ADRA

An initial emergency response is underway targeting areas affected by the deadly earthquake, which hit 57 miles from Chengdu, the capital city of the Sichuan province, destroying up to 3.5 million homes. ADRA volunteers are in Dou Jiang Yan, one of the most accessible areas in the affected region, to conduct emergency assessment. Based on initial findings, the most urgent needs of survivors are water, food, blankets, shelter, and first aid medical service.

The current situation on the ground continues to be tense and uncertain due to ongoing aftershocks and heavy rains.

The quake, considered the worst since 1976 when more than 240,000 people died, hit at 2:28 p.m. local time (6:28 a.m. GMT) and was felt as far as Beijing and Bangkok, Thailand. Updates will be released as response efforts expand.

To send your contribution to ADRA’s emergency response effort, please contact ADRA at 1.800.424.ADRA (2372) or give online.

ADRA is present in 125 countries, providing community development and emergency management without regard to political or religious association, age, gender, race, or ethnicity.

Paulo Lopes has a confession to make: "The more challenging the position, the more I like it." And he has had his share of challenges—blessings too—since accepting his first job with ADRA fifteen years ago.

Listen to an Audio Interview with Paulo Lopes

A challenging initiation

Paulo received a baptism of fire on his very first day on the job in 1992, when he joined ADRA Angola as its finance director. With a civil war churning and foreigners fleeing, the country was an extremely difficult place to live. "I remember my very first night in Luanda, the capital city, like it was yesterday," he says. "Seven kilometers away from where I was staying, a huge blast woke me up in the middle of the night. The blast was so strong that the house trembled as it would during an earthquake. Later on, I learned an ammunition storehouse had exploded."

Six months later, his wife, Edra, joined him in Angola, holding their infant son Lucas in her arms. They arrived in an almost empty plane; most everyone else, it seemed, was determined to avoid the country all together. At the airport, security was rigorous and brutal. Walking towards Edra tangled up with baby and suitcases, Paulo made a step past a location guarded by the Angolan army. "If you make one more step, I'll kill you!" warned a heavily armed soldier. Paulo knew by the soldier's tone that it was not an idle threat, and served as a reminder of the harsh reality into which his family had arrived.

Food was scarce. Electricity had been cut months before, and water from the tap was non-existent. The family had to buy muddy water from local vendors, then boil and filter it before use. Often, they had no milk for the baby.

With armed patrols at every street corner and frequent night bombings, life was stressful. Only one week after the family's arrival, the airport was shut down and the civil war erupted, making travel out of the country impossible. Six thousand people were killed in one single week.

After nine months of serious discussions, United Nations representatives allowed Paulo—representing ADRA— and UNICEF staff to fly to the town of Huambo, a civil war hotspot in the center of the country, to assess needs, evaluate logistic challenges, and meet with the rebel forces. As a result of weeklong negotiations, Paulo and the others established a trust with the rebels and organized the first food distributions. ADRA's food distributions, coordinated with the United Nations' World Food Programme, continued for a full year. Each week, seven planes brought desperately needed food to the region, feeding hungry Angolans.

"I knew God was using me to help in this crisis, despite the dangers and difficulties," remembers Paulo. "Those were my best years with ADRA."

From nursing to numbers

Growing up in Brazil, young Paulo's ambition was to be a nurse. However, he soon found out that he didn't much like sciences. Instead, he focused his studies on accounting and theology, and made plans to become a pastor. Though he liked theology, he realized that he preferred budgeting and analytic accounting. In college, the decision to study business came naturally, as did the decision to begin dating Edra, whom he had met in high school. The couple married immediately after graduation and Paulo was hired as the college's cashier. Later, he held high-level accounting positions in different areas of Brazil.

After those first two difficult years in Angola, the family moved to the ADRA office in the neighboring country of Mozambique, where ADRA managed large post-civil war projects that included food distribution operations funded by USAID. The program was complex and challenging and again, Paulo’s special gift for finances was put to good use as assistant finance director for ADRA Mozambique. It was during their six and a half years of service in Mozambique that baby Marcos joined the family.

From Mozambique Paulo moved to finance positions for the Adventist Church in Armenia and Irkutsk, Russia. What a challenge it was to adapt to the harsh climate with long freezing gloomy winters after nine years of work in Africa! Learning the Russian language presented another challenge. So far, the family had served in countries where Portuguese, their native language, was spoken. Now in Siberia, they had to learn Russian to communicate. As expected, the children learned it easily at school and adapted quickly to their new environment and culture. Paulo and Edra struggled a bit more.

After two years in Siberia, they moved to Zaoski near Moscow, where Paulo worked as finance manager for the Adventist Publishing House.

Pray and trust

By the time the Lopes family left Russia a few years later, they were fluent in Russian. Paulo, however, admits that during the years he worked at the publishing house, he truly missed working with ADRA. "I visited ADRA's Web site almost every day!" he says. Consequently, the family asked God to open up a position at ADRA.

As they waited for an answer, they planned to return to Brazil, their home country. Tickets were booked. Cardboard boxes multiplied. They grew anxious to see their families again, their thoughts already centered on Brazil.

However, just one short month before leaving, Paulo received an unexpected phone call from Heriberto Mueller, at the time director for the ADRA Asia Regional Office. The Indian Ocean tsunami had struck India and several other countries a few months before, in December 2004. With significant tsunami emergency and recovery programs developing, ADRA India was eagerly looking for a good finance director; Paulo's name was at the top of a list of potential candidates. When Heriberto asked if he would be interested, Paulo was speechless from shock. God's answer was so evident and so perfectly on time! But, the family still had to agree. . . .

The decision to accept the job in India took the family less than ten minutes. God's answer to their prayers was simply too clear to ignore.

A Passage to India

In July 2005, six months after the tsunami, Paulo started his new position as ADRA India's finance director. Though it demanded much time, energy, and travel, Paulo relished his work organizing and managing the finances of the tsunami-related projects. After a first phase of relief and rehabilitation projects (mainly housing reconstruction and water and sanitation projects), the programs naturally evolved into a post-tsunami recovery phase with more income-generating and agricultural projects.

In March 2007, Paulo was promoted to country director, a role that allows him to direct not only ADRA India's tsunami recovery program, but the office's projects throughout the country. He notes especially the recurring polio eradication projects in northern India. "India is a huge country with huge needs, especially in the health issues such as HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, and maternal/child health," he shares. The office also responds to seasonal emergencies, such as the recent severe flooding in the eastern portion of India.

While Paulo keeps busy directing ADRA, Edra continues to be very much involved in the church and also enjoys her teaching job at a local kindergarten. She's finally had her chance to learn English, and the boys, Lucas and Marcos, are now perfectly fluent in both English and Hindi. Though they have spent their childhoods in far-flung countries, the boys maintain a thoroughly Brazilian love for soccer. However, this has not prevented them from also becoming expert players of cricket—the national sport in India.

Married to his work?

Edra is very supportive of Paulo's passion for and dedication to the work of ADRA: "In all the countries we lived in we were always able to find help when needed. Sometimes a neighbor, other times a church member or a local friend. We always had our angels taking care of us."

And then Edra smiles and winks as she says, "Paulo really has two wives, both with very similar names: Edra and ADRA!"

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.

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Looking down from the relative comfort of my airplane seat as I pass over the vast, arid country of southern Somalia, I notice that the water holes are downright dry. Blame it on Gu and Deyr—the seasonal rains that have been largely avoiding the Horn of Africa for the better part of a decade.

In general, one would remark, the region is in trouble. Slowly keeling over. The two consecutive failed rainy seasons are giving the residents of the districts of Huddur, Elberde, Rabdure, Tieglow, and Wajid, in the Bakool region, a reason to consider the worst. The last dry spell arrived in 2005 between April and June, when the Gu rain was supposed to soak the grazing areas and give farmers enough moisture for their fi elds. But when the water didn’t come again in October, and the fodder and the water holes became critically low, livestock carcasses began turning up all over the place. That’s troubling news when your way of life depends on the health— and size—of the herd.

In the Bakool region alone, more than 1.4 million people are beginning to feel the effects of the drought. Water prices are already jumping. But the water itself is increasingly going to fewer people—that is, to people who can afford, and are ready to pay, 35 to 40 Somali shillings for each 52-gallon drum, nearly US $3. In a country where the yearly income for an average person is $600—when there are no droughts, of course— that kind of spending will cut a hole in your pocket. If the situation worsens, the United Nations fears that there will be more than just dead animals. The magnitude of the situation then would be like shutting the faucet off in, say, Colorado Springs, Minneapolis, Honolulu, and Tulsa at the same time—indefi nitely.

Elberde district is the most affected by the lack of rain, and the problem is stretched to an almost unbearable level by the ongoing clan confl icts. Only two hand-dug wells and one borehole—from a total of 18 wells—are functioning. The rest have simply dried up.

Many herders up and down the Somali-Ethiopian border are not waiting for the water to come to them. Instead, they are pushing their flocks, and their families, to the south across an area the size of New Jersey toward more fertile areas in Garas Weyne, Morogavi, Dhil Siji, Xuddur, El-Lahelay, and various Tieglow villages where they are likely to fi nd a river. The move, in humanitarian lingo, has turned them into IDPs— internally displaced persons. This means that thousands of people are now strangers in their own country. And that, most likely, means that someone else will decide whose bucket dips into the water fi rst.

Although ADRA rehabilitated several wells and boreholes in the area, the infl ux of 12,000 IDPs and their camel and goat herds has reduced water levels by half. That’s worrisome, if not alarming, when you consider that the next rain— the Gu seasonal rain—is not due for another two months. However, no one should have to wait around that long for water.

But some do. In Falanfay, a small village near the Bakool regional capital, Xuddur, people waited four years to see the water in their well. Nevertheless, after all that time, Ibrahim Golbow is thankful. He is 98 years old, a former shoemaker and a village elder. He has a good reason to be happy about the water. That’s because over the years he has become the father of 20 children— 14 boys and six girls. And he wants to see them live a long life, as he has. He says, “ADRA is the sun of our village. It has brought us water, which had been a problem for ages. I see hope on the way, and this is a good thing, you know.” Finding water when you need it most is in some ways an exercise in patience and stubbornness.

Take the plan of ADRA, for example. It’s a struggle against the harsh Somali landscape: picking a collapsed borehole, removing the silt from the inside, digging deeper into the earth, and restoring water yields to normal levels—all of this before moving on to the other 69 holes. One by one.

While other relief agencies are trucking in the water from the Juba River, a steady drink that meanders across the most droughtprone region in Africa, ADRA’s plan—funded by the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA)—is entirely set up to give towns and villages in the Bakool region—Garas Weyne, Elberde, El Dhun, Xuddur—a permanent way to get their water. Already, the UN Water, Environment and Sanitation (WES) committee is on the ground, so work can start immediately.

Soon, ADRA will carry out a geophysical survey and drill a borehole in Abal, a town east of Xuddur. Also, because that kind of assistance most likely won’t be enough, ADRA hopes to partner with Médecins Sans Frontières- Belgium to pump and pipe water from the El Dhun borehole to Xuddur, then build latrines in some of the most overcrowded villages, chlorinate water sources, and produce kitchen gardens at some of the rehabilitated wells to increase food production and give people better choices of food.

For now, however, the attention is on the holes. No one is celebrating yet.

Perhaps, if the people of Bakool fi nd the water before the water fi nds them, they will have time later, one hopes, for everything else.