Watch Jay Leno tonight!

And Happy Birthday David! (and Quentin Tarantino) I should've guessed. Aries!

This is a good story. I got it from my ONE campaign updates. These guys are going to be on Jay Leno tonight talking about their expedition across Africa's Sahara Desert -- the water crisis there and what we can do to help. Here's a blog from Charlie Engle, Expedition Leader for Running the Sahara:

On November 2, 2006, I started to run with my friends Ray and Kevin. We entered a heading on the Magellan GPS and headed east from St. Louis Senegal. The goal was to run over 4,300 miles to the Red Sea in Egypt. If we could accomplish this, we would become the first people in history to run all the way across the Sahara Desert.

Ultimately, we ran for 111 consecutive days, covering as much as 50 miles per day. The suffering we endured was tremendous but it was worth it because we got the chance to see Africa in a way that nobody had ever seen it before.

Running across the Sahara, we knew that the physical challenge would be huge, and we expected to encounter people that would change our lives and perspectives. These kids are one group that had this profound effect.

Kids love to have their picture taken. It's the same all around the world. So when I was preparing to leave for Senegal, I decided to bring my fancy high tech digital camera with all the attachments. When I went to buy a new disk before leaving for Africa, I spotted an antique--an instant camera. I didn't even know they made them any more. A light bulb went off in my head; maybe I could GIVE photos instead of just taking them. I bought the camera and a bunch of film.

The results were spectacular. This photo is one of my favorites. I asked the kids to hold up the photos so that I could see them. The little boy on the right did what I asked but he was so fascinated by his own image that he refused to turn it around. That was awesome. Before it was over, I gave hundreds of photos as I crossed the desert.
While we witnessed communities that were abandoned because of a lack of clean water, and saw that the few functioning wells were separated by miles of harsh terrain but still overflowing with people, we learned that despite the hardships, the people of the Sahara were kind, generous, proud, family oriented people that asked for nothing - and these kids brought this home to me on a one-to-one basis.

A basic well used to draw drinking water
for a village near Timbuktu, Mali.

This experience opened my eyes to the fact that I can actually make a difference in the lives of thousands of people. But not by running! I can make a difference by connecting with them, and then using my voice to represent their needs to as many people as I can reach. By spreading the word that the need for clean water is real and the people are real—that these kids are real, the photos in each one's hand a symbol of his or her identity.

With the help of ONE members, clean water for all of Africa is an attainable goal. Please go to www.RunningTheSahara.com to learn more about our journey and what you can do to help with the world water crisis.

Happy World Water Day! (and Happy Birthday, Mom!)

What better reason to talk about this borehole? World Water Day, not you mom.

I'm not exactly sure what these kids are playing in. I think it's a sink. Maybe you put water in there? A place to wash clothes?

Anyway, a borehole is a pump system for water wells. They're really important in the developing world because they can serve as the main water supply for an entire community, like this one.

Before Raising Malawi/NOVOC put in this borehole, I understand a lot of the kids were drinking out of the river and getting sick -- even dying.

Quick research check: More than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water. Five million people, mostly children, die each year from water-borne diseases. More than 50 percent of Africans suffer from water-related diseases such as cholera and infant diarrhea. (Fast Facts: The Faces of Poverty: www.unmillenniumproject.org)

OK. So obviously, this is much better.

You always see pictures of women walking with heavy buckets of water on their heads. That's because water chores typically fall to the women and children in a village. So, not only does a borehole help save on backbreaking work, it gives women and children extra hours to work, attend school, etc.

I was watching one little boy and his older sister fill a bucket at this water station. The boy spilled some water so the sister popped him on the head. It was tragic! He cried so loud! You think about it, water is a matter of life or death for these kids and families. This borehole is a holy grail. It's located right outside of the peri-urban village that I talked about on an earlier blog post. And it was busy non-stop.

Here's a clip of the kids pumping water. It's 24 seconds.



Just off to the right is an orphan care center. It must be part of the Spirituality for Kids program, given the logo on all the kids' backpacks (and the fact that they own backpacks). I'm not sure what they do in the program. A lot of singing, for sure. Every time I tried to take a picture of the kids, one of the instructors would start a song. "We are jump-ing!" was a favorite. I have a lot of blurry shots to commemorate that one. I also remember a days-of-the-week song, "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...." you know the rest. It was hard to get it out of my head (sorta like a migraine). But they are certainly happy children.

You can see in this picture that the side wall of the care center is going up. We came back the next day for an interview with the chief of this village and remarkably, the whole center was nearly built.

Hey, hey! Progress!

We are jump-ing!

I live here.

This is the Upper East Side in New York.
A neighbor put up a note in my building last year that her neice wanted to do an internship in New York and was looking for an extra room to throw her stuff. I offered my place. It's a one-room studio. I didn't want any money for it. I figured I'd do a good deed. I put myself through college (I dropped out 3 times! -- no money, no funny!) and I remember how hard it was to get a break.

So, I took all my clothes out and moved in with David (my boyfriend at the time) who had a lot of space and was happy enough to have me.

Two girls actually moved in to this little space. One from Providence, Rhode Island and one from Lake Forest, IL where I used to work. I never met them, but we were able to hand off the keys and make this work for the summer.



Here's the room they stayed in. It really is a studio, so they had to get super creative. At the time, I had a little twin bed hiding behind the couch. Very dormy, but functional. Not sure who got the bed, but I'm sure they figured it out.


When they moved out, I moved back in and brought in a grown-up bed and put the couch in storage. So, it doesn't look like this anymore, but I kept the blue! It's fun to experiment in such a tiny place.

I share all this to say that something really cool happened this past Sunday morning. I was re-reading Creative Visualization (S. Gawain) and put a new request in the world that someone THAT DAY would send me an email or find me on YouTube or come across my blog and decide to make a donation to Raising Malawi for AT LEAST $500.

One of the important tips in creative visualization is that you want to add the following phrase:

This, or something better,
now manifests for me
in totally satisfying and harmonious ways
for the highest good of all concerned

Sounds quite cheesy, yes? Well, it is, but three hours later I got an email from the RI family saying they wanted to send a token of thanks to my charity.

I got the check in the mail today. $750 to Raising Malawi.

Thank you, Creative Visualization guru, Shakti Gawain. And Thank you Rhode Island family.

If you were an Angel, who would you be?

Let me help. Imagine if all you were was a head. And someone had to feed you. Care for you. Comb you.

What qualities would you want to project? Probably needless to say, I always aspired to be Kate Jackson's, Sabrina.

I didn't really have any role models growing up. My mom I guess. But she scared me a little. You get within two feet of her and she would find a reason to wipe your face with the stink rag from the sink. Naturally, I avoided her.

My mom was also a Type A, gotta-break-outta-poverty-and-make-it-big type character. And she was sorta crazy. I try not to tell stories about her because she is still very much alive and still reads my blog on occasion, so I know for sure she'll get mad (which I'm OK with), but she'll tell my dad and he'll have to call me to smooth things out between us, and I just hate to have to put my poor dad in that role for the rest of his life. But it is what it is.

I wonder if she would let me write my memoir. An honorable, truthful memoir. It'd be on caliber with something Augusten Burrows would write. I'll bet she'd let me if I gave her a big cut. Come on, Leona. What do you say? All proceeds (minus your cut) would go to Raising Malawi. Think about it. You could re-wallpaper the whole house.

Meantime, I am writing a piece about my lovely wedding, short marriage to my highschool sweetheart, Scott. It's for my next fundraiser at the PIT in two months. Invites to follow shortly.

I'm revising my New Year's Resolutions with the help of my favorite little Americans: Luke (7), Matthew (6), Jacob (3) and Lauren (22mos.) They all have Cherokee in their blood from their mom, my sister-in-law Nancy. So, they're as American as it gets.

I've been thinking about my resolutions. They're too fixed on denying me. Depriving me. Disciplining me even more. I really do think that's all important, but I want a new focus for the year. This year is not about "improving" my health. Eating only good foods. Doing only good things. Yuck. I blew it before the rooster crowed even once.

It's gotta be about a healthier outlook; finding a way to connect with the whole. I think the only way to get it is to stop chugging along unconsciously. And stopping cold turkey. Putting down the wine and spitting out the cheese to take a moment to reflect. Take a look at where I am and how I got here. And then with that, do more work to expand my soul -- a soul with the mighty good fortune of being born American -- and expand our collective soul in the process.

I love this country. I hate this country's politics right now...but....I love America. We have it all. We worked hard and we earned it. Well, we worked hard to take it from the Indians and of course much later the slaves helped us out a good deal, but let's just put those little details aside for now so I can make my point.

I'm borrowing from Jeffrey Sachs, now. His point is that 200 years ago, the idea that we could potentially achieve the end of extreme poverty was unimaginable. Everyone was poor with the exception of a very small minority of rulers and large land owners. Life sucked just as much in Europe as it did in India and China.

Before the 1800s and the period of modern economic growth, there had been virtually no sustained economic growth in the world, and only gradual increases in the human population. As of 1820, the gap between the rich and poor -- specifically, between the world's leading economy (the UK) and the poorest region (Africa), was a ratio of 4:1. Some quick math:

1820 -- UK 4:1 Africa

Today, the US is the richest economy; Africa is still poorest. The gap is:

1998 -- US 20: 1 Africa

Big gap. So obviously some parts of the world achieved modern economic growth while others did not. (Lazy Africans, right?) Well, no. Not right.

What changed was the onset of the Industrial Revolution, supported by a rise in agricultural productivity in northwestern Europe. Better management of soil nutrients via improved crop rotations and viola, we literally reap the harvest.
And then, of course, there's the steam engine. We mobilized a vast store of primary energy. Modern energy fueled every aspect of the economic takeoff.

Food production soared as fossil fuel energy was used to produce chemical fertilizers; industrial production skyrocketed as vast inputs of fossil fuel energy created equally vast powerhouses of steel, transport equipment, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, textile and apparels, and every other modern manufacturing sector. By the early twentieth century, the service industries (incl. modern information and communications technologies) were powered by electrification, itself a breakthrough of the fossil-fuel age.

And it goes on. Coal fueled industry. Industry fueled political power...creating huge military and financial advantages that allowed the British to expand its control over one sixth of humanity at the peak of the empire during the Victorian Era.

Why Britain first? Why not China or other centers of power?

-British society was relatively open; more scope for individual initiative
-Fixed social orders, serfdom was still the rule through much of Europe
-Rigid social hierarchies, like India's caste systems were common in other parts of the world
-British parliament and tradition of free speech and open debate were powerful contributors to the uptake of new ideas.
-Britain became one of the leading centers of Europe's scientific revolution -- a big deal, because for centuries before, Europe imported scientific ideas from Asia.
-Britain's political openness allowed for scientific thinking to thrive. Modern physics emerged out of that -- Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler and Galileo. Then, in 1687, Newton wrote a rather important book called, Principia Mathematica.
-And now there's an innovation gap, where rich countries exponentially benefit from further innovation and the poorest of the poor don't even have a foothold on growth.
None of this makes us bad or greedy people. It's just how the cards played out. And no card game is ever totally on the up-and-up. What's a little meddling to affect politics? And Lord knows we meddle. But who's even looking, especially when it comes to Africa? (I would need to devote a whole new blog for the mideast). Come on. Does it really matter when the deck is stacked in your favor?

I'm grateful that my country is not landlocked. I am grateful that we have access to education and medicine and don't have to continue to die from AIDs. Or tuberculosis. I'm grateful that malaria isn't an issue here. Heck, when I was in Malawi I met a 28-year old guy who looked more like 45, who buried his 3 year-old niece that day because she died of malaria three days prior.

You could tell he was grieving, but he wouldn't let it show. He told me it is a fact of life, and it was time for the baby to cross over. That's what he told me. And my heart just breaks. Because I know it does not have to be that way. So, I look at Princess Lauren here, and I can't even begin to imagine the grief and sadness he must be feeling inside to have just lost his niece. And then I quickly thank God my family and I pulled the long straw.

And sometimes, I just go in circles because I don't feel big enough to know what the heck I can do to make a difference.

I have some ideas for the next fundraiser, but I'm getting scared. I have to raise this money. I said I would. These kids are counting on me to help. I don't even know what I am going to do. I'm taking an improv class now to come up with a one-woman show. It's an 8 week course and the show is 8 minutes of a solo stand-up routine.

It costs $5 at the door. What if I invited 20 people and rather than asking for $5 I asked each for $3,750? That would be so great. Then I wouldn't have to stress anymore about how I am going to raise this next $75K.

But I have to stress about it. How could I not?

This is the house that Jack built.
by Mother Goose


Actually, this is the house that NOVOC built.

This is the nsima
That lay in the house that NOVOC built.

This is the rat,
That ate the nsima
That lay in the house that NOVOC built.

(OK, no. I don't have time for this.)

da da da da da ... fast forward....

This is the farmer sowing his corn,
That kept the cock that crowed in the morn,
That waked the priest all shaven and shorn,
That married the man all tattered and torn,
That kissed the maiden all forlorn,
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

The End.

But for real, this is a house that NOVOC built and we set out to interview the happy family. My job during these interviews is to stay out of the way and be quiet. I was innocently taping these guys from a good distance when I made friends with about 10 women who could hardly refrain from laughing at the way I tied my sarong. Actually, none of us refrained at all. I didn't speak any Chichewa, but they could tell on my face I was asking them to make it right for me. The joke was that I had this huge bulging knot on the side of my body. Anyway, with all the laughing, I think we may have disrupted the interview, so Johnny was given the assignment to distract the kids. (as if.) So, here he is off doing that....look at the beautiful scenery!

The people of Malawi may be poor, but man this country is anything but.

This is a peri-urban village outside of Lilongwe.


Honestly, it's one of my favorite places we went. It's so ghetto, but so rocking. The men, women and even kids didn't immediately like or trust us. In a lot of these villages the kids are taught to run if they see a "Mazungu" (white person). I can only imagine what we looked like waltzing through their community with our cameras.


Janja had appointments for her interviews, so we were expected. And we were really respectful not to overstep our bounds. Well....Kevin did run after some of the kids with his arms over his head yelling, "Mazungu!" "Mazungu!" but the kids loved it, so, it's all relative.... As I walked thru the village a lot of the women would grab their children or hide/protect them when I turned my camera on. Others were into it so I tried to be sensitive to their wishes as much as I could read them.

So, why were we there, anyway? Well, Raising Malawi has a board seat on NOVOC, Network of Organizations for Vulnerable and Orphan Children. NOVOC works with the local CBOs throughout Malawi to help them build their capacity for orphan care. Raising Malawi provides NOVOC (among other organizations) substantial financial aid and other resources to make that happen.

In this village, we're helping to build an Orphan Care Center. And we recently put in a pump so they can get fresh water. I'll show more of that in another blog entry. Actually, in this clip, you *may* notice Philippe off in the distance grilling the head of NOVOC (who is so nice) on all the facts and fine points of exactly what has been accomplished in this village since our last visit. It was good to hear. We're really holding these organizations to task.

Anyway, here's 3 1/2 mins of the peri-urban struggle and bliss to give you a feel for the vibe.

This is a local Malawian band. We're having a party at the Kumbali Lodge where we were staying. We put on the event to thank the teachers in the Spirituality for Kids program. I say we for lack of a better pronoun. My good fortune is that I was there. And I was welcomed.

I have lots of great clips from this night, but I think I'm going to have to burn them to DVD to share. The room was dark and when you extract this for YouTube, the quality gets too compromised to see anything. But maybe just click and listen to the music. It's good!



Kevin Brown joined the band and even did a great great Bono-style solo for us at the end of the night. Sadly, I ran out of tape for that. Here's him on something that looks like a comb...I don't know what it is, but it gets your toe tapping. This clip is about 40 seconds if you want to have a look.