As Nigeria Project Director, I traveled to Nigeria on a fact finding trip from September 3^rd – 15^th. While there, the goal was to evaluate the feasibility of establishing RMF’s pilot health care clinic in the Aguda/Coker area of Lagos, in partnership with Afodise, a local NGO, and the Lagos State Government.

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We’ve now finished our 2nd training, which took place at Mama Kevina Comprehensive Secondary School. The school was established 2 years ago by a couple of (Ugandan) Franciscan nuns, Sister Clare and Sister Margaret. The primary 3 populations among the students: children affected by the war in the north (including “invisible children” and child soldiers), those affected by the flooding that affected ½ the country last year, and AIDS orphans. The remaining are just plain poverty stricken, or have other, more personal disasters.

The school is secondary, meaning for high school aged kids (although because of interrupted studies, the students range in age from 12 to the early 20s). Because most of the kids will never get a chance at college, the sisters focus on vocational programming. Some Dutch philanthropists organized the building of a bakery, including lots of industrial machines, although the power to run these machines is unlikely, so some enormous wood stoves have been constructed in the back, which will probably see a lot more use. The sisters also hope to offer tailoring, basic computer skills, and some other things, and as a matter of course the students do agriculture (had just planted sweet potatoes, beans & corn) to supplement school food (most students are boarders), and are making the bricks to make the new dorms and school rooms.

The students are full of personality, although some seemed a bit disconnected, and some – as the sisters say – are “a bit cheeky”. They have a reputation for being very good at music (which we later had opportunity to see), and were extremely well-disciplined when they needed to be.

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I’ve wanted to write sooner, but electricity is sporadic and our days are long and full, so here I am on a Sunday afternoon, ready to write.

It’s been almost 2 weeks since we left Hawaii. Took us 5 days to get to Tororo, Uganda, where the first trainings are taking place.

Judah & I flew from Hilo to Honolulu to L.A. to New York to London (where we took the tube to visit the National Museum of History during our 12 hour layover) to Nairobi.

In Nairobi we stopped over at the Abha Light offices, where I met up with my Real Medicine Foundation colleague Beth, and where Didi (who I worked with in December) got us organized, gave us a bit of a crash pad & repacking centre & refueling site before catching the late night bus to Uganda.

Beth had brought most of the training supplies, so had huge and many bags, which we wrestled onto the big, greyhound style bus that would take us on the 12+ hr ride across the border. We set off only 1 hr late, out of Nairobi and into the black African night. Judah and I entertained ourselves with i-pod stories and the occasional flash of village firelight.

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By Dr Martina Fuchs The Ten Commandments trailer

The Zambezi, Africa’s fourth largest river, rises in Zambia and flows along the borders of Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe to Mozambique, where it spills into the Indian Ocean. Since mid December 2007, early and torrential seasonal rains 

across northern Zimbabwe, southern Zambia, Malawi and central and northern Mozambique – intensified by a La Niña in the Pacific and possibly climate change – have waterlogged and destroyed fields, washed out roads and villages, and destroyed livelihoods.  The worry for Mozambique is that most of that water drains out to the east along the Zambezi River valley through the center of the country. By early January 2008, it already had caused flooding in the Zambezi valley with 13 dead and 102,330 displaced and 57,000 hectares arable land flooded. At that time, the Mozambican government estimated that up to 95,000 people had already been moved to resettlement areas, but over 200,000 people were still at risk and needed to be evacuated. It is anticipated that this year’s flooding in Mozambique could cause more material damage than the catastrophic experience of 2000/2001. Recent reports found that most households affected by the flooding of February 2007 are yet to recover and are experiencing severe food insecurity. About 285,000 people were affected and 29 killed in the Zambezi River basin last year during the worst floods to hit the country in six years. According to Mozambique’s Ministry of Health, there are increasing numbers of people with diarrhea and vomiting. Cholera is a serious threat. In Mutarara, one of the most affected areas in the Zambezi high basin, there is no reliable road access. Water levels are higher than those seen in the peak of last year’s flood, and helicopter landing sites used for the delivery of aid last year are submerged this time.

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