ADRA : Adventist Development & Relief Agency International

Out of central Tajkistan's rocky, war-hardened soil, ADRA is constructing greenhouses and helping families in the Rasht region grow hope in an area still recovering from Tajikistan's brutal five-year civil war.

Since the end of Tajikistan's civil war in 1997, the region has suffered a full collapse of its economy, leaving many people struggling financially. In a region already characterized as "less developed," the civil war destroyed the region's financial infrastructure. Many of the survivors lost their homes and livelihoods in a conflict that reportedly killed at least 50,000 people and forced another 1.2 million to flee from their homes. Thousands of families were left to mourn fathers and brothers who never returned home. And when the war ended, those who remained wondered how they would survive.

The greenhouses built by ADRA Tajikistan provide an answer to that question, allowing families to grow dill, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, and other vegetables during the cold mountain winters.

"The home-grown vegetables enrich the families' diets, provide an income, and increase their overall wellbeing," said Victor Muhanov, project assistant for ADRA Tajikistan. "Also, children can watch the process of carrying out greenhouse agriculture and learn valuable skills and abilities that will be passed down from generation to generation."

The greenhouse project, showcased in ADRA's 2007 edition of The Original Really Useful Gift Catalog, began in June of 2007. Each greenhouse costs $1,500 dollars to build, and can be constructed in two days. So far, ADRA has been able to provide greenhouses for six families.

Sanchagul, a rather shy woman with soft brown eyes and dark, kerchief-covered hair, is the wife and mother of one of those families. Fifteen years ago Sanchagul, her husband, Mirzo, and children were a typical Tajik family. Then war broke out, filling each day with insecurity, terror, and confusion. And when a missile fired by a military helicopter destroyed their home and belongings, they were forced to join other war-displaced families in a settlement known as Pitomnik. Mirzo was able to build them a small, four-room house, and Sanchagul has done her best to make the simple house a home, with traditional rugs to warm the floors and family portraits to line the walls.

The couple and their 25-year-old son, Mirzorahim, bear deep scars from the war. Mirzo struggles with crippling states of depression caused by the trauma and horrors of the war that make it hard for him to work and provide for his family. Before the war, Mirzo enjoyed a successful career as an accountant and business manager for the Rasht region government. Now he works as a laborer working to reconstruct the local roads. But with his depression, he often is unable to work, and the family often does not have enough to eat.

Mirzorahim was a normal, healthy, 10-year-old boy when the fighting began, exposing him to the hard realities and deadly violence of conflict. Since then, he periodically battles epileptic-like seizures doctors believe were triggered by war-caused trauma. His three younger sisters, Khangoma, and twins Fotima and Zuhro, attend school in a nearby settlement, though without proper shoes the walk is often difficult, especially in the snowy winter weather.

With both her husband and her son ill, the responsibility of providing for the family has fallen squarely on Sangachul's shoulders. Like all mothers, Sanchagul wants to make sure that her family is provided for, that her children are safe and their lives easy, and that they grow healthy and happy. But without help, each day becomes a struggle to survive.

Sanchagul received a greenhouse from ADRA this past November, and is just about ready to harvest the first crop of vegetables. Mirzo and Mirzorahim enjoy working in the greenhouse, cultivating vegetables that will supplement the family's meals and be sold for much-needed supplies, such as new shoes for the girls.

Grateful for the assistance from ADRA, Sanchagul knows the hope she holds for her family's future in this rocky, war-torn land will now grow as strong and healthy as the vegetables in their new greenhouse.

ADRA's relationship with the people of the Rasht region began back in 2002, with a project that distributed wheat, sugar and oil among the people in need there. ADRA has continued working in the Rasht region, reconstructing schools, providing community development assistance, and distributing gifts to children from vulnerable families.

She wanted me to meet one of the students. I knew that this must be something special she wanted me to experience. I did not need a second invitation. At 3:30, I pointed the old Land Cruiser into the wall-to-wall traffic and fought my way to the district where the school was located.

Schools #29 and #116 are located next to each other and work with the deaf and the blind, respectively. The four-story gray building with cement-brick walls resembled a prison rather than a school. I walked up those uneven concrete steps to the third floor to the classroom that had been assigned to our project. As I stepped into the classroom, all 20 students touched their foreheads, then put their fists to their chests and pointed their open palms toward me in greeting from their silent worlds. A smile was evident on each face. Private conversations took place in sign language between the students as we waited for the teachers. Just a week ago, these children lived in isolated worlds; now they had been brought together and given a sign language to communicate with each other.

I made a little speech in English that was translated into Mongolian by Battsetseg and then into Mongolian sign language by one of the teachers. I challenged the students to make the best of the rest of their life’s journey now that they could communicate. We gave each one a certificate, and I shook each precious hand that is now being put to such valuable use in communicating. I took a photo of the group, each student holding their certificate with one hand and pointing their other hand with loose fingers to the ceiling and wobbling it back and forth, which is sign language for clapping and joy. They were so proud of those certificates.

Battsetseg then asked them who the best student had been. The students all pointed to a thin, pale, and emaciated man about 30 years of age. Was this the student she wanted me to meet? Tsendjav’s story unfolded as I spoke to his parents alone afterward. He was one of triplets that his parents were so proud of. While still a baby, he was given an antibiotic for an infection. His parents claimed that it made him deaf. For 30 years these respectable parents—the father is a Mongolian language professor at the University of Mongolia, and the mother is a teacher at an elite school—hid this child from every visitor to avoid the embarrassment of anyone knowing that they had a child with a disability. Every time anyone knocked at the door, they would hold their index finger across their lips, and he would go scampering to the bedroom and remain out of sight and quiet till the visitors had left. Not a single person ever knew that they had another son who was deaf. They loved him, but they did not know how to communicate with him. The only sign he knew was the index finger across the lips.

One week ago, the parents, who had heard about the ADRA sign language course, plucked up enough courage for the first time in 30 years to take Tsendjav out of their apartment. The first day in class, he would not lift his head and made no sign of taking anything in.

But I saw him this afternoon, just five days later. He was at the center of many conversations. This week he learned all 35 letters of the Mongolian alphabet for the first time in his life. He could not even count when he came on Monday. Oh, the joy of his parents as they clutched the precious 600-word sign language dictionary, their key to communication with their son. Soon we hope to have a new 3,000-word dictionary in their hands. Tsendjav came up and shook my hand, gave me a rose, and pulled my head toward his so he could press his cheek against mine as a sign of respect and thankfulness. I had a lump in my throat, and my eyes misted over. This was a child who had been brought out into the light for the first time in his lifetime. How many more are still hidden?

The parents thanked us over and over. The father is going to give us a list of 3,000 of the most actively used words in Mongolian so we can corroborate our list with his. I challenged him to become the first professor of sign language in Mongolia.

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The cold tarmac at the Vladivostok airport was the end of the line for me. The air was about 17 degrees Fahrenheit, as warm as it was going to get for a mid-winter morning. Twenty dull hours of flying had set my wrist watch no less than fifteen hours ahead of Washington D.C. to a distant time zone in the Russian Far East. Here, if not for strict border crossings, a person might drive to North Korea for lunch or go to China for an all-afternoon shopping spree. I was, for the moment, in a different dimension.

The moment we stepped off the bus that ferried us from the plane, the main terminal door swung open and we entered reverently in a single file. Down the hall a crowd of eager Russians, shapkas on every head, searched our group of new arrivals for a glimpse of their husbands, girlfriends, and business guests. I, too, was looking deep into the crowd for a man who just two days before had promised in a short e-mail to meet me here. He had sent me his telephone number in case one of us failed to show up, but he didn’t see the likelihood of that happening since he had booked himself on a flight that would arrive several hours before mine from a distant city in Siberia. The only thing he noted with some level of concern was,  “I have problems with English language.” And that was it.

It was almost 11:00 a.m. by my watch, and I stood in the middle of the hall wrestling with my bag before I set it down on the shiny floor. For a moment it occurred to me that he would not arrive. After all, there are still many things that can keep two complete strangers 9,343 miles away from each other from converging at the same time on the same spot of earth in a place unfamiliar to both.

On the Trans-Siberian Railroad traveling to visit ADRA projects along the way.

That impossibility, however, came only as a passing thought.

I watched a family, anxious to see a relative arrive, stretch out their arms as he approached their side of the airport hall. As for me, I imagined the meeting with my local contact being something like this:

“Am I glad to be here! I wasn’t sure if we’d meet, but I’m certainly happy that you made it. So, good flight from Novosibirsk? Are you ready to get on with the trip? By the way, when do we catch the train tonight?”

Which is why, a minute or two later, when I found myself standing in front of a man wearing a suit and tie and an elegant black shapka who spoke to me only in Russian, but to whom my identity was fully known, I was only half convinced that this was Nikolay Grebenyuk, director of ADRA East Russia, the person with whom I had corresponded for a month and who had replied to all my inquiries in a series of messages in well-written English. How could this be? I was flummoxed. Then I said:

“Nikolay?”

A wide smile spread across his face, the kind that says unequivocally, yes, it’s me.

He had immediately recognized the stitched ADRA logo on my windbreaker jacket when I walked into the terminal. He pulled out a paper folder with the same logo printed on it, as a gesture to ensure mutual recognition.

“How did you manage to write in English?” I asked.

He fumbled with some words, and said, “Computer program.”

Pointing to the exit, he asked (I could only guess), how my flight from Moscow had been, and was I ready to get on with the trip? He patted me on the back. As we walked out into the brisk morning air, I sensed that perhaps he was also glad to know that neither of us had flown all this way just to be stood up by the other.

At two o’clock that same night we were seated comfortably in a spacious and mostly empty sleeper railroad car on our way to Irkutsk, a city three days away that lies near Lake Baikal’s southern extremity not far from the border with Mongolia. Although we had enjoyed the convenience of a local translator during the day, our communication was now restricted to loose Russian and English words, wild hand signals, and doodles on a small paper pad.

I crawled into my sleeping bag. Nikolay, who still seemed to be working out some words in his head, stood up and said, “Chai?” The word would have gone past me had I not visited northern Pakistan a year earlier where drinking tea is a part of every social event and is offered to any guest who enters a home, much like a calumet among American Indian tribes, to extend friendship and peace.  He quickly dashed through the narrow corridor and got two tall glasses from a train attendant, then filled them almost to the brim with hot water from a boiler at the end of the railroad car.

“Good chai,” I said. Nikolay responded in Russian and seemed pleased by my appreciation of the local tea.

“My country drink chai. All people,” I said.

A puzzled look settled on his face. The confusion, perhaps, had something to do with my assertion that everyone in my country, like Russia, was a tea drinker. Or that he wasn’t sure what country was my country.

“America?” he said pointing to me.

“No, no. No America,” I said putting my index finger to my chest. “Chile.”

I drew an imaginary map in the stale air of our compartment, and after a brief pause, he said: “I Ukraina.”

“Not Russki?” I said in the best bit of Russian I could summon.

Until now it had not occurred to me that Nikolay could be anything other than an authentic born and bred Russian. Perhaps, if I’d known the language well I could have detected a slight foreign twist in his voice, but then again, he had lived outside the Ukraine for so long that he surely had by now left out of his pronunciation any clues of having been born elsewhere.

In his work for ADRA, Nikolay Grebenyuk oversees all of Siberia, an area equivalent to nearly nine times the size of Alaska.

His mother and father, who raised him Russian Orthodox from birth (he would later become Seventh-day Adventist), still lived, he said, in his childhood home in Kumejki, a small rural village 110 miles southwest of Kiev, where they had a large field of bright sunflowers, which they tended to year after year. They loved the Ukraine and would not live anywhere else, even if that meant seeing their son, who had lived in Siberia for the better part of two decades, only from time to time. Fortunately, his older brother lived just down the road from them, and that gave Nikolay a measure of comfort.

Family was sacred to him; one doesn’t need words to sense the love of a man for his wife and children. Opening his notebook computer, he clicked on several photographs which popped onto the screen: holding a big fish with his 12-year-old son, Pavel; daughter Katya, 16, posing near the door of her grandparents’ home in Kumejki; and Lena, his wife of seventeen years, sitting on a beach during a recent summer trip. I was sure, then, that being on this train with me meant that Nikolay was losing time with them; it was the nature of the work. We’d all been there: far-removed, longing.

Presently, as we sped through the darkness across the vast Russian countryside, we were taking sips of hot tea. It was late in the night, but there seemed to be a sense of interest in each of us to know where the other had come from—and perhaps where he was going.

The train traveled the entire night along the Chinese border all the way to Khabarovsk, then turned west at the northern end of the city and crossed the Amur River. Nikolay was delighted to see the river flowing undisturbed under a hefty layer of ice possibly as much a three feet thick, he said. To sink a fishing line into the river a man would need to drill by hand for the better part of the morning, a sweaty task even in the deep freeze of winter. But no amount of ice, nothing really, was going to get between a man and his fish.

This was apparent the next day when it came time for lunch. Long before boarding the train (when exactly is anyone’s guess), Nikolay got his hands on a trout that only two or three day ago, I imagined, had been swimming up a river in Kamchatka, an extensive peninsula opposite to Alaska across the Bering Sea whose fresh fish products are considered the best in the region. Now, the trout lay smoked inside a plastic bag. Using a small kitchen knife, he cut the flesh into thick slices; the outside was clearly well smoked, but bringing a piece of the fish to my mouth, I tasted the raw gelatinous body.

“Good,” Nikolay said, “Very, very good.”

One bite was enough. In Russian he offered to give me half of the fish. Taking the knife, he pointed to the slices that were mine. I declined, offering my upbringing as a poor excuse for not being accustomed to eating fish. He said no problem, and having eaten his share of the trout, he put the rest back in the bag and placed it by the window where the deep cold from outside would keep the meat fresh until the following day, in case I changed my mind.

By now it was customary after every meal for us to read from a book or stare out the window or simply sit back and choose a conversation topic to pursue. We had somehow managed to discover words in Russian and English that we both vaguely recognized, and soon we were having lengthy exchanges.

One such discussion started hours after we left Khabarovsk as the train worked its way across a vast, uninhabited plain colonized by birch trees and little else. We were in the Siberian taiga proper, Nikolay said, a biome that extends all the way to Norway and, skipping the Bering Sea, into Alaska and much of inland Canada. A man takes a measure of pride in saying he has been in it—in winter especially. It is, after all, a place of infinite beauty, but which can test even the most rugged of men. In years past Nikolay had ventured into the open taiga for days at a time, not necessarily alone, but always in the spirit of adventure.

“My friend professional hunter,” he said.

It was with his buddy Sasha and two or three other friends from Irkutsk that he would walk into the wild on weekends to camp, rest, and sometimes hunt. He was showing me some photographs of one such trip when he said he owned three carbines. It was with one of these that he went into the forest one day and killed a bear. At present, however, he kept his carbines stored at home, because he hadn’t found much use for them in recent years since he moved west from Irkutsk to the bigger city of Novosibirsk.

Life in Irkutsk had been memorable: hunting trips to the Siberian taiga, visits to Lake Baikal, friends, romance. But Nikolay had not moved there postulating that he would achieve those things, but rather that those things would come to him in time, as one must often do upon arrival in a strange, foreign land. This was 1986 and he was enjoying the relative freedom of having finished four years of training at a military academy in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) at the confluence of the Volga and the Oka rivers 250 miles east of Moscow. The Soviet Army, naturally, would expect a return on its investment. Before the blanket of winter dropped on Siberia, Nikolay arrived in Irkutsk to report for duty and begin, he said, a career as an acquisitions and logistics officer. The job meant supplying the base—from the grunts to high commanders—with everything from socks to the lard used in the kitchen. He was organized and watchful of every detail and over the years he rose steadily, as did his love for Irkutsk and his new wife and later his two children, to become major—by now in the Russian Army. 

A few days later, in late afternoon, he would take me to the main entrance of the army base to show me his former home. A Sukhoi jet fighter was propped handsomely on the snow near the gate. A young guard was standing out of the cold inside a yellow building. Nikolay didn’t say a word. He just smiled. But I knew that he had thirteen years of memories tucked away behind those tall black metal gates.

Siberia, if you didn’t know it already, is enormous. It extends eastward from the Ural Mountains not far from Moscow and southward to neighboring Kazakhstan, and runs along the borders of Mongolia and China all the way to the other side of Asia where the land dead-ends at the Pacific Ocean eight time zones later. If you take a cutout of the map of Alaska and set it down over Siberia, it will easily fit no less than eight times and leave plenty of wiggle room to add California, Oregon, Washington, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Connecticut, and two Districts of Columbia.

To approach the size of Siberia in a different manner, one comes to the conclusion, after some simple mathematics, that Nikolay must oversee—and try to crisscross—as many square miles as the vast majority of ADRA country offices in, say, Africa (twenty-six out of a total of thirty-four)—Mauritania, Mali, Cape Verde, Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Sao Tome, Angola, Namibia, Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mauritius, Ethiopia, Malawi, Lesotho, South Africa, and Zimbabwe—alone.

One man.

He tackles distances by plane and car and, as we were doing now, also by train. Getting around remains a very big undertaking.

Nikolay, however, had not let a single moment of frustration slip out of him since we’d met. If he ever felt overwhelmed by anything—by the size of the territory he was meant to bring relief to, by the needs of the people, by the time away from home—it was never apparent to me in any way. Perhaps, Siberia had had the opposite effect on him. Or he had dealt with it long ago. The reality, nevertheless, is that eight years after leaving the army to work for ADRA he remained driven, optimistic, confident, and, best of all, cheerful to the marrow. 

In the process, he had managed to stay deeply human, too.

“Every time I go to a project I dedicate myself to the people,” he said later through a translator. “I try to do my best to help them and make their lives a little better.”

I saw this side of him even more clearly in Irkutsk, where we arrived in the middle of the night after seemingly time traveling 2,569 miles over the frozen Siberian taiga sipping hot, sweet tea.

The next day at noon we gathered in Novolenino, a residential district of the city, inside a spacious, sunny room at the Regional State Organization Orphanage #2. Here, sometime ago, ADRA had brought food to supplement the pantry of the orphanage and improve the diet that the children needed to grow up healthy. Lunchtime was well underway and two dozen little children, one to four years of age, sat around tiny square tables eating hot soup and bread. A few, too little to master a spoon full of soup, got help from the staff. When lunch was over, the children ran inside the room chasing each other around until they slowly grew tired.

An ADRA volunteer helps a little boy eat lunch at a center for HIV-positive children in Irkutsk, Siberia, Russia.

Many of the children staying in this orphanage wing, called Aistenok (it means “stork-baby” in Russian), are living with HIV. Some arrived at the orphanage soon after birth, abandoned, in some instances, near a bus stop, in the snow, or in the alleys between houses, well before they would know the love of a mother or understand the cruelty of the world outside these walls. Fortunately, on this day none seemed aware of the latter yet.

The happiness in Nikolay’s face was palpable. He held a little girl in his arms and whispered a few short words to her. She was shy. Quiet. He said something else, tickled her chin and she broke out in a wide smile.

Many children who have been abandoned live in infant houses until they can be adopted or transferred to homes for older children.

“This is what drives me to do my best,” he said. “The children.”

We stood quietly watching the staff put every child in bed for a nap. Not every child was willing to go to sleep. Minutes later, however, the room grew peaceful. Silence.  We heard only the gentle, rhythmic breathing.

I was certain that the faces of these children, of so many others, too, would stay with him beyond this day. He had said to me, “Each time I return home after several weeks, I feel pain for the people. I am touched by the sorrow I see in many places in Siberia. But then I tell myself that I’m working for them.”

Nikolay standing on the ice of Lake Baikal.

We drove to Lake Baikal the next day over newly fallen snow. The icy surface of the lake was a clear window into the depths of the water. So clear, we could see the bubbles trapped inside the ice. Nikolay walked to an open market not far from the edge of the lake. When he returned, holding something wrapped in a newspaper under his arm, he said,

“Baikal fish.”

I sensed right away that Nikolay Grebenyuk wasn’t going to let my upbringing get in the way of a good fish.

We spent the next hour eating fish with our bare hands.

“You like?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said.

Eating omuel, a popular fish from Lake Baikal.

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A group of Australian optometrists had volunteered their time and come to Mongolia in July 2005.  They visited 22 schools in a two-week period, examining the eyes of over 4,000 children and adults.  Although they brought suitcases full of glasses, it was not possible to have the correct eyeglasses for all. 

Today I visited a school to give sixteen students their glasses.   The excitement was evident on the happy faces.  They all seemed to echo the sentiments of someone who said, “We were sure that the Australians living so far away would not remember their promise.  We are so happy.”   

They could hardly contain their immense joy at being able to see properly once again.  I went home filled with that wonderful feeling that comes with helping someone.   Today these students also helped me see properly once again.

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" 'I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid…’ ” Leviticus 26:6 (NIV)

A couple months ago, I returned from a trip to East Africa, including southern Sudan. Sudan is the largest country in Africa, but has been in a state of war for approximately thirty years. The results of this long-term conflict have been tremendous.

The infrastructure—including roads, schools, health facilities, and much more—is in shambles. One particularly bad 10-mile stretch of road took us 1.5 hours to travel! To get to ADRA’s projects, we, like ADRA South Sudan staff, had to fly in on a United Nations single-engine plane that lands on dirt strips.

The poor transportation and communication in southern Sudan make this area extremely difficult to work in. On top of this, there is the constant threat of ongoing conflict. At all times you must carry a “quick run” survival kit containing enough water for four days.

Despite these conditions, ADRA is carrying out a tremendous work in southern Sudan. Education projects are supporting schools that have no supplies. A guinea worm eradication project is helping to eliminate this painful, but rectifiable, disease. Women’s groups are learning literacy and numeracy skills and starting their own business to create income for their families.

One school that stands out in my mind is the Affa Displaced Primary School. It’s a school that ADRA is supporting with supplies and teacher training. The children who are students there were forced to flee their homes farther north due to fighting. Many of their stories are very saddening.

The future in this region depends heavily on the peace process that is ongoing. I hope you’ll join me in praying for the safety of ADRA staff working in this dangerous environment, the continued community involvement and support of ADRA’s projects, and especially for peace in southern Sudan.

“And on that day they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy. The women and children also rejoiced. The sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away.” ~Nehemiah 12:43 (NIV)

After packing the essentials for a four-day visit to the village of Donomade, I met Irene, a field worker for one of ADRA Togo’s women’s empowerment projects who lives in Donomade during the week.

When we arrived that afternoon, ADRA’s AIDS Prevention Program team began by giving questionnaires and doing informal discussion groups with villagers and showing a film about signs of AIDS, transmission, and prevention. “Now we know how to protect ourselves,” said Bosi Rosa after the presentation. “I will start telling my children about AIDS and how they can prevent it.” Dovi, a petite little girl with a stack of schoolbooks resting on her head commented, “What I learned about AIDS makes me sure I want to avoid it.”

When I stepped out of Irene’s hut at 7 a.m. the next morning, a large circle of villagers was gathered around. ADRA’s life-skills classes, covering topics like women and children’s rights, health, sanitation, nutrition, family relationships, family planning, and methods of income generation, begin very early as its often the only time when women are free.

ADRA reaches youth through weekly presentations at primary schools. Out of 32 students, only eight were girls. This is not surprising in Togo, where there are nearly twice as many illiterate females as males. Early pregnancy and marriage are two factors that cause many Togolese girls to drop out of school. “My dream is to be a journalist. I want to stay in school and finish my education,” said 15-year-old Kristine. “Today I learned that I need to avoid early marriage and pregnancy to complete school.”

On the trip back to Lome, Irene and I passed barefoot school children on the narrow footpaths, waving as we drove by. We saw women walking with heavy loads of firewood balanced on their heads and men riding bicycles with towering sacks of corn tied to the back. These are everyday sights in Togo, and it’s easy to pass them by without noticing. Yet within each person, there are needs and a story. My week in Donomade gave me insight into some of those stories, and encouraged me as I saw the rejoicing of the women and children—like Bisi, Dovi, and Kristine—as ADRA brought empowerment to their life and hope to their future.

"You are the light of the world" Matthew 5:14 (NIV)

ADRA has been drilling wells in Somalia since 1992. Water is extremely rare, with water points being 70 to 100 km (43 to 62 miles) apart. People and their livestock have to walk two to three days to get water. The countryside has no lakes or rivers, and rain falls only about twice a year. Otherwise the climate is hot and dry year-round with temperatures averaging 40º C (104º F) in the shade.

Drilling wells is a real challenge. Boreholes have to be around 200 meters (656 feet) deep. To drill that deep we need from 80 to 100 thousand liters (21 to 26 thousand gallons) of water. Tanker trucks bring water from the nearest source located about seven hours one way over heavy sand and sharp rocks.

Sheik Mahmoud Diblawe from the Datable clan visited our office in Mogadishu. He wanted to thank ADRA for helping his people and to assure us of safety under his protection. Our drilling team and equipment were guarded by 50 armed militiamen with six technical cars, each mounted with a heavy machine gun.

I recalled his friendly welcome during our survey trip two years before. As we talked, I had mentioned that I was also a religious man, a Christian sheik—adding that we all pray to the same God. Impressed, he asked if I could dig a well for his village. He added, "Because of the remoteness of our area, no international organization has ever made an effort to come here."

Due to lack of funds, I could promise only to do my best. As we left, he asked for my business card. I wondered about this request since his area has no post office or telephone. "I have kept your business card in my Koran," he said. "Every day when I read it and pray, I include ADRA in my prayers. `If this man is a true sheik,' I told myself, `he will keep his promise. One day he will return.' Now I realize that you are a true sheik, and I thank ADRA for what has been done for my people!"

“Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases.” ~ Psalm 103: 2, 3 (NIV)

It was a bright, sunny Togolese national holiday morning as I walked out of my apartment to go to the villages for one of our project visits. Kofi, the driver, Mawunyo, the project coordinator, and I were on our way to the village of Donomade. I wanted to know if Donomade had any spectacular meaning. Yes, it had! And that was, “the village is so far that a sick person can never get there.” Upon our arrival in the village we saw a group of women under a big tree involved in a health training session facilitated by Chantal, the ADRA agent for this village. Their faces beamed with joy as they welcomed us, shaking our hands warmly. They quickly realized that I did not speak the local language because I did not know how to respond very well to the local greeting.

Suddenly, a mentally challenged man with a broad, genuine smile interrupted the meeting and started questioning why some people were speaking in English. He seemed curious and wanted to be my friend.

The shock of the day came when, on saying good bye to the community members, the man came close to me, and as he held my hand to say goodbye, he gently lifted it to his cracked lips and kissed the back of my hand. I reassured him that I cared about him, too. As we drove back to the city of Lome, his parting words filled my mind as I was reminded of my new buddy in the village.

I learned lessons from this precious child of God. We each desire to be loved. Thank God that His love is unconditional at all times, and when we need His attention He is always there. More so, He is the great physician who not only heals physical diseases, but the spiritual, too. And in Donomade, “where sick people cannot reach,” there was a mentally challenged child of God. I’m thankful that God can always reach Donomade, regardless of the distance. And as God’s arms and hands, ADRA is reaching out to people, even in villages considered too far. I love being part of the ADRA family!

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6 (RSV)

Ella, a 13-year-old girl in the village where I work, had just finished primary school and had gotten her certificate (after passing the test). But her mother did not want her to continue her studies. The little girl, who was very unhappy about this, told me about it and pleaded with me to help her convince her mother to let her continue school. I went to their home and spoke to her mother about it; but her mother did not agree and would not be convinced. She responded, “I do not want her to continue her studies. The purpose of a girl is to work in the kitchen, on the farm, and to have babies. Me, I didn’t go to school but I eat and do everything just like those who have been to school.”

The situation was tense but we did not give up. I tried all the different means to bring her to reason. One evening after dinner when the three of us were all in the same room, I started to tell a story, a story about a woman doctor who had saved the people of her village from a terrible disease. The mother listened attentively without saying anything. However, the next day she came to me and asked if I thought that one day her daughter would be able to become a government official. I said “Yes, but only if she continues her studies.” With that dream, her mother was convinced.

One week before school started, all was ready for the girl to start school. Her mother came to visit me and excitedly reminded me, “My girl is going to school.”

ADRA strongly believes in empowering young people to reach their dreams. And education is a necessary tool to breaking the poverty cycle. I’m reminded how rewarding this work is every time little Ella happily thanks me—and ADRA—for our help

“Think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands.” Job 4:3 (NIV)

The view from the top of Mt. Muhavura, an inactive volcano in Western Uganda, is overwhelmingly green. It is a jungle of intertwining trees, hillsides covered with swaying banana plants, and a valley blanketed with the delicate hue of tomato vines, cabbages, onions and potatoes. But the tiny pygmy huts that are scattered throughout the region are largely invisible.

Walls of mud and roofs of palm fronds give shelter to one of the most marginalized groups in Uganda. In 1991, the Batwa Pygmies were evicted from their forest home in order to create Mgahinga National park, one of the few remaining habitats of the mountain gorilla.

Without land, the Pygmies have been forced to become squatters. They have no permanent home, no gardens to grow food and for many, they have no hope. Standing next to the huts, the children’s eyes are large with sorrow and hunger. Their bare feet are cracked, their bellies distended from malnutrition. Their clothing is colorless and filled with tears.

But ADRA Uganda has been making a difference by building the Mabuyemeru Primary school. Now Pygmy students have a place to sleep, access to clean water, regular meals, school uniforms and, most importantly, a life-changing education. In a district where the illiteracy rate is 67 percent, the Pygmy children are learning how to read and write. They are also gaining skills like tailoring, weaving, and farm maintenance.

In the past, Pygmies were so discriminated against that their children could not attend local schools. But at Mabuyemeru, Pygmy children stay in the same dormitory as non-Pygmy children. They share clothes, school supplies, and dreams for a better future.

Alice Nyamihanda is fourteen years old and the first in her village to finish primary school. Her shy smile belies a determined spirit. Alice dreams of graduating from secondary school. Right now, she is halfway through.

ADRA is giving Alice and many children like her a priceless gift—a chance for a better tomorrow. “Please tell ADRA to continue their compassion for the destitute,” said the leader of the Kanyabukung Pygmy community. “Please tell ADRA that they give us hope.”