There is a water problem in Tamale, my fiance’s hometown. We are planning a celebration there for his family before we get married. Because water availability is uncertain, we have to buy a tank of water now, even though the event is still weeks away. That water is for cooking.

During the last few weeks I have been talking to a lot of middle schoolers about what it is like to live without running water. Some of them had done an activity in class where they practiced carrying a one-gallon jug of water a half mile to the classroom. They tried to imagine what it would be like to walk a longer distance carrying even more water, enough for all the things that we need water for each day: cooking, cleaning, showering, washing clothes, and drinking, of course. Then they tried to imagine that all that water they would have to carry wasn’t even clean, that it was going to make their families sick. One billion people around the world do not have access to safe water. Middle schoolers around the world have to carry water, not just once for a fun activity, but every day, before studying or going to school, even before breakfast. And five thousand children die every day from drinking that hard won, contaminated water.

The students brainstormed conservation ideas and wrote letters to Congressman Pat Tiberi, asking him to vote yes on the Water for the World Act, which will provide access to clean water for 100 million people worldwide. The act passed the Senate unaminously, and is now in the House. Writing a letter or calling your congressperson is a very simple action that anyone can take. So is conservation. Tap water may be like magic here in the US, but it isn’t truely free. Nor is it always unpolluted. We all can turn off the water while we brush our teeth, or take shorter showers, or wash only full loads of clothes.

For more great ideas, check out blogactionday.change.org.

*Pictures: Top/drawing by Hissan, a student at Wa School for the Deaf in Northern Ghana; Middle/a scene from a story by Abdul-Rahman Mohammed & myself; Bottom/my nephew Clayton and a friend share a drink in Bamako, Mali

How much does malaria cost Peace Corps in overhead just to keep volunteers healthy? How much more could we have accomplished if that energy could have been diverted to constructive projects in our communities? If our host families and counterparts could have access to these kind of mammoth resources, would it cost as much as the $12 billion a year in GDP that Africa already loses to malaria?

In our modern, global society, a disease that affects almost half of the world, affects us all. Even here in America where we have been malaria free for more than 50 years, malaria affects us. It affects where we invest our business, where we choose to travel for vacation, where we invest aid and effort. For those of us who have friends and family members in malaria-endemic areas, we have to live with the anxiety and helplessness caused by seeing our loved ones suffer.

watch?v=BNXmW7wcddE

(Please explore this link to a short YouTube video I made about malaria–artwork created in Inkscape)

When I was in the Peace Corps, I never had to experience malaria (all those medicines and nets and insect repellents kept me pretty well off). Malaria has struck near to me several times. My sister, a missionary in West Africa, has had malaria multiple times, including when she was pregnant with my niece. Pregnant women are far more likely to contract malaria and also far more likely to die from it. Every time I look at my niece (okay, Skype with my niece) I am grateful that this case of malaria didn’t result in death or miscarriage or brain damage to the baby as happens in so many other cases. My sister has some choice at least in where she lives and works. Other people don’t.

My fiancé is Ghanaian. When he traveled to the capitol for a business venture, he suddenly contracted malaria and passed out in the middle of his work. All of the money he had brought for his expenses went for medicine. Instead of bringing his profits back home with him, he barely made it home at all. His business trip was a total loss, even more than a loss, because of malaria.

Malaria cripples development, and by doing that it holds us all back. We’ve all been inspired by iconic people from different parts of the world, such as Nelson Mandela or Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (or the Black Stars football team of Ghana - Go Black Stars!!). How many other stories and voices have we been deprived of just because of a preventable disease?

I arrived at the borehole still early in the day. The wives and small children of the other teachers at my school had already formed a line and they were terribly amused when I joined them. One of my neighbor’s daughters bounced up and down in her flip flops as she worked the pump handle, the rhythm sending a steady stream of clear water singing into a bucket.

They watched tactfully as I tried to imitate them, twisting a round piece of cloth into a donut shape and setting it on my head for a cushion. Then my neighbor helped lift my filled bucket over my head. I grabbed the bucket on both sides, wobbled for just a moment, and was on my way back to my bungalow.

I could do this. I could really do this, carry an entire bucket full of water on my head–oops–almost full anyway. A little water splashed over the side and dripped down my face and off my chin. I adjusted my posture, found my gait.

“Good morning!” It was my landlady. I had to stop and greet her. I stopped, but the water in the bucket kept moving. Another splash rolled down my shoulders. The landlady chatted for a few minutes, careful not to draw attention to the bucket of water, her face full of barely concealed amusement.

“See you later.” The obligatory greeting finished, I swayed, turned and started forward again, feeling several drops of water on the backs of my knees. An ache was spreading between my shoulder blades. All the way to my bungalow little bits of water splashed out every few seconds leaving dark spots in the sand.

Inside my front door I uncovered my water barrel and dumped in the fresh water. It went in with a whoosh and the water level in the barrel rose just an inch or two. I dipped a plastic cup in and drank it immediately, unfiltered. If I was going to carry water all morning, it was going to make me awfully thirsty.

In the end I could only manage four trips to and from the borehole. I listened to the steady deep-throated singing of the pump as water poured into the deep, metal basins, and felt the steam rising from the sandy path as a portion of my load splashed out on the way home. My clothes washing, I decided, could wait until another day. The sun rose quickly and it was too hot to continue.

The next time I filled a bucket for washing I thought for a minute and poured a little back into the barrel. I didn’t really need that last refreshing dipperful. I could never take water for granted again.

I was amazed at the amount of water an African girl could could carry on her head. They started training their necks as small children, carrying just a bottle at first, then a small bucket, a bigger bucket, then increasingly larger basins. My neighbor’s daughters collected all the water for the family every morning, enough for a family of six to cook, wash, bathe, clean, and drink. Before any of the other work of the day could be begun, a lot of time had to be devoted to water.

I was not as amazing as they were. I carried my own water only during school breaks. The rest of the year I hired my students who could bring me enough in a few trips to last a week.

Back in the States we had too much water. In the fall the basement flooded and in the winter we had to leave our faucets dripping to keep the pipes from freezing. Still, I got anxious when someone tried to run the dishwasher twice in one day. Imagine how many buckets that would take.

Mosquitoes, at least, are familiar. We look at Malaria, however, across a great deal of distance. Although 40% of the world’s population has to worry about Malaria every day, here in Ohio we haven’t had to think about that particular disease in a very long time. Still, most of the people I interviewed knew at least a little about Malaria:  that it is carried by mosquitoes, makes people very sick with a high fever, and is prevalent in tropical areas. One World War II veteran told me that he remembered many of his buddies becoming sick with the disease in Burma during the war. Someone else mentioned that, growing up in West Virginia, she remembered always being on the lookout for stagnant water because of a risk for Malaria in her area.

One of the most common answers was that Malaria is a tropical disease. Actually, Malaria once plagued much of the United States, Europe, and Russia. Efforts to eradicate it here were successful in the 1950s and 60s and the developed world moved on. Now Malaria is stronger than ever, with the greatest hold in Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. It is the number one cause of child mortality in Africa, a major threat to women during pregnancy, and costs Africa an estimated 12 billion dollars in lost GDP annually, due to health care costs and lost productivity.

Whether we spend a lot of time thinking about Malaria, or hardly give it a thought, it does affect us, too, even here in Columbus. We live in a globalized society, and if you haven’t traveled yourself to a Malaria-endemic part of the world, you probably know someone who has. The United Nations has made it their goal to bring deaths from Malaria to near zero by 2015, and the United States is a part of that effort.

Malaria is preventable. It doesn’t have to play as large of a part as it does in the lives of so many people and in the economies of countries around the world. Any individual can make a difference, whether it’s by buying a ten dollar bed net for a child around the world or just by raising awareness and making sure the rest of the world still cares about Malaria.

And then, maybe soon, if a child in Africa is asked to draw a mosquito and answer the question “what is Malaria”, she too can tap her pen on the table and stare into space and answer, “I don’t know, is it a disease or cancer or bug, or what?”

I want to say a really big Thank You to everyone who allowed me to survey them this past week! Everyone was extremely obliging and agreeable, taking time out of their workdays or lunch breaks or birthday parties to spend a few minutes talking about Malaria.

For more information, or to donate a bednet, see: www.malarianomore.org

Survey Answers:

Malaria-Blood disease-passed to us by mosquitoes-high fever, prevalent in tropical areas. Use mosquito nets! -Diana, Social Worker

Malaria is a tropical disease carried by Anopheles Mosquitoes. -Shahin, Librarian

Malaria is a disease spread by Mosquitoes, most commonly in warm humid areas. Its symptoms include a fever, chills, and vomiting. -Ellie, Children’s Librarian

Malaria is a mosquito that carries a disease that can make people very ill. -Gabby

Malaria is an infectious disease carried by a mosquito often in warm climates. -Tim

Nets can protect you from mosquitoes that carry the disease. -Leslie, Environmentalist

Insect borne illness I think involving “bad” water. -Lorelei

Malaria is a kind of cancer? Not sure. -Chelsea

This is caused by dirty water and caused by mosquitoes. -Deb, STNA

It is a disease. It is spread by mosquitos. It is most common in warmer climates. It can cause a fever. -Don, Police Officer

A disease caused by mosquitoes. -Abbie, Therapist

Malaria-has something to do with bugs. -Marylou

Malaria is a disease transmitted by a mosquito that has fed from an infected individual. It can cause high fever and malaise. It is more prevalent in 3rd world nations in tropical regions of the world. -Laura, Science Teacher

Malaria is a disease most commonly transmitted by mosquitoes. It was a big problem during the construction of the Panama Canal. Adam, Engineer

“I thought you were drawing too,” I ask my friend. This whole trip was his idea.

“Oh,” he says. “I can’t draw here. Everyone is too distracting.”

This gourd painting came out of my village drawing session. I was sitting in the shade of one of the many market booths, a small thatched roof held up with shea logs, and drawing the chief’s 4th wife, who dished out porridge a few feet away. That was the first time I tasted the local ginger porridge, smooth and extremely tart, with a lot of sugar and fried dough crumbled into it. Two of her small daughters sat on an upturned basin in the booth behind her. This is village childcare, playing in earshot of your mother while she works.

Around the rim I copied another pattern from the black and white cloth. I had joined a women’s ministry group in my area and one of the women wore a dress with this pattern. The repeated picture of a hen and chicks was appropriate to these women’s groups, which so often dealt with issues of motherhood. I titled the gourd “Akoko Nan”, the title of the West African symbol shown on another gourd, below. The full translation is: “The hen treads on her chicks, but she does not kill them.” It represents the idea that parents must both discipline and nurture their children.

The drawing was done by one of my Junior Secondary students, Catherine.

Below, another volunteer, inside her bungalow, sitting and talking late into a warm evening while her dog sleeps on another chair.

Her dog, Jaro.

(As a PCV, with my not-so-attentive class)

Afterwards, the moderator gave a short speech, summing up the issue for everyone.

Yes, it was certainly useful to send girls to school, he concluded, but not for the reasons I expected. Send Your Girl Child to School was a widely publicized campaign encouraging families to send their daughters to school.

Send Your Girl Child to School appealed to logic as well as equality, advertising that an educated girl means an educated mother and more educated future generations. But the fact which tipped the debate, put forth by the moderator, had to do with development. Not that a more educated population was useful for development, but that other countries and organizations held back financial aid from countries that refused to educate half their populations.

It was a political issue, in the end. Send Your Girl Child to School meant more investment, more aid, more money.

Of course I never saw women in Ghana act as if they were less equal than men. I could see that during the debate, as the girls hammered away at their points while women in the audience jumped up and pressed coins to their foreheads in praise. One of the great heroes in Ghanaian history was Yaa Asantewaa, a woman who led an Ashanti rebellion against the British in 1900. When the Ashanti chiefs were afraid to fight, she rebuked them for not standing up for their own king against the governor. She famously said, “If you men will not go forward, then we women will. I will call upon my fellow women. We will fight the White men until the last of us falls in the battlefields.” She led her troops into battle and it took 1400 soldiers with advanced weapons to defeat her.

At any rate, whether it was an issue of equality or politics or colonialism, the debate swirled over the heads of the young girls crowding into classrooms. From my limited vantage point, the Send Your Girl Child to School campaign was successful. Girls were sometimes even in the majority, at least in my lower grade classes. As the students got older, for whatever reason, there were less girls.

One of my gourd paintings, from the series about women’s roles in Ghana, pictured young girls in this role, as a student, but also as a political and international symbol.

The two girls pictured were my students, in second or third grade. They were looking at a National Geographic Magazine. I had signed up for a program which sent old copies of the magazine into schools. There were wonderful photographs inside, from all over the world. The first time I opened the box of magazines, my students handled them carefully, replaced them almost reverently.

But as time passed, the parts of the magazine that interested them the most were the advertisements. They loved the car ads that folded out into sleek, modern, bright red models. And they especially loved food advertisements, the kind that advertise some kind of box mix with a picture of a complete, prepared meal, so close up to the camera lense you can almost smell it.

Great ideas are so often different in practice, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t still great ideas.

In Africa, I expected everything to be very communal, especially meals.

An illustration for an international foods cookbook

I have enjoyed sharing many meals with African friends, spiced with lots of talk and camaraderie. One of my best Ghanaian friends is deaf, and it was only a little difficult to eat with our hands and talk with them at the same time.

However, more often meals were like this:

Woman Eating, Oil on Calabash

At public eating places, you could eat on a bench facing the wall to avoid any interruption. In traditional Ghanaian homes, family members often eat separately. The father is served in his room or on a veranda. If an important guest is visiting, they may eat with the father, or be served separately. The children eat together by the kitchen. And the mothers eat in the kitchen after serving everyone else, or earlier, while they prepare the food.

Someone once told me that he had never seen the women in his family eat. They ate where and when they could (which isn’t so different from some mothers in America). Mothers are caregivers, and they constantly adapt to the needs of their children and families. I painted this portrait of a friend eating to illustrate the woman eating in the room on her own.

This is one in a series of paintings on gourds showing Ghanaian women in their traditional roles as caregivers. I used gourds because they were inexpensive and easily available in Ghana, and because they were often used as a versatile kitchen tool, for washing rice or storing salt or shaping banku. The pattern around the outside is taken from the designs on the black and white cloth that women wore for celebrations, for weddings, baby-naming ceremonies, funerals, and also for women’s groups. The themes I illustrated were representative of life as I experienced it in my small town in Northern Ghana. My point of view is that of an outsider, and the paintings are by no means representative of all African women. But there is something in the idea that I believe speaks to women in general, from any part of the world, and especially mothers. Women are the caregivers, the sacrificers.

In the room on our own, we relaxed. We changed out of our nicer clothes and wore whatever was coolest and most comfortable.

There was something nice about eating alone. My needs and responsibilities shrank down into just what fit into that bowl of soup and rice in my lap.

Spider Night/Ink on Paper

One night every few months it would happen again, and my little bungalow would be filled with drifting baby spiders. Larger spiders would appear out of nowhere, running across the concrete floor and up the walls. It was Spider Night. The next morning they would all be gone, as if it had only been a grand Larium hallucination. But I knew it wasn’t. The Ashanti word for spider is Anansi, and everyone knows Anansi is a trickster.*

Outside it was sunny and calm. All of the neighbors were stopping by each other’s homes in the morning to greet or share news, perhaps a little porridge or rice for breakfast. Kids at home wrote and wondered if I had seen monkeys and lions. But the creature life I encountered in Ghana was quite a bit smaller. It was all step on or be stepped upon.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

One of my favorite drawings done by one of my sixth grade students: Yams. Because of course they come in all different shapes and sizes.

Yams by Dorothy Dery P6/Pencil on paper

*Anansi is the name of a West African folklore character, Anansi the trickster (known in the Southern United States as Aunt Nancy, he is also some kind of distant cousin to Br’er Rabbit). A good site by one Anansi artist, and the story of how Anansi came to America, can be found at: http://anansistories.com/Anansi_Came_to_America.html