Today I took a break from the grind of the Depression Project and spent the whole day on the Water Project. It began with a meeting with the woman from the NGO, where my questions included: Did I just agree to work for free for two years...and will I get shot while I'm doing it?
Yes, I'm working for free – they didn't budget for a writer when they got their massive grant from CIDA – but they are paying for flight/travel, accommodation, food, visas, vaccinations and insurance, including being airlifted by commandos on the off-chance I do get shot. Which I won't because that's not how I'm gonna go down.
Unless it involves a blaze of glory. In which case, I might consider it.
Anyhoo. Working for free. Or...getting to travel the world for free. Which is how I like to think of it. It's all good. I'm already plotting magazine articles and columns to pitch, book proposals, generating massive blog traffic (tell all your friends) and a Top Secret Fundraising Extravaganza you're all invited to if I can pull my wicked idea off. Stay tuned.
I also got some insight as to why NGO Lady decided to send an outside writer and not go herself as originally sort-of planned: she's PREGGO. The Universe works in mysterious ways...and with impeccable timing.
After that meeting, I jumped in my car and headed home for a Skype meeting with the photographer, where we started zeroing in on travel plans and creative concepts. So, the scoop as of today is something like:
Leave Calgary around July 10th and take a couple days to travel to Ndola, Zambia – just in time to celebrate my 33rd birthday. Meet our contact there, whose name is Blessed. For real. Stay in the guest house of the partner agency in Ndola and take satellite trips from there, connecting with families in several townships in the Copperbelt province. Possibly visit an internally displaced persons/refugee camp. Visit the chimp orphanage (I KNOW!) near Ndola.
Then at the end of July, we take off for the Tamil Nadu province of southern India, where we'll spend most of August and where the plans are still vague because we haven't gotten that far yet.
The creative concept is still forming and will be HUGELY shaped by what we see and who we meet when we're there, but we're both drawn to the women and children.
The big statistic for all water-focused development efforts is that of the 4,900 people dying every day from waterborne illnesses, 90% of them are children under 5. When you see a statistic like that, it doesn't tell you the story of how those losses impact the mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. And what being healthy now means to these families.
I want to have some fun with the kids if I can – bring some sketchbooks and crayons, record them singing some songs or telling me stories. I'm hoping, perhaps naively, that being healthy means they actually get to be kids.
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