Ethiopian School Takes Shape

Good news, even if it is late in coming, is still good news. The Maru-Chebot First Cycle Elementary School in the Berga wetland area of Ethiopia is expanding its classroom space with a new building as you can see in this progressive triptych. The authorities are planning to add a grade level a year starting with 5th this year and going up to 8th. As we must remind ourselves, these simple additions will make a world of difference in the lives of the kids, the little girls especially. The walk to the nearest school with the higher grades is 5km, a distance tantalizingly close but out of reach for many and again, for many of the girls. So many good things come with the education of young girls and women, a set of correlations that others have firmly established through the heart-wrenching stories of individual girls or through the coldly analytical quantitative analysis. Both ways to tell the story can be effective, often to different audiences, and both are necessary. In this case, we hope to see it for a group of kids whose faces have shown through on these pages time and time again.

As I wrote last fall, it was some of our support that directly helped make this building take shape. Modest funds earlier this year went directly to purchased the corrugated steel sheets that constitute the roof. Some subsequent support, just a few hundreds of dollars from some who wanted to advance their donations, went over this fall to help outfit the new building with windows.

At the same time, Geremew highlights continuing challenges for different aspects of this integrated development program. The health extension workers, two women with one year of training apiece, have knowledge but little in the way of supplies to dispense to the needy population. When I visited in November 2007, their one room was stocked with a range of supplies provided by UNICEF. No longer. Geremew writes that they are mostly without health commodities and supplies to give out. I’ve talked to some good friends in Ethiopia who work in health services and we are hoping to find some stop gap assistance. But stock outs as they call them continue to be a long term challenge.

Two Forward, One Back

This blog features two types of posts.

One catalogs the needs of a particular community in the Ethiopian highlands a few hours drive from the capital Addis Ababa. I visited over a year ago and was humbled and impressed with their diversified approach to providing for the community’s residents young and old, male and female. Building on support from conservation organizations interested initially in their wetland area as one of two homes for an otherwise unremarkable ground nesting bird, the White-winged Fluffftail, this community and its partners fashioned a program that provided health, education, micro-credit, and livelihood services. I’ve tried to provide a glimpse of their struggles and ingenuity in meeting those challenges.

The second type of post has been about my effort, a contrivance really, to help motivate myself to get in shape. I set out to lose weight and convince fiends and family to make per pounds lost pledges that would be donated to this community. I started at the beginning of May 2008 and set myself an end of December 2008 deadline. Summer and the early fall showed some gradual but appreciable success in losing weight as previous posts and the right column counter has documented.

Then October and work and travel kicked in. The gains from what can only be defined as sublime food in Barcelona were not sufficiently balanced by Delhi belly the next week. The results on the weight loss front plateaued and eventually starting falling back. I had reached 27 pounds lost at one point which is a lot by many measures but little more than a good start for someone who started this effort in the high 200s.

And sadly my most recent weigh in (the first in over a month) put me ending the year at just 17 down. I weighed in December 29th at my mother in-laws in Ringe, Denmark. While it is appealing to highlight all the temptations spending two weeks in Germany and Denmark with friends and family, that would be a temporarily satisfying but ultimately counterproductive dead end rationalization. Same for the “I’m too busy (or tired) to exercise” -- comprehensible but unconvincing. And counter-productive on so many levels.

So like so many others as well as my own previous bouts with weigh loss (for it feels constantly like a fight), pounds lost come with pounds gained back. I’ll be in touch with all of you who have so kindly pledged support to figure out whether to continue what really should be two life-long efforts: supporting communities in need and taking care of one’s own health. I have appreciated all the kind words and support throughout.

Two Big Boosts for Berga!

Wow! We just got TWO big boosts for Berga!

The first one was in the mail when I came home from a trip to the United Nations in New York. A small envelope held a big surprise. It was a check for $100 for the Berga project from two close friends of my parents. Mom and Dad had gotten to talking with them about my losing weight to raise money for the needy community in the Berga wetlands of Ethiopia. They showed them this Losing Pounds for Berga website and it prompted them to send a check AND pledge $2 per pound for weight lost beyond the 21 pounds I had already lost at that time.

One line in their hand-written note struck a chord. “This is just the kind of thing we like to support – people helping people without a lot of hullabaloo and hierarchy.” They definitely took the right message from the website. That is definitely my approach!

And here is a preview of the second big boost for Berga that shows even modest efforts can make a big difference. I got an email this week from Geremew Selassie, the head of the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society. He sent photos of the community receiving the boxes of school supplies and the 66 sheets of corrugated steel the community decided to buy with the money we raised before starting this weight loss effort. The photos showing the progression of the new classrooms being built is moving. It is deeply satisfying to see the resources we gave turn into something so practical for people in such need. Stay tuned for the next post!

Lawnmowers, Funnel Cakes, and Ferris Wheels

It was Labor Day weekend here in the United States and in my current home town, Greenbelt, this holiday is a big deal. Taking inspiration from FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, the town was built with little machinery as a works project in the 1930s. It has a strong workers, left-leaning ethic in town of cooperatives. We don’t quite sing the International (I’ve done that in Norway actually on May Day), but something just short of it.

Part of celebrating Labor Day in Greenbelt is the annual four day festival, the 54^th annual this year. Rides, games, entertainment and all sorts of local community groups with stalls selling used books (my daughters’ elementary school), t-shirts (my son’s nursery school), and especially food. None of the food is good for you. None. Period. But boy do those Democratic Party funnel cakes taste great with powdered sugar.

We were down at the festival each day (it is only two blocks from the house) to volunteer and to play. The ferris wheel offers an incomparable view of our wooded neighborhood. Couple that with a skewers party we held at our house for friends and co-workers and it adds up to a rough week for dieting. So the needle hasn’t moved much or if so, slightly in the wrong direction. So I have not adjusted the pounds total this week.

Finally, the title of this post includes lawnmowers. Old fashioned reel lawnmowers to be exact. It has nothing to do with Berga or my weight loss efforts, but I witnessed a brilliant Labor Day parade show that could ONLY occur in Old Greenbelt. The Greenbelt Reel Lawnmower Society Precision Drill Team performed and was captured on video in what is what they call an instant classic. I wanted to share it here.

Poop is No Laughing Matter, Okay It Is

This UNICEF video uses humor to make the point that sanitation issues can be funny when kids talk about it but there are real human costs that aren't so funny. I thought I would share the first part of that post here and urge you to read it all on the Woodrow Wilson Center's New Security Beat. My primary point was the hidden cost of no or poor sanitation at schools: girls often drop out or stay home once they reach puberty. The school in Berga only goes to 4th grade. Part of expanding the school to serve kids up to 8th grade will be the necessity to upgrade its sanitation facilities as well.

I was actually responding to a post by the New York Times' Andy Revkin, the most important journalist with an environmental beat at a major newspaper in the United States (he might be the only one too!).

A recent post on Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth blog—entitled “Poop is Funny, But It’s Fatal”—highlights a UNICEF World Water Day video about the necessity of destigmatizing human waste. Bacterial infections caused by contact with human waste kill 1.5 million people every year—most of them children. The stakes are high. The film uses kids and humor—two good ingredients for education through entertainment—to explain the importance of sanitation. The film emphasizes that although we may not like talking about feces, urine, toilets, and the like, we need to because the fact that 2.6 billion of us lack adequate sanitation is a fundamental threat to human health, productivity, and dignity. It’s a short film—YouTube friendly—and these are complex links, but they are key to understanding the need to invest in available technologies. The UNICEF video rightly emphasizes the additional costs of lack of sanitation, noting that girls often won’t attend school if there isn’t adequate sanitation...

And Now 21!

When you weigh a lot, your weight can change quickly, at least by the standards of you folks occupying the skinnier world. So I am pleased to report that I have finally broken through the 20 pound threshold that has been so elusive.

Intense exercise is a wonderful thing and of course key to this whole endeavor. Yesterday was one of those days, pushing up the roundball in a basketball run that I joined in 1992. Organized at first as graduate students from the University of Maryland Government and Politics Department, it has been weekly for 16 years now. Only a few faces left from those days and we have moved inside to kinder wooden floors as we got older - gone are the days of mid-day sun outside on the asphalt.

But the upshot is a push and a magic 21 popping up on the scale this morning (after some subtraction of course). Facing happy hour with former students of mine tonight so it may be short-lived but the hope is we are off the plateau!

Note of explanation on the Duke University logo - as a alumnus, one thinks Duke when one talks basketball. Just the order of things.

Back to 19

That would be pounds lost, not years old. I am finally back to the lowest total pounds lost after having a highly caloric (Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale is actually outstanding) vacation and follow-up weekend in Ohio to celebrate my folks 45th wedding anniversary. One cake wasn't enough, a neighbor friend made a second. And despite BOTH cakes having typos (ironic given Mom's English teacher background), they were quite tasty. Perhaps a little too tasty. (I should hasten to add, it was the baker and the neighbor who had the spelling difficulty, not me mum.)

So I am back to 19. Need to make a push. Waiting for that push. I am sure it is coming. Any time now. Do hope it will come. Really need to make that big jump. Also really need to add a donate here page with a Paypal account so I can really start sending this thing out to folks. The new addition to the school in Berga is just not going to get built at this pace.