Camilla Barry, Dimpho Siphoro, Alice Robertson find ways to help struggling communities
by Stephanie Hiller, Awakened Woman e-Magazine
September 23, 2004
Original Article
Camilla Barry became concerned about Afghanistan when she learned of the abuses of the Taliban. "I was horrified that they wouldn't let their girls go to school," she said in a talk at the Presbyterian Church in Mill Valley, CA. "I said, I'm going to go over there and find out if there's something I can do about it."
Camila has just returned from her third trip to Afghanistan, where she taught science classes to street kids in Kabul and to teachers in Ghazni, just south of Kabul, by arrangement with the Ministry of Education. Thirty science and math teachers were expected, but 120 signed up. They were so eager to meet her and learn from her that many of them showed up a day early. Students who attended her previous classes came up to her to tell her what they remembered. Everywhere, the response was enthusiastic.
Camila paid her own way to Afghanistan but was provided housing at a Guest House in Kabul run by Afghans4Tomorrow, an organization of Afghan Americans who are setting up projects in their native country to help Afghans recover from years of war.
Her trip has been reported on national television here.
Despite firm instructions by her guide not to wander alone in Kabul, Camilla explored the city on her own. Although people were curious and watched her as she shopped for materials to use in her science experiments, no one bothered her, and she witnessed no violence.
Women like Camilla are finding that they can make a huge difference in the world by initiating small-scale, independent projects that help communities deal with overwhelming difficulty.
Alice Robertson is originally from a small village in Kenya. She was the only student in her class to be selected to come to the US as a foreign exchange student. Later she returned for high school and college, she married, raised two sons here, and works as a loan officer at a mortgage company in Santa Rosa.
Three years ago when she returned to her village to visit her family, she learned that her best friend had died of AIDS the night before.
"Every day 600 people in Kenya die of AIDS," she told me. One in four are women. "Most of the high school girls have AIDS." In many families, grandmothers are left to raise their daughter's children after their mother has died.
There is no medical care in the villages. "If you do go to a doctor, when they find you have AIDS they send you home without even an aspirin."
She thought, "What can I do to help?"
She decided to start a health clinic in her village of Kangundo. With the help of her Baptist Church in Santa Rosa, she was able to raise $12,000.
This summer the clinic was built! Workers in the village built the clinic with stones shaped by chisels. The 40 foot well was dug by hand; it will use a solar pump to pump the water to the top of the building so that it can be delivered to the clinic by gravity. The clinic has room for 16 beds for patients who come from far away.
The spread of AIDS is directly related to the economic situation. Men leave their farms and families to work all week in the cities. "Some people live in the streets. Then you see them in the office doing whatever work they do." Some take a mistress — or visit young prostitutes forced to take to the streets to support their kids — and contract AIDS; they bring the disease back to their wives and children. Some have more than one wife.
"The colonial way is clashing with the cultural ways in the villages, and it's a mess," said Alice. "Kenya is only 40 years old. They are trying to keep the old ways and integrate a new way of knowing, and that leaves everybody almost without a culture at all."
Yet it is the women who hold the communities together. They get together to help each others on the farms. When Alice was a girl, the girls would get together, pick coffee on her father's farm one week, then help at another farm the next week. "That kept the closeness. Kids get to know all the mothers. Kids know whatever they're doing, there's more than one parent watching. "
"Women do all of the work and have the least wealth. Does that sum it up?" Women have started projects, weaving baskets and clothes to sell. The men come to buy the goods to take to the market, but they don't pay until the things are sold. "We said, wait a minute. They have to come with the money!"
Educating the women, says Alice, is the key.
The next task for the clinic is to secure the furnishings and the medical supplies that it will need to operate.
She'll return to Kangundo next summer. "We hope the clinic will be operating by then."
If you can help Alice and her friends get the supplies needed, please contact her at ten.labolgcbs|aawbikila#ten.labolgcbs|aawbikila/
Dimpho Siphoro, 26, lives in Soweto, a black township in South Africa. This year she made her third trip to California as the guest of Mary Moore, 70, a Sonoma County activist who met Dimpho at the Black Women's Conference in Johannesburg in 1999.
"For years I've always said you can't heal the world one by one, you've got to get to the source of the problem," said Mary Moore, 70, a lifelong activist who initiated the protests against the Bohemian Grove elite encampment held here every year, "but I feel I've done more bringing Dimpho here than in all those years of protests."
This summer Dimpho attended the Solar Living Institute internship program in Hopland, sponsored by Mary with the help of her network of local activists. She will be returning home next week to begin the hard work of manifesting her vision for a model eco-center in the urban township where she lives.
Three years ago, after her first trip to visit Mary, Dimpho had begun her work for positive change in her community by starting the youth group UBUNTU (which means humanity) with her brother. UBUNTU runs a community garden in a local school yard.
Inspired by her training at the Solar Living Institute, Dimpho plans to build an eco-center modeled on the ecovillage principle, using natural building methods and supplied with solar and other renewable forms of energy, where young people can learn the principles of permaculture.
Or re-learn them. In fact, straw bale or "cob" housing is the native method of building in her country, and people — primarily women — have been growing natural foods for centuries.
But now, seduced by the glamor of modern life as it is portrayed on television, South Africans think straw bale houses — made of mud and straw — are lowly, primitive types of dwelling. They want brick houses with all the modern appurtenances.
But straw bale is easy and cheap. "We built a house here in just one week," says the energetic Dimpho, "and there were only 20 of us." The South African government is subsidizing housing now, but there is a long waiting list. "If we can get the government to give us the money, we won't have to wait for the contractors. We can build houses ourselves."
It's going to be a hard sell in a country aspiring to achieve the inflated American lifestyle. But Dimpho's enthusiasm and strong spirit — backed by the growing network of youth around the world dedicated to sustainability — will be persuasive.
Dimpho is one of thousands of women and men who have dedicated themselves to practical applications of the knowledge of sustainability that has been issuing from the disenchanted west as a practical alternative to the ongoing destruction wrought by the greedy jaws of rampant consumption devouring resources to achieve a level of comfort and luxury that the planet cannot support.
The corporate machine that provides Americans with so many new carpets, extra tv sets, throwaway wardrobes and other toys is dedicated to maintaining a luxury lifestyle for the few. As Bush has said, "The American quality of life is non-negotiable." To maintain it, America appears prepared to "reduce the surplus population", eliminating poor people of color — or allowing them to die and starve — so that there will be plenty of goodies for the fortunate few who benefit from their production.
We are the fortunate few. With our personal computers, our two and three cars per family, our cosmetics, our thick mattresses, 24-hour electricity, and all the rest, we are equipped to turn the benefits of technology into a rich harvest for the struggling world.
It's our obligation, and women are the first to recognize that by sharing our resources with communities across the sea, we can empower them to carve out a more fruitful way of life.
"We need support to get started, but we can't live on handouts," says the resilient Dimpho, who has maintained a hectic schedule of trainings, talks, prison visits and other meetings ever since her arrival last spring. "No point to have people feed us and not telling us how to fish that fish."
Her eco-community center, where tourists can come to stay and South Africans can gain knowledge of advanced eco-technologies, is going to cost money.
Land, in particular, has become nearly as expensive as land in inflated Northern California. They'll need computers and Internet access is costly. They'd like to have video cameras and tv screens so that they can show people what these eco-friendly projects look like. The list goes on. If you can help, please contact Dimpho at ku.oc.oohay|morohpisohpmid#ku.oc.oohay|morohpisohpmid/
Connecting the money with people who need it is the challenge. In Afghanistan, the women in our Peace Circle are eager to start a tailoring business so that they can provide for themselves and their children. Women for a Better World is working with them to find sponsors interested in helping them develop their business.
People, ordinary people, will work hard to create a better life if given the tools. Instead of sending more planes to Iraq — and taking money out of reconstruction to send more troops — we could make peace by restoring the water supply and providing healthcare.
Since governments have failed to understand the power of nurturance to create peace, we will have to show them.
One person at a time.
Stephanie Hiller is the editor of Awakened Woman. You can contact her at moc.namowdenekawa|rotide#moc.namowdenekawa|rotide
