Nanci is the tall one

As you can imagine, the trip itself was both breathtaking and heartbreaking. Bangladesh, in particular, is a beautiful land with  colourful, happy folk who live in a geographic area and climate not condusive to sustained development. The yearly floods and increasingly frequent, crippling storms and their consequent tidal surges keep millions of people in a perpetual state of rebuilding and “starting over.”

To view Faye Hall's painting of this photo see link at page bottom.

One of my favourite photos is this one.  These mud-caked kids gleefully followed us as we visited a massive excavation site where around a thousand people were working to restore a 5 km water canal that had been silted-in by a single and devastating storm – Cyclone Sidr  (click HERE for details of this storm that claimed the lives of between 5-10 thousand people in late 2007.)

The Bangladeshis have developed an ingenious way of coping with some of the environmental traumas they face annually. For a good part of the year, the land is totally covered with flood waters  isolating communities to random highlands, disrupting inter-community life and restricting access to health services and schooling.  For the other part of the year, as  the waters recede  there are irrigation issues to deal with and transportation problems as so many roads get washed out in the floods.  The response is to dig canals for the dry seasons, which are used for transportation, irrigation and stocked with fish for food.  The dirt excavated from the canal is piled immediately beside to form a highland walk-way above the floodwater level so that communities can remain connected.  The high roadways are then planted with grasses  and renewable, fast growing fruit and lumber trees that stabilize the ground but also can be harvested for food and building materials.

What is remarkable is that all this work is done by hand without the aid of machinery of any sort:

6 feet of silt excavated from 5 kms of canal by 1000 people in 15 days!

We visited an excavation site where a thousand workers (paid in food from a program supported by CFGB) were digging out the silt from a massive canal/irrigation/fishery/water diversion ditch. The canal itself is 32 feet across at the top, 8 feet across at the bottom and fifteen feet deep. The flooding from Cyclone Sidr silted-in many of the water ways which requires gargantuan efforts to remedy. These folks, using only mud cutting tools and baskets, had removed about 6 feet of silt from the bottom of 5 kms of irrigation ditch in only 15 days. The silt itself is left beside the ditch in a ten foot high mound that the women pound into a road after it has dried out some. The irrigation ditches here help divert water when there is too much and bring it in when there is not enough.  Everything here is about managing the good and harmful potential of water.

Women pound clods of mud excavated from the canal into a smooth high-road.

It’s very hard to get a picture that captures the enormity of this work. Below is a completed canal/ high-road ready for planting and below that, a mature canal/highroad.

Ready for trees and grasses.

Beauty!

Mud Buddies / Painting by Faye Hall

It’s all very inspiring! To view Faye Hall’s painting and read her notes click  HERE

To become better familiarized with the tremendous work of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank click Here

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In closing… a moment of Zen:

Boats in repose.

Tim Plett's photo of his daughter Tayah

(The following is Part 4 of a series of paintings by Signpost staff, Faye Hall. The inspiration for the paintings came from photographs Steve Bell brought back from Bangladesh in 2008.  To view earlier paintings, see the links at the bottom of the page.)

Back to the beginning…I hadn’t painted seriously in years. It wasn’t until I saw some of Tim Plett’s photography that my hand started itching for the brush. I chose a portrait of his daughter Tayah, playing  Tim’s mandolin. When it was done, I called it Daddy’s Mandolin. (Tim is an awesome free-lance photographer, calling his company Dawntreader Photography. He does all of Steve’s tour and publicity photos.) At the time I thought…if I can paint a mandolin, maybe I was brave enough to tackle a few of Steve Bell’s India and Ethiopia photos.

Originally, I picked five of the best photos from Steve’s collection to paint. I didn’t tell him that I was painting them at the time, but confessed later on after two were finished. (I didn’t know if I would do a good enough job).  It was amazing that the first five I had chosen were his top favourites.

Mud Buddies - Oil Painting of Steve's Photo from India

I thought I had found enough of the inspiring photos, but perhaps I looked through them too quickly. One afternoon I was driving Steve home after work, and he opened his laptop computer to show me another of his favourite photos…how could I have missed it! The sheer joy and delight on the mud splattered faces of these boys was enchanting! They had nothing, but enjoyed playing in the mud as they worked. I had to paint this one next. I called the painting Mud Buddies. The most fun part of painting this one was the very last session – smearing the “mud” on the boys!

- Faye Hall, Signpost Music Director of Orders and Fulfillment

To read Steve’s story behind this picture click HERE.

To view other paintings in this series click below:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three

Musahar Child Painting by Faye Hall

(The following is Part 2 of a series of paintings by Signpost staff, Faye Hall. The inspiration for the paintings came from photographs Steve Bell brought back from Bangladesh in 2008.  To view other paintings in the series, see the links at the bottom of the page.)

Steve Bell took a photograph of this young girl in the rural countryside Bihar region of India in a hamlet of the Musahar people. Musahar means “the rat eaters”. They don’t actually eat rats, but often survive by hunting for rat dens and robbing them of the grain the rats have stored there.
When we were viewing the photos, I was struck by the gorgeous, liquid eyes of this little girl, and I had to paint her. I wasn’t sure I could recreate how incredibly beautiful she was – her eyes spoke volumes of misery and pain – yet hope. When Steve saw her he was also mesmerized by her, and she appears briefly in the promotional video of the trip made by the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.

Original Photo by Steve Bell

Steve said, “Most aid experts agree that the education of a female child is probably the best investment in the fight against poverty – not only for the child but for the community. Through a local “Right-to-Food” program supported by Canadian Foodgrains Bank, members of the Musahar tribe are learning about their human rights and learning how to access social programs that will benefit them.”

- Faye Hall

Director of Order and Fulfillment, Signpost Music

To view other paintings in the series click below:

• Part One
• Part Three
• Part Four

Mother and Son painting by Faye Hall

(The following is Part 1 of a series of paintings by Signpost staff, Faye Hall. The inspiration for the paintings came from photographs Steve Bell brought back from Bangladesh in 2008.  To view other paintings in the series, see the links at the bottom of the page.)

When I started my new job working for Steve Bell at Signpost Music, I had no idea what was in store for me. The story of getting the job in the first place is a miracle in itself, and I have complete confidence that I am in the place where God intended me to be.

Steve had just come back from one of his trips with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, and as a staff, we looked at all of his photos and listened to his stories about the amazing, resilient and beautiful people he met on his travels. As an artist, I was particularly inspired looking at the gorgeous faces, and my desire to paint started percolating. I have always loved painting people, and Steve’s talent for photography was a perfect resource for unique, original material.

I hadn’t painted seriously for years. I had worked as an advertising artist, raised my children, lost my first husband, started a new career as an administrative assistant and finally remarried the same year I started this job. I didn’t even think I was particularly good at oil painting.

The first two paintings I did are from Steve’s trip to Bangladesh and India in 2007 with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. He met this elderly mother and her son about an hour south of Calcutta in a rural village in the region of West Bengal. Steve said, “The village is a notorious junction for the slave trade that still infects our humanity. Here we visited a project that rescues young women from this tragic reality; housing them and helping them heal and re-integrate with the community while providing food and education. Canadian Foodgrains Bank supports food-for-work and flood response projects in the region.

Smiling Woman painting by Faye Hall

The woman in the paintings was the oldest person in the village: 83 years and a body that bares the evidence of a life lived in chronic malnourishment. She had a lovely spirit and hugged me enthusiastically after I showed her the portrait that I had taken of her. She was very smiley until she was posing for the camera. I couldn’t convince her that the uninhibited toothless grin was what had charmed me most.” (The fact that she smiled all the time except when he took a picture, is the reason I called the painting “Smiling Woman” – FH.)

-  Faye Hall, Director of Order & Fulfillment for Signpost Music

More about Steve Bell’s Humanitarian efforts…

To view other paintings in this series click below:

• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four

Neither Nanci or I have been to Africa and as the timing seemed right we were very happy to say yes to the trip which will begin in a couple of days: January 5 – 17 / 07.

Immediately I got on line and started learning about Ethiopia of which I knew nothing.

Ethiopia is a country about twice the land mass of my own province Manitoba but with over twice the population of Canada. (75 million as compared to Canada’s 33 million) We are so used to vast empty space that this seems staggering to me. Although it is predominantly an agriculture-based economy, Ethiopia currently has a structural food deficit of four to six million people (during a good rain year of which there have been only seven in the last 24 years). Alarmingly, at her present growth, Ethiopia’s population will more than double by 2050. Food insecurity is a staggering threat to these people.

If you don’t know where Ethiopia is, you’ll find her in the Horn of Africa landlocked between Sudan on the West, Eritrea and Djibouti on the North , Somalia to the East and Kenya to the South. Her history is fascinating. Ethiopia is, I think, the oldest independent civilization in the world and boasts the Queen of Sheba no less, the son of Israel’s King Solomon, and claims to be the place of origin for the coffee tree. It is still considered to be predominantly Orthodox Christian but now almost equally Muslim. Her last Emperor, before a brutal struggle and emergence as a fragile democracy (1980s), was the complex Hailee Selassie whom is revered most highly in Rastafarianism (ya mon).

I’ve read a couple of facinating books in preparation for the trip. First is The Abyssinian by Jean-Christophe Rufin (Doctors Without Boarders). The Abyssinian is a novel that takes place in 1699. Louis XIV of France sends an embassy to the most mysterious of oriental sovereigns, the Negus, or King, of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia). The novel gives an overall and fascinating orientation to the rich history of Ethiopia.

The other book, Notes From a Hyena’s Belly by Nega Mezlekia is a contemporary (true tale) of a young boy growing up in last turbulent years of Hailee Selassie’s reign. Rich in folk-lore and heart-renting in detail, Notes gets under the skin of the media’s Africa and invites you into her own telling of the story. This was a great read!

It’s bed-time. More later.

Anyway – here’s the itinerary as far as I know at this point:

Jan. 5-6 Fly to Ethiopia via Toronto and Frankfurt. We arrive in Addis Ababa (capital city) at 10 pm

Jan. 7 Day of orientation and exploration of Addis

Jan. 8 Travel by road to Weldyiya (long travel day)

Jan. 9 Arrive mid-day at SSD (Support for Sustainable Developement) base camp in the lowlands of Afar Region. Orientation to SSD and operations. Afternoon filming.

Jan. 10 Mid-morning depart for rock-hewn churches of Lalibela

Jan. 11 Travel to FHI (Food for the Hungry) Arb Gebyia base camp in South Gondor. Orientation to FHI and operations.

Jan. 12 Full-day of on-site filming

Jan. 13 Morning departure for Bahr Dar

Jan. 14 Long travel day to Addis Ababa

Jan. 15 Early morning debriefing. Mid-morning flight to Nairobi, Kenya. Travel about an hour south to Mitaboni to visit various projects going on there with water, food distribution, micro-credit etc.We will travel back to Machakos late in the day to visit a girl’s school and possibly perform a song or two.

Jan. 16 Take part (sing) in a gathering/media event to launch their new micro-credit program. Visit several other projects in the Machakos area.

Jan. 17 Morning departure for Nairobi for a lunch with the field staff before boarding a plane for home.

Jan. 18 Arrive home (after 32 hours in transit).

This is about all I can tell you. I will post as often as I get access to the web- the next one will likely be from Addis on Sunday.

It’s betime for bonzo.

Addis is a city of about 3 million and we are staying in an older hotel in the center of the city that is built in the former palace grounds. The hotel is not much to write home about but the grounds are gorgeous. Outside the compound is a rambling city that at first glance seems to be a large field of rubble with buildings growing haphazardly out of it. – Lots of goats! It turns out that today is Ethiopian Christmas and folks buy and skin goats on the spot for this evening’s festivities. One can see high piles of freshly removed skins in the middle of the sidewalks.

We didn’t do much in terms of site seeing, we slept in of course – went for lunch at Sam and Cathy VanderEnde’s. Sam is the regional rep for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank and will be our guide and companion for the whole week. We’ll now take a walk about the neighbourhood and get back for a traditional supper and some Ethiopian music and dance.

Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries of the world and that is evidenced by the sprawling slums and crumbing roads and sidewalks – but the people are very colourful, obviously affectionate and quite shy but very smiley. I am looking forward to the coming days.

I seems like I won’t have much access to the internet so I don’t know when I can post again. I’ll journal everyday and post a lot at a time whenever I can.

I wish I was more reflective and descriptive now but the brain is a little fuzzy and jetlagged. I’ll try to be more eloqent in coming posts.

Tomorrow is a travel day to a lowland area on the way to Afar. Apparently the vistas will be spectacular and the temperature will get quite warm as we decend from the mountains.

I’ll sign out – others want on this computer.

Peace.

I didn’t have time to journal as I went along so I’ll just have to give a brief overview now and flesh it out with photos when I get home later this week. We had three major stops over the week. The first was in the Afar desert two days drive north-east of Addis Ababa. We stayed at the base camp of Support for Sustainable Development among the Afar people – nomadic pastoralists who are living now as they have for centuries, in tiny straw huts that can be dismantled, transported by camel and reassembled in a new location according to the whim of nature – rainfall/drought, malaria outbreaks, access to natural forage, etc.

Like ourselves in the west (but for very different reasons), the traditional way of life for the Afar has become unsustainable. There are currently 1.6 million people and perhaps 20 – 25 million cattle and goats competing for survival in a region where climate change has increased the frequency of drought from every 10-15 years to every 5-7 years. As the population rapidly increases, and food sources become increasingly unreliable, the Afar are beginning to make the difficult transition from a nomadic pastoral way of life, to a more sedentary way which includes agriculture as a major component of the community’s food security.

Support for Sustainable Development , with the aid of Canadian Food Grains Bank, has set up a camp in the middle of the desert and has helped the Afar build a water diversion project which includes a 5 km, hand dug, water diversion system that currently irrigates 200 hectares of land affecting the lives of over 900 families (average family size is six people). A second project is underway which will irrigate 160 hectares of land and affect the lives of over 1150 families.

The work being done there is incredible- I have much to say about it and lots of great pictures – again, once I get back home I’ll post much more detail and reflection.

The second major site we visited was more north-central. Lalibela is named after King Lalibla who in the the 12th century (legend has it) was instructed by God to build 11 churches by carving them out of the rock. These are now considered to be the 8th wonder of the world. Ethiopia has deep roots in Judaism and Christianity as these 11 marvels confirm. It’s a complicated history – again, I’ll flesh that out as best as I can when I get home.

Our third stop was south west of Lalibela on the way back down to Addis Ababa, in the mountainous region of Amhara. There, in a remote village called Arb Gebeya , we visited the base camp for a Christian development organization called Food for the Hungry International (FHI). This is a region whose land has so depleted by over farming and the demands of over population that twenty years ago there was not a tree to be seen, and the land itself had all but stopped producing food. Run-off from rainfall has badly eroded the hillsides, washing away the topsoil, becoming almost uninhabitable for a people who have nowhere to go. FHI, supported by Canadian Food Grains Bank, started a program of reforestation, gully rehabilitation, terrace management and crop rotation that has now begun to reverse the erosion damage and soil depletion. At the base camp we visited, they employ hundreds of local folk to produce and plant over 4 million seedlings a year (trees, grasses, shrubs and nutrient replenishing crops). The program in Arb Gebeya has dramatically altered the landscape and made food production a sustainable reality for some 56,000 people. It’s incredible, really.

I have much to say about the beauty of the land, the determination of the people and the profound impact of the Food Grains Bank partners here on the ground. But for now, the internet is sluggish and I’m not the only one who wants on, so I’ll sign off.

Tomorrow, Nanci and I leave for Kenya to visit several more of CFGB’s project partners. I’ll post if it is reasonably convenient, otherwise you’ll hear from me again Thursday or Friday.

Thanks for your prayers. Nanci and I have had an incredible experience we’ll be unpacking for some time I”m sure.

There is an African story of some western travelers who followed native guides on a particularly dramatic journey. At one point the guides sat down and refused to move on. Upon questioning, the guides explained the reason they had stopped was that they had to give time for their souls to catch up to their bodies. A good bit of our trip felt like our bodies were dragging our reluctant souls along at a pace that seemed unfortunate – much like a hurried mother drags a crying child down a sidewalk who just wanted to stop to pet a puppy. We had a job to do and a lot of ground to cover. But I think our souls are still back in the highands of Ethiopia somewhere gasping in awe at a stunning view, or teasing some kids, or marveling while some five-year-old herder coerces 50 or so dog-skinny goats up a mountain side. And it just may take some time for our souls to even want to return to these bodies now recouping from the second shock of jet lag in a few short weeks.

Over the next few days, I’ll recall the trip as best as I can remember it. I have Nanci’s penciled notes to help. But let me start from before the beginning:

As our kids have grown and become increasingly independent, Nanci and I have been longing to share more of our life together. For years now, my work as a musician has kept me travelling far and wide while Nanci’s work as a teacher and homemaker has kept her closer to home. For the most part, this has been okay. We’ve experienced the loneliness of so much of our lives being separate but it’s a life we’ve felt called to and sustained in. Recently, however this has started to stretch thin, and as our boys don’t need the intense care they once did, we’ve been watching for ways to live and experience life together more fully. So a few months ago I decided to go on a fast requesting that God would grant us this wish. And I decided I would fast from coffee as I drink so much of the stuff that a coffee fast would remind me many times a day to pray our request. It was less than a month into the fast that I got a call from Heather Plett at the Canadian Food Grains Bank asking if I would consider going to Ethiopia, and the request extended to Nanci as well as myself. What I didn’t know at the time, but has since become a source of amusement to me, is that Ethiopia is famous for many things, not the least of which is that Ethiopia turns out to be the geographic origin of the coffee tree

Another significant antecedent to our trip was a conversation I had with a friend just two days before we left home. Cathy Campbell is an Anglican priest here in Winnipeg who wrote a deeply insightful book on food justice issues as they relate to “kingdom etiquette.” The book is called Stations of the Banquet (Liturgical Press) and think will become my main text as I reflect back on our trip over the next months. Anyway, Cathy encouraged me to recall as I travel that immediately after his birth, we first encounter Jesus, the bread of life, lying all swaddling and gorgeous… in a feeding trough. There is something profoundly sacramental about food. And if we would have eyes to see and ears to hear, what we learn might be far more than a flat, linear understanding of food security, but rather of gift, gospel and the dignified communion that springs from encountering together and sharing God’s goodness. Food is life and Christ is food – family is celebrated, nourished and sustained around the table. “Come to the table” has been an almost audible pulse of the last few weeks – perhaps it always has been so, but like the pulse of crickets in the night, it sometimes takes a particular circumstance to notice what has never ceased to sound.