Pix Aid

This blog is the first in a series of blogs by Ali Raza, a young engineering student working in developmental aid. Originally from Pakistan, he comes from Minniapolis, Minnasota. Hopefully he will keep us posted on his adventures in helping others in Africa and soon in Pakistan. You can see his earlier blogs on his blog site.

Ali and Maasai friends.

The EURONEWS team

I was very excited about this post. It was my most eventful few days, I got a chance to spend 3 days with two very exciting people, one, a free lance journalist and camera person, Terry Winn with an illustrious past and exciting future and a very calm and serene Julian Gomez producer from EuroNews, and like icing on a cheese cake fantasy, I spent Saturday night with 28 very courageous and beautiful college students from 3 Universities in the US who are in Kenya for 4 months, studying and experiencing first hand life in urban and rural Kenya. Terry and Julian were here to film a documentary for the World Water Day, March 22, for which they were going to film the Maasai using the Solar Disinfectant Water Project to get cleaner water for their daily living.

Terry and Julian arrived late Thursday night and on Friday morning the Bush Team (Saruni, Joe and I) with its latest members, Terry and Julian left for Longausua - Masaai Land. On the way I learned about the fabulous stuff these guys had been involved with over the years. Terry I must say is 'DA MAN', a war journalist, worked in Russia for years, been in over 100 countries and also has a Non-Profit with a very unique philosophy behind it (www.pix-aid.org), a must view. On the way, Terry shares his wartime and Russian stories as we all enjoy the wonderful scenery on both sides of the Great North Road.

Finally we get to Longausua and I'm very excited to meet the kids in the school next to the ICROSS clinic. I had made a promise to them last week after seeing them kicking around what seemed like a paper football. I told them that I would get a real football for them next time I came. As I approached the school I saw the kids gathering behind me with huge smiles on their faces. I handed the ball to a teacher who was very grateful as he said that the football came when it was desperately needed. I wish you could have been there to witness the joy a small thing like a football can bring to life of dozens of kids. It seemed like a scene out of the movies, it was drizzling and dozens of kids were chasing after and kicking the new football that they were so excited to have. It was an image that could bring tears in the eyes of anyone. But the tears I had in my eyes were tears of joy, tears that were thanking God for giving me the opportunity to witness this (http://picasaweb.google.com/alirzaidi).

Next we headed for the Maasai Mantyata (kind of masai village - a collection of Maasai huts) where Terry was going to film how the Maasai use the Solar water purification technique. The Maasai are very adamant about having their particular way of doing things. They for centuries are used to drinking water right from small lakes and water puddles in the forest. The same water that their animals also drink which has led the numerous water born diseases being very prevalent in the region. The Maasai do not like to boil the water as they say that the taste of the water changes, so what ICROSS has convinced them to do is pour the dirty water in plastic bottles and put them under the sun for 6-8 hours, during this time the UV rays from the sun through the plastic inactivate a lot of the bacteria in the water for up to 48 hours, during which they can have the water to drink and to wash their utensils in. Pretty neat right, well they say the Egyptians invented this 2000 years ago. This method has reduced the water born diseases cases by 30 percent in the area in the last 11 years. One of the scenes that the guys had to capture was the women going down to the water source and getting the water, so we all followed a few women and little girls only 8 or 9 years old down to the water source. Please do go to pics to see how filthy the water that they previously drank without boiling looks like, it's the same water that the dogs were having when Terry was filming the women pouring the water in the 4 gallon water bottles. Well after the water was collected we witnessed something very incredible, those 8, 9 year old girls strapping the water on their foreheads while it hung on their backs and walking 30 mins with it back to the village. Well, I thought I'd give it a try and trust me, I who thinks that he is pretty athletic would have barely been able to make it back and wouldn't ever try it again whereas these girls were carrying these bottles without breaking a sweat or having a frown on their face. They were just doing something they did every day. Makes you wonder what the hell we complain about in our lives; waiting an extra 15 mins for the meal at a restaurant, the traffic jam due to an accident, not getting our H1-B visas on time. Just thinking about the things that I felt were troubles in my mind makes be sick and ashamed now.

After the Euro News team got their footage, we headed back to the base. It had been a very tiring day and the next day turned out to be the same where we went to a different location to shoot the Maasai girls getting water and the Euro News crew filming it. We had an addition to the team though, Jesse Goldfarb, an American boy who is a junior at St.Louis University and will be working for ICROSS in a month's time. Hopefully Jesse and I will be involved with a lot of development projects in the months and years to come. After we got back Saturday evening, Mike sat down with Jesse and I to go over what he had in mind for us for the next few weeks as he is heading out to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to develop the maternity health programs in those countries; which brings me to the part that I am most excited about. Mike has been talking to the director of CARE international for East Asia including Pakistan about a project dealing with women's' rights issues in Pakistan, and as the whole ICROSS philosophy is getting the project done without the bull shit involved in the middle, which means not paying outsiders to come and use up most of the money of the projects for things like staying at the Holiday Inn for a month, but to train from within the affected community as no one knows how their problems can be fixed better than the community itself. If the solution comes from within the society rather than from an outsider, that's what makes it credible, that's what makes it work. Anyways, so guess who is going to setup the project, Yes!! it will be me. When Mike told me that I'll be flying to Pakistan in a couple of weeks to talk to the leading social justice activists there and try to figure out all the logistics, for that moment, I was the happiest man on the planet. I thought I wouldn't be able to do something like that for years in Pakistan. Maybe after my PhD. and that also was a maybe! But here was my chance, within my first 2 months of Developmental work. It is more than a dream to be able to serve my own people, even before the start of my grad school. I have a million and a half ideas already in my mind on how to write the proposal, how to get to all the people, Pakistanis and non-Pakistanis all over the globe to contribute to this. To reach out to all who think that changing the lives of hundreds or thousands requires some sort of a miracle; one that certainly they are not capable of. But if a guy like me can be a part of something like this in 2 months then I think each and everyone who has the desire to do this can be part of making that change.

I would greatly appreciate any help that you guys could give me in identifying who to meet or ideas for where there the greatest need lies for such a project, or any other advice that you guys want to give me.  Badae.