I know it might be hard to tell what is in this picture. But if you look closely, you will see something that truly amazes me.

(and no, its not the face of this woman that shows signs of a life lived in a place that we call both beautiful & “behind”…though her face is beautiful & amazing to me.)

It is what she is standing in front of. A stove.

A stove made entirely from:
1) mud from a termite mound, mixed with grasses
2) the stalk of a banana tree
3) a few hours of hard, back-breaking work

Here’s how it goes:

• Prepare the mud (by mixing in the grasses & some water)
• Cut a few foot-long sections of a banana stalk
• Throw down the mud by giant handfuls as hard as you can (to get the air pockets out)
• Smooth out the surface
• Let it dry for a few days
• Cut out the banana stalk you used as a form to make air holes to take the smoke outside the hut.
• Prepare food in a way that doesn’t cause smoke inhalation, or burns (because you are no longer cooking over an open fire where your children (or you) might fall into it & get burned) and is more energy-efficient.

I was amazed at the simplicity of these stoves. They are made quickly, and women are going around to their friends & other villages teaching each other how to make this. It’s revolutionizing the way that cooking is done. And it really is amazing.

There is no shortage of creativity in Africa. Just check out www.afrigadget.com for proof. God made people to be creative as he is creative, so it should not be surprising that there are people all over the world who come up with new and interesting ideas, build crazy new things, or come up with new ways to use what we already have.

. 

In his book  Do the Work Pressfield Steven says:

When you and I set out to create anything, art, commerce, science, love – or to advance in the direction of a higher, nobler version of ourselves, we uncork from the universe, ineluctably, an equal and opposite reaction.

That reaction is Resistance. Resistance is an active, intelligent, protean, malign force – tireless, relentless, and inextinguishable – whose sole object is to stop us from becoming our best selves and from achieving our higher goals.

The universe is not indifferent. It is actively hostile.

Stevens says that Resistance comes from within and from other people, which I think is true. It’s also just part of a broken, fallen world.

Seeing the creativity of the Ugandan people has made me think about the forms Resistance takes in my life. Lack of discipline is a big one for me, lack of focus as well. I take on way to many things. Fear, desire for acceptance…all of those are part of it. Im learning fight some of these, but it is constant work.

It seems like I should be in an ideal place to create, I live a comfortable life, I don’t want for food or water, I have access to amazing resources. Yet I often struggle. Somebody in Uganda on the other hand has it seems huge obstacles to overcome. Lack of infrastructure, resources, basics of life.

I wonder though if these are not the true sources of Resistance for them. Sometimes, oftentimes, limits bring creativity, great need causes us to find great solutions. There are of course boundaries on this. Being comfortable inhibits my creativity in some specific way, just like being sick or hungry will inhibit your creativity in another way. I don’t by any means want to suggest that if we all poison our water and destroy our crops we would suddenly find the cure for cancer. What I do want to suggest is that figuring out where Resistance comes from is probably not as simple as it seems. The creativity of people in Africa prove that its not just about resources. It’s never fair to say “if I just had more X I could come up with a great idea.”

In the end it seems like resources are more about execution. That is were I have a massive advantage. Any one of the amazing ideas on AfriGadget might be a game changer for the person who invented it and for the communities around them, but the Resistance of dirty water, bad economic systems, malaria, etc stand in the way of letting those ideas grow into impact.

Uhh…this post got sort of rambly and not really making sense. Sorry for the randomness. I guess what it comes down to is this: I want to understand what allows me to be creative and to impact people with ideas and the things I do. And, I want to understand what stands in the way of that. Likewise, I want to understand those things for somebody who lives in Uganda.

I’ll leave you with one more picture about creativity:

Uganda is a beautiful place, and we got to see almost every corner of it! I sort of have a love hate relationship with photography…I often feel like trying to capture a picture makes me miss the real experience. That said, if I ever get to go back to Uganda I want to be much more intentional in the way I try to capture the land and the stores of the people there. Here are a few pictures:

This is the Nile River. Remember how I posted about how many people are in Uganda? In some ways this picture is a perfect example. It looks very remote and untouched. But there are probably 150 people standing behind me.

This is near Mt. Elgon, which is near the border of Kenya. Mt. Elgon is where a lot of Ugandas coffee comes from.

Here is a quick little video I made for our report to the church about our trip:

I think that when most people think of water well projects this is what they think of:

That was not our trip…its just a randome video i found on youtube We did get to be part of an experience sort of like that (without the big truck). It was really cool to see water come up out of the ground for the first time in a village. Clean accessible water represents a lot of possibilities. It’s tangible and exciting.

But watch this:

That’s us, sitting in a village meeting about how to fix a broken water well. It’s not very exciting. It’s interesting, but meetings are meetings.

A bit of context might be good. There is a well very far away form the village, because of its distance people have to spend hours everyday just gathering water.

Kibo Group has been working in this village for a while. They had been doing several important things, like teaching about sanitation, establishing water and sanitation committees, helping maintain a rain collection system, and being a part of the community. The village had a rainwater collection system (its the big tank the kids are sitting on in the video). It is a good source of some water, but because it depends on rain it is unreliable, and does not provide enough water for the village.
At some point some other orginization came to the village dug a well, and left.. Everyone was happy, now they had water.

But something happened to the well and it stopped working. Nobody in the village knows how to fix it, and they paid some money to somebody to try and fix it but they never got it working either. So, now they are stuck. This is a classic problem on the African continent.

This is complex, and I don’t understand all of the culture/economic/human nature/whatever else behind why well projects fail. But, a really simple explanation would be that there are not good systems in place to ensure the continued maintenance, funding, and use of the well. Fixing the well is actually sort of easy. It would take hard work, time, and money. But not that much money, around $1000. The people who work for Kibo have the skill and desire to put in the hard work. But instead of fixing the well  they had a meeting.

A proposal was made. Kibo would provide half the money and the labor if the village would provide the other half and would ensure that there was a group of people from the village that would be a Water Use Committee and a Sanitation Committee to ensure the future of the well (remember, these are things that they had been in the village working on for a long time already). In the end the village decided they should have another meeting to talk this over.

This is not the stuff of gripping video and glossy brochures.It;s not the tuff of statistics and “we have to DO something” either. But it is the stuff of relationships, hard work, lots of time, deep understanding, more time, community, cooperation, and even more time.

There are lots of take aways from this for me. I think most people are aware of some of the issues around water, that its not just about drilling a well. But to actually see some of those issues played out in a very small way makes it real…and it makes it seem even more complex in some ways. There are all sorts of things going on that are not obvious (even when you are there at the meeting). So, I want to learn more, i guess that is one of my big take aways, from this small experience in the village, as well as overall: There is a lot to learn, and it takes a lot of time and dedication and listening to learn. But until you do it’s impossible to serve people (in Uganda or here or anywhere) well until you take the time to understand.