including greens like spinach and kale. And more than 1,000 of their neighbors are doing the same thing. A skill that came in handy over the last few years as election violence spread through the slum in 2007 and 2008 when there was conflict in the slums of Nairobi. No food could come into these areas, but most residents didn’t go hungry because so many of them were growing crops—in sacks, vacant land, or elsewhere.
Just across from Kibera another group of farmers, most of them women, have been growing food for nearly two decades on a plot of vacant land. They don’t own the land where they grow spinach, kale, spider plant, squash, amaranth, and other vegetables. Instead the land is owned by the Kenyan Social Security Administration, which has allowed the farmers to farm the land through an informal arrangement.
They’ve been forced to stop farming more than once over the years, and although they’re getting harassed less frequently, they still face a number of challenges. The biggest challenge is a lack of water and fertilizer for their crops. For many years, they’ve used wastewater (sewage from an underground pipe they tapped into) for both irrigation and a source of nutrients. Although this wastewater can carry a number of risks, including pathogens and contamination from heavy metals, it also provides a rich—and free—source of fertilizer to farmers who don’t have the money to buy expensive store-bought fertilizer and other inputs. And because of longer periods of drought (likely a result of climate change) in sub-Saharan Africa, the farmers didn’t have to depend on rainfall to water their crops.
But even with the loss of their main water supply and nutrient sources, these farmers are continuing to come up with innovative ways of raising food—and generate income. With the help of the organization, Urban Harvest, the farmers are not only growing food to eat and sell, but, perhaps surprisingly, becoming a source of seed for rural farmers. Kibera’s farmers have always grown fodder for livestock feed for both urban and rural farmers, but by establishing a continual source of seed for traditional African vegetables, they’re helping dispel the myth that urban agriculture only benefits poor people living in cities.
Using very small plots of land, just a quarter of an acre, and double dug beds, the farmers can raise seeds very quickly. Fast-growing varieties like amaranth and spider plant take only about 3 months to produce seeds, with about 3000 Kenyan shillings in profit. And these seed plots—because they are small—take very little additional time to weed and manage. The future for these farmers continues to be un-certain. Their land could be taken away, the drought could further jeopardize their crops, the loss of wastewater for fertilizer could reduce production, but they continue to persevere despite these challenges. Bernard Pollack and Danielle Nierenberg are blogging about their travels at Border Jumpers. http://borderjumpers1.blogspot.com/
Worldwatch Institute's Sustainable Agriculture Program highlights the benefits to farmers, consumers, and ecosystems that can flow from food systems that are flexible enough to deal with shifting weather patterns, productive enough to meet the needs of expanding populations, and accessible enough to support rural communities.
http://blogs.worldwatch.org/nourishingtheplanet/vertical-farms-finding-creative-ways-to-grow-food-in-kibera/
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Singer Copes with Daughter's Death Through Music
He stood there at the hospital, not as a Christian music singer comforting a little child, but as a father praying for a miracle. Steven Curtis Chapman held onto his wife that night 18 months ago and prayed for their 5-year-old Maria, their youngest adopted daughter, who had been accidentally struck in the family's driveway by one of her brothers returning home in his truck. Chapman had tried CPR at his house. The paramedics had tried to revive her but she had been pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Now he asked God's help to bring her back. Chapman's wife, Mary Beth, told him they had to accept her destiny.
"It was after a few minutes that my wife, with her hand on my shoulder, said, 'I really think we are supposed to let her go for now,' " the soft-spoken Chapman said recently by phone before a concert in North Carolina. Chapman, who has been singing Christian music for more than 20 years, was now faced with a God he had not known before. Everything he thought about God was different, he said, and he began to wrestle with his beliefs. His new album, his 19th, entitled "Beauty Will Rise," is his personal testament to Maria's life and the overwhelming belief that they will be together again one day.
Maria had been playing behind the family's home in Franklin, Tennessee, on May 21, 2008, when her brother Will came around the driveway in an SUV. While no one is sure exactly what happened, Maria, who wanted someone to lift her on the monkey bars, ran towards her brother's truck and was struck. An investigation called the tragedy an accident and no charges were filed. In the days after Maria's death, the whole family -- Chapman, his wife, their two sons, their daughter and two other adopted daughters -- grieved together, went every-where together, did everything together, even sleeping all in one room.
Chapman said he felt like he was in a black hole. "I just felt myself being pulled down into this place of despair," he said. Chapman and Maria had a special connection. He met her in her native China while she was an infant. He and his wife had already adopted two children from there, and weren't looking for another. But Maria "touched a special place in my heart," and he called his wife just to tell her about the baby girl. "I can't put it into words, but I've picked up a lot of little orphan boys and girls over the years," he said. "I've never had anything happen to my heart like what happened when I held this little girl in my arms for a few minutes."
It was almost impossible to imagine her not bouncing through the house, not dancing along as he sung to her, he recalled. And it was equally as difficult to think about singing again after she died. Her passing was an emotional earthquake and in the immediate aftermath Chapman doubted he would want to write and sing again. He cringed at the suggestion that he write songs about Maria. Her death was such a deeper level of sadness than he had felt before that he thought he would never be able to share that pain through music, he said. But as the dust settled and life went back to its new normal, Chapman began to think about putting his fears and hopes into music. He still didn't plan on doing an album, but songwriting was helping him heal. "Songs are really cathartic for me," he said, "because they force me to put my feelings and thoughts into a capsule and say, 'There it is.' " (Hear more clips of Steven Curtis Chapman's music at his website)
The first song he wrote, "Just Have to Wait," was an example of the raw emotion Chapman hoped to share. Chapman said he wrote it sitting alone in the darkness, just aiming to share with his family the faith he has that each one of them will join her in heaven. He soon knew that these personal psalms needed to be recorded, but he didn't want a slick, produced sound. Instead of working with a slew of recording people, Chap-man and co-producer Brent Milligan decided to work on the album while the singer was out on a tour. Just the two of them, a sounding board for the other. They recorded in hotel rooms, dressing rooms, the side of a stage, wherever they could set up a laptop and a couple of microphones. They would also squeeze in recording time in the hours between sound checks and the show, trying to find quiet moments to get things on the computer, he said.
It was genuine that way, Chapman said. "It just felt like that's honest. This is life going on," Chapman said of the unorthodox recording method. "It's the day-to-day pain, just walking the journey." Reviews have been positive and respectful. The New York Times called it "stirring." Billboard said, "Never has a writer's pain sounded more achingly raw. The new set examines unfathomable grief, but also celebrates an extraordinary young life." Milligan said that he believes the music's meaning transcends the tragedy that inspired it. "In recording these songs, he knew they were going to bring hope to a lot of people," Milligan said. "And that is so much what he is about. These songs are timeless, people will always be hurting and these songs will always speak to them." When asked what song he thought would be Maria's favorite, Chapman said, 'Beauty Will Rise'. She likes loud, she liked it fast", the smile returning to his voice. "She likes the one with all the energy and the one she could bounce in the car to." Music, his blogs, and his community at www.stevencurtischapman.com
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Family’s Generosity Benefits Retirees
Cameron Park, CA – At retirement community, Ponté Palmero, a legacy left in honor of former resident, Lori G. Pilegaard, can help others enjoy what she had. Just a few days before Thanksgiving, one of Ponté Palmero’s most active and vital residents passed suddenly. She was one of the community’s first residents and its most vibrant "Resident Ambassador." In her memory, her family has dedicated $1.5 million to a fund to help new Ponté Palmero’s residents offset up to 50% of their rent.
"Mom had a dream of what Ponté Palmero could become — a healthy, thriving community for active older adults," reports Lori’s son, Erik Pilegaard, owner of Ponté Palmero. In Lori’s memory, her family has established a fund to help other local families share in her vision. "Lori understood that today many older adults are waiting to move into the next phase of their retirement," said Tracy Freudendahl, Administrator of Ponté Palmero, who added, "The burdens and uncertainties of these economic times are delaying the decision for many families."
The Lori G. Pilegaard Legacy Fund was created to allow a limited number of families to enjoy the benefits of Ponté Palmero sooner, rather than later. "Mom wanted her neighborhood to be chock full of happy neighbors," Pilegaard said, "This is our way of honoring her wish."
Applications will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis until the Fund is exhausted. A ceremony to acknowledge the first recipient will be held in conjunction with Ponté Palmero’s Aging Adult Health and Wellness Fair on January 19, from 11am to 3pm in the Clubhouse. For more info about the Lori G. Pilegaard Legacy Fund, contact Janet Saitman or Ilisa Gallant at Ponté Palmero, 3081 Ponté Morino Drive, Cameron Park, or call (530) 677-9100. Janet Saitman, Sales and Mar-keting Director, Ponté Palmero, 3081 Ponté Morino Drive, Cameron Park, CA 95682. 530.748.5763; Janet.Saitman@eskaton.org; www.eskaton.org
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There’s No Such Thing as Too Many Hugs
Women especially understand the need for hugs at critical times in their lives. Seemingly equipped with an alarm that goes off the moment they are in need, they intuitively know they must reach out for support. One talented writer is doing her best to wrap her arms around every woman – one at a time – with her uplifting book, Hugs Bible Reflections for Women (Simon & Schuster). Mindy Ferguson understands this need and the benefit of uplifting help, and although she can’t personally hug each reader, she manages to do the next best thing with prose in her enchanting book.
What better time to introduce this book with the Holidays fast approaching, bringing their accompanying emotional mix of joy, sadness, love, pain, and loneliness. Since this compassionate author has made it her mission in life to help women, she has collected meaningful real-life stories during her nationwide speaking engagements that became the basis for Hugs - a collection that will tug at heartstrings with tales ranging from losing loved ones to destroyed financial dreams. The message they offer is wisdom and understanding – that through the journey of these women came discovery about God’s desire for each of our lives. During these tough economic times, it has become increasingly difficult to hang on to proper values and to search for God’s guidance; however, as evidenced by Ferguson’s insightful and inspiring book, ‘don’t ever under estimate the power of a hug’ and responding by helping others.
When Jesus told parables or stories, His followers could grasp his message. Likewise, in the fifty-two inspiring lessons in Hugs, Ferguson uses real-life stories to enable women to find the work of God’s words. Founder of Fruitful Word Ministries, a non-profit corporation dedicated to encouraging women of all denominations to better their lives through the study of God’s word, she is recognized as an expert speaker who understands the special challenges that women face in this world of selfish ambition, and through her positive outlook she sees today’s woes as simply an opportunity to promote wide-spread healing.
Visit Mindy Ferguson’s inspiring website at: http://www.fruitfulword.org. Her writings have appeared in Chicken Soup for the Mother of Preschooler's Soul, the P31 Woman magazine, Just Between Us magazine, and the One Year Life Verse Devotional. Ferguson is the author of Walking with God: From Slavery to Freedom; Living the Promised Life, an in-depth Bible study for women.
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