Growing

It starts with a book. Once I've decided to do something I've never done before and have no idea how to do it I read, I scan, I scour. I do this just enough to build a small amount of trust with a few experts and enough knowledge to make my own mistakes. So began my garden.

I left Sudan one year ago deeply frustrated that there is so little food produced locally in a historically agricultural society with little economic opportunity, where children die of malnutrition as their parents scramble to receive food aid and afford expensive imported produce. Why can't they grow more food? Why can't I?

So I grew my own food this year. I did my best to use what I had in front of me. I used my own compost to enrich the soil in my backyard plot, collected water from the roof when I thought about it, and became known as the biggest weirdo among friends and acquaintances by collecting my own (and sometimes Seth's) urine to fertilize my little seedlings. That's right I said urine - and I would do it again.

6 months after I began this little venture I am proud to report I grew a significant amount of our food! Well, that is if we ate Kale 3x's a day. In theory our grocery bill has been significantly slashed. Too bad I'm a spoiled foodie with a ridiculous palette that demands culinary diversity.

So what I'm trying to say is come by and get some Kale.

Here's my favorite recipe:

A lot of Kale

Olive oil, Onion, Garlic

Ground cumin, coriander, fennel, any other Indian spices you find in your cabinet

Butter, cream (milk or yogurt)

Directions: Play around in the wok till it tastes good

Getting a little philosophical

Last week I found myself in a far-ranging, fascinating, and provocative discussion with a few friends. The conversation, allegedly, was about the social contract and it's well-being after a couple hundred years of democracy, but we talked about much, much more than that.

One of the themes that we kept returning to, in part because none of us could find a way to respond to it, was, "what is an ideal society?" And one of my friends made the bold assertion that life would have been better as a peasant in 12th century France than as a 21st century urban American, because, although life would be shorter and harsher, one had a clearer sense of one's role in the community, stronger ties to that community, a sustained relationship with one's family, and possibly even more leisure time.

Agree or disagree, that's a real argument, and there are plenty of counterarguments to be made; I know because I immediately began thinking about what we are trying to do through Cornerstone Friends. While southern Sudan isn't quite feudal Europe, a lot of our programs address conditions that are at least similar in appearance - take for instance the general lack of education available to the typical Sudanese child and the staggering rate of illiteracy among the adult population; it's not dissimilar to the lack of education among most of European society prior to the Enlightenment (if not later). We are trying to improve both the quality and the amount of education that Sudanese children receive in Sudanese schools, and we are trying to reach as many of those children as possible.

But what end does education serve?

As my friend pointed out, education brings with it the burden of self-awareness and an often unsatisfying struggle to understand one's role in the world and maintain one's connection with others. While education liberates a person to think and make choices rather than be constrained by the limits of tradition, tradition is not automatically a negative (nor, for that matter, is choice automatically a positive).

We will be working in a society that is overtly traditional. Is it our role to educate people to defy tradition or to better understand it?

Yes.

We want to improve education because we believe that it is both a joy and a burden, and that as people bear that burden education produces discourse. Discourse, however, is not the end; it is the means to the end of constructing a society.

I'm not sure there is a single ideal society, but I do believe there are principles that guide its construction, and one of those principles is that it should arise from the values of those it governs. How to do that is a question of even greater complexity, and it's the kind of question that can only be answered by people who have the skills and abilities to look at a problem from every imaginable perspective and identify the various strengths and weaknesses of each.

Those skills are not innate, they are learned, and someone always learns them, but for a society in transition (such as southern Sudan) a crucial question is whether those skills are in the hands of few or many. I personally believe that for all the shortcomings of tyranny of the majority, it is preferable to absolute authority, because it encourages people to live not only for themselves but for their society as a whole and to be active within that society. People who see problems can acquire the skills, through education, to address those problems. People who see injustice, cruelty, and oppression can oppose it and propose a different way. People can live for more than just survival, can be part of something larger than a family, can imagine and hope and dream.

And that's the kind of society I want to live in.

Discoveries, both here and abroad

We've been discovering an awful lot lately; that's what our summer has been about. Primarily, I'd say that we've been discovering the joy of living in Colorado. We spent a long weekend in Telluride, driving out the long way along highway 285. We spent a day on inner tubes shooting the rapids of Boulder Creek (which claimed my wedding ring). We've been making a list of things we absolutely must do to take advantage of being Colorodans before we move (to wit, 6 weeks from Monday).

Of course it isn't all fun and games for us. With Christian already on the ground in Nimule, we've also been taking stock of the situation there and thinking about and planning for this first phase of our work. Our most exciting discovery has been the breakthrough in solar-powered products designed for the developing world. We are thrilled by the products being manufactured by Tough Stuff and D.light. They're both impressive in their own rite.

For us, giving our kids reliable nighttime lighting would allow them to use the evening hours to study. We've looked into a full power system using a hybrid of wind, solar, and petrol, but the cost is jaw-dropping.

So let me say that solar lamps are one of those brilliant innovations for the developing world that replace an existing product with something more efficient, less expensive, and less dangerous. Many, many households in the developing world already use paraffin (kerosene) lamps to light their homes at night. If you have ever used one of these lamps, you know that they aren't especially bright, they can be irritating to the eyes, and they are expensive to maintain because they constantly need kerosene. If knocked over, they can cause household fires. In short, they serve a purpose, but they also pose a lot of risk.

What stood out to us about Tough Stuff was the durable solar panel, which is a separate from the lighting units they design. Tough Stuff has designed a whole complement of products, from lamps to small cell batteries, that can be powered by this solar panel. Even cooler, for distribution they have developed a network of micro-entrepreneurs who receive training to sell Tough Stuff products in their villages.

D.Light is equally cool, though their product line is a little different - their lamps have an integrated solar panel, so the lamps themselves are placed outside in sunlight during the day and then brought inside at night to provide hours of illumination.

In both cases, the products were specifically designed for conditions in the developing world (such as weather and utility), and their units retail there for less than $25 each.

We think that for us this could be the difference between spending thousands of dollars to power a home for 65-100 kids and spending a few hundred dollars.

It might make me an epic dork, but these are the kind of things that excite me and fill me with hope that we might live in a time when poverty could be greatly reduced or even eliminated altogether.

You should take a look at these two companies' websites and let us know which product you like better.