This is Karen. (With the red bandana on). Karen is a 24-year-old woman who volunteers her time to work for an organization called Ministry of Hope. I walked with Karen through a buzzing market place in Chipoka, Malawi only 2 weeks ago. As we walked through the market place, piercing stares from the day’s merchants and consumers made their way towards our path. An entourage of young children yelling out, "Mazungu" (white person) quickly made their presence known close behind as we walked. 

It was a loud, busy market place and amidst the noise, I asked Karen a question that seemed to quiet our surroundings in an instant. "Karen, what is your story?" She immediately launched into her story as if she'd been waiting for me to ask the question from the moment we began our walk. 

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Due to slavery, Burkina Faso is one of the poorest places on the planet. The majority of the population is stripped and undergoes the stress of inflation, the continuous increase in costs for basic necessities. I will discuss and explain in a sincere manner, the effects of the high cost of living felt by the Burkinabe in their everyday lives.

Our family, like a great number of others in the region, are underdeveloped. This is visible on many levels. Since we are directly affected by inflation, living conditions are unstable. There is no guarantee that we will have something to eat each day. Even two meals a day are not assured. The food shortage is so evident that you can read it on the faces of the Burkinabe and in their skeletal bodies. They are very skinny. In addition, we cannot eat well because of the insufficient quality and quantity of our poor monotonous meals.

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 Listen to the voices of 3 sweet teenage girls, singing their national anthem...

 

I just returned from The Warm Heart of Africa, Malawi. Refer to my previous post Destination Malawi for a mini description of why I went with a team from my church. There are a lot of stories and a lot of statistics I could throw at you as a follow up. However, some of that will fade from my memory as I return to my daily routine in the states. 

The one aspect I hope never dims in my heart is the sound of the voices of the 180 Malawian teenagers I spent 4 days at camp with. These kids love to sing and they have amazing voices. They taught us a few worship songs and we attempted to keep up with their sweet dance moves. Check out this video below where Keren, a local worship leader, taught the teens I Love You Lord. Notice the teens writing. Without any prompting and as a complete surprise to us, they began to write down the lyrics and they all shared pens and paper with friends so that all of them who wanted, had the song. Later that day and into the next, we continued to hear the teens practise this song.

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I have a quick story for you: I was at the Sundance Film Festival this past year, and my favorite film was titled: Triage, Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma. During the Rwandan Genocide, all the NGO's fled Rwanda, Dr. Orbinski's organization (Doctors without Borders) was the only one to enter the country. Orbinski's job was to number off victims. 1 meant a person needed immediate attention or they would die, 2 meant that they needed to be treated within that day, and 3 meant that they did not have a chance to make it. He decided whether victims would live or die. He also did surgery after surgery on people and the film chronicles him returning to all the countries he worked in as he prepares to write a book about his experiences. In these countries, so many people are still in tough situations, maybe not in war or genocide, but living in huge slums and struggling in extreme poverty. As he walks around the slums remembering what had happened there, people missing limbs hobble up to him and tell him thanks for saving their life. You realize this one man literally healed and saved the lives of thousands of people.

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In my last blog I posted a lot of population stats about Mongolia. If you didn't read them or just skimmed over them, some of the ones I really wanted to stick out to you were these:

-HALF of the population is under 23 years old.

-40% of the entire population is living in one city alone, Ulaanbaatar.

-43% of what was once a nomadic culture are now living in cities. There is a large migration from the countryside to the cities.

My dad sent me this article that puts a more personal face on those numbers.

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A small, hungry cat is tied up next to the door of this family's ger. It meows incessantly and seems eager to be free as it strains at the cord around its neck. Animals often reflect their owners.

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Hey kids, how's things.

Tuesday morning we left for California earlier than blue jays wake up and it's been non-stop filming/ man cuddling since we left. About an hour or two after our plane landed, we were already setting up for our first interview with the founder of The Falling Whistles Project, Sean Carasso. It was amazing and we all felt that we enjoyed almost everything that he brought to the table. In the past Dan has been asking most of the interview questions, but this time I made a point of shooting a few out there. I think the best part of this interview, not to discredit Sean, would have to be that we did the interview in a warehouse, with Dan and me seated on a shop vac and a bucket respectively. I dont know about you, but shop vac chairs scream Give A Damn? to me.

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I'll start by introducing myself; my name is Rob and I look forward to conversing back and fourth with everyone through this blog. I will gladly answer any questions you might have about myself or the film, but I'll warn you that most of the time you probably wont like the bluntness of my answers. Bottom line, I am offensive and I'm way past the point of dancing around the issues and people's feelings when we could be cutting through the crap and getting somewhere.

If you have seen the trailer then you most likely have a basic understanding of who I am, or at least who you might think I am. To the average viewer, I most likely come off as the atheist asshole who doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself. While I don't believe this to be the case, I certainly wont be so bold as to try and demand you think otherwise. I would also argue that my viewpoints are not a product of apathy and/or selfishness, I more so believe that I am the product of years of having propaganda-guilt-trip bullshit crammed down my throat. I think deep down a lot of people can relate to where I'm at, but most people just don't want to admit it and be the douche. Basically, I have no idea what my responsibility is to people half way across the world, but I'm willing to look into the issue and find out if we can make a difference.

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In less than three days I will be congregating with a team of fourteen eager excursionists in a church parking lot at 2:15 a.m. With twenty-eight suitcases among us and with a mental suitcase filled with the unknown and heavy with anticipation of a new adventure, we will launch ourselves willingly into an unforgettable experience.

Our destination: Malawi, Africa.

I’ve heard it said that Malawi is considered the Warm Heart of Africa. I’m ready to experience that warm heart first hand. At the same time, I am not naïve to the reality that creeps its way into the lives of Malawians. Life is not exactly easy going for many who live there. The life expectancy for males is estimated around the age of thirty-five and for the females it’s roughly thirty-nine years old.

Recently I was reminded of a situation I witnessed on a hot summer day in 2003. I was traveling with a group of 17 and we were on our way to visit a Mother Theresa home called House of Peace just miles outside Kinshasa, Congo DRC. 

The House of Peace is an interesting name, considering it serves as both orphanage and hospice. Upon walking through the large iron gates, fully lined on the top with barbed wire and broken glass bottles, I noticed a black top play ground to the left, near a small building. On my right, were a handful of park benches, shaded by a large tree planted at the entrance of another building: this one larger than the one adjacent to it.

There was no one near the larger building to my right at first glance, yet, within seconds of entering through the gates, we heard laughter and the giggles of small children headed towards us coming from the smaller building.

Hows it going everyone?

We thought you might be interested in where we are at with this project.

As of right now, we are stationed in an office in St. Louis working all the time to try and get the word out about the film. We are consistently creating videos for our youtube/facebook/myspace/conversantlife pages (all those links are below.) Every day people come out of the wood works offering their help and support.

Next Tuesday, Rob, David and myself are headed to LA to get interviews with the people who run Invisible Children, The SOLD Project, and a few other non-profit organizations (Big thanks to our friend Rachel Burney for hooking a lot of that up.) We will be there for 9 days, getting interviews, promoting the film at concerts and events (a Big thanks to Rock 4 Justice) and doing some man on the street interviews.

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