Author Archives: Austin Bailey

About Austin Bailey

Austin Bailey is a writer and editor for Heifer's World Ark magazine.

Shop for Sheep

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Cotton is fine, I suppose, and hemp and linen are nice although hard to work with. Acrylic and polyester? No, thanks. When it’s time to pick up the knitting needles, sheep’s wool is almost always my yarn of choice—perfectly stretchy, durable and nearly waterproof.

Yarn snobs like me aren’t the only fans. Families around the world rely on sheep to provide

A Bolivian shepherd tends his flock. Photo by Christian DeVries

the wool that keeps them clothed and warm. And wouldn’t the gift of warmth be a great thing to share this holiday season? Tending a flock that started with a few Heifer-provided animals is helping Bernardo Zapata-Gonzales feed and clothe his family in the chilly highlands of Churubamba, Bolivia.

It’s easy to forget that fuzzy, fluffy sheep, those staples of county fairs, aren’t the only breed. You might be surprised to know that hair sheep, the doppelganger of white goats, are popular in West African countries like Senegal, where their meat is prized and their biology makes them an easy fit for the dry, sparse landscape.

Sheep mill around their shady, covered enclosure in Fandene village, Senegal. Photo by Geoff Oliver Bugbee

And don’t forget to add milk to a sheep’s list of contributions. People have been milking sheep longer than they’ve been milking cows. Sheep’s milk is more easily digested by humans, and has more calcium, potassium and magnesium than cow’s milk. Most of the sheep milk produced in the world is used to make cheese, yogurt and ice cream.

So if you’re a knitter who hasn’t quite gotten around to making all the mittens and scarves you’d planned to give as gifts, maybe you’ll consider a sheep, instead. Donate a sheep today.

This post is part of our What to Give series, where we’re helping you choose the best Heifer gift for your loved ones. Read previous What to Give posts here, and subscribe to the What to Give series here.

Still don’t know what to give? Check out our entire online Gift Catalog.

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Holiday World Ark Features U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

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The holiday edition of World Ark magazine is out, hope you got yours already. This issue is especially great.

It’s not every day that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton takes the time to chat with us about women’s role in development work. She makes a brilliant case for why boosting women’s status around the globe is so important.

“We know that investing in women’s employment, health and education levels leads to greater economic growth across a broad spectrum,” she said. “It also leads to healthier children and a better educated population overall. We know that political systems that are open to full participation by women produce more effective institutions and more representative governments.”

The magazine also features stories and photos about Heifer projects in Senegal, Malawi and Bangladesh.

If you haven’t found your magazine in the mailbox yet, view it online here.

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International Day of the Girl Child: Little Soldier Girl

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Vanessa Chakhala, almost 2, snores away as her mother holds her.

Most of the children streaming over the packed-dirt roads and dusty orange paths of Malawi’s Mchinji region have no shoes to wear, although a few scuff around in ragged flip-flops. Shoes are a coveted commodity here, especially when the summer sun burns into the ground. Children who have only one shoe will wear it.

Vanessa has shoes to wear, making her one of the luckier children in her village.

Vanessa Chakhala, though, is luckier than most. A sturdy 22-month-old, her chubby feet are jammed into new blue jelly shoes even though her feet rarely touch the ground. The youngest in the family and the only girl, Vanessa gets heaps of special treatment. Her satiny peach-colored dress is torn but clean, and her hair is styled in short braids that match her mother’s. Mother Patricia, age 32, carries her daughter in her arms or on her back much of the time. When it’s time to nap, Vanessa snores away in Patricia’s lap.

The special treatment certainly hasn’t made Vanessa soft, though, and her mother is delighted by her only daughter’s sturdy build and stubborn personality. Patricia wants Vanessa to become a soldier so that she can be in charge of her own destiny. Unlike herself, Patricia said her daughter will have an education that extends beyond 8thgrade and a chance to shape her own future. Money for Vanessa’s education and the education of her three brothers will come from the meat goats Heifer provided. The family is also hoping that being able to add meat to their diet occasionally will make them stronger and better able to stave off malaria, diarrhea and malnourishment.

Baby Vanessa refuses to smile, which only makes her cuter.

Snapping cute photos of Chionko Village’s little princess Vanessa was no problem when she was sleeping, but the shoot shut down as soon as she woke up. Vanessa does what she wants, and she does not want to be in pictures. Her mother and the other women in her village danced for her, made faces, sang songs. But Vanessa wasn’t going to cooperate and refused to smile or pose.

It’s unlikely that a little girl in Malawi would be so fawned over or her obstinacy so celebrated 20 years ago. But today a woman is president here, and even in rural areas many girls are getting sent to school. It’s real progress.

But women and girls in Malawi are still expected to handle the majority of water fetching, cooking, gardening and tending children. These never-ending obligations cut into time girls could spend studying, and often smother their opportunity to live lives different from their mothers and grandmothers.

Today is the United Nations International Day of the Girl Child, a time to recognize the challenges girls in many developing countries face and to find ways to help them reach their potential. Gender equity is one of Heifer’s Cornerstones for Just and Sustainable Development, and encouraging women and girls to learn, cooperate and use their gifts is part of every project.

To learn more about International Day of the Girl Child, go here.

Nope. Still not going to smile.

Photos by Russell Powell

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The Perks of Peer Pressure

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It’s something new and daring, and all the coolest billionaires are doing it. It only hurts a little. You want in?

This month Warren Buffett announced he’s enlisted 11 more billionaires to give half of their wealth to charity. That brings the number up to 92 billionaires planning to divest themselves of a huge chunk of their fortunes. Bill Gates, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg are among the group’s most famous.

Nonprofits will benefit not only from the hefty sums these billionaires are donating, but also from these donors’ know-how. Clearly the 92 people in this exclusive club know a thing or two about handling money. Gates, who along with his wife Melinda and Buffett started The Giving Pledge, said big donors can help shape the future of philanthropy, making it more efficient and far-reaching.

“This new group brings extensive business and philanthropic experience that will enrich the conversation about how to make philanthropy as impactful as possible,” Bill Gates told the Wall Street Journal. Click here to see the list of people who have signed on to The Giving Pledge so far.

So you don’t have billions in your bank account? Don’t feel stingy. Not all billionaires are as generous as Buffett, Gates and their cohorts. In fact, when calculated as a percentage of income, the neediest are the most charitable.

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Glorious Food

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The following is an essay on mindful eating submitted by Diane Baron, a Heifer International supporter from Asheville, N.C.Thanks, Diane!

“Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The one who eats the fastest gets the most.”

My grandfather used to say that, my mom tells me, and I’d bet it was a silent prayer in many other homes. Especially if there were boys, brothers in my case, at the table. Even as a small girl I had the appetite of an active teenage boy, and despite nearing age 50, I still do.

Someone in our family who seemed immune to the challenges of a runaway appetite was my grandfather’s younger daughter, my aunt, a Catholic Benedictine sister. If she had been a practicing Buddhist, I would say she had aced “The Middle Way.”

Sister entered the convent at age 17, and a 82 is still teaching and adjudicating piano solos. She’s gotten up before dawn to practice tai chi close to 20 years, and at age 60 she began taking harp lessons.

I’ve studied her habits (no pun intended) relating to food since I was young and brimming with gusto for the big worlds of nature, art, dance, music, books and especially food. While the rest of her extended family gobbled throughout the holidays, I never saw her volunteer as quality control tester at the stove, serve herself a second helping of food or take a nap after eating. Her dishes were always cleaned off like they hadn’t even been used.

I remember one Thanksgiving in particular. With the same alert energy with which she sat down at the table, at the end of the meal she was clearing plates and transferring food from serving dishes to plastic containers. Then she stood at the sink and hand-washed dish after dish, plate after plate, platters, glasses, utensils. How much tableware could six people dirty? Then she S.O.S.-ed the roasting pan! It was Herculean. She continued on, soaking one tea towel after another, drying everything by hand all to say, “Thank you for inviting me.” Whatever I did to help with the before-meal preparations (make cranberry sherbet, set the table and eat stuffing bread) was nothing compared to this.

After our feast I slugged my way from the dining room to drape myself over the kitchen table, where I watched her with awe and thought of how she took on our suffering for us. I could hardly move, sit upright or breathe, and there she stood–steady, poised and heroic, 35 years my senior, with all the vitality and freshness of someone my preteen years of age. With her dignified bearing, she even appeared to enjoy being helpful at such an overwhelming time. Why hadn’t we all just given thanks over a shared box of Saltine crackers and been done with it?

Sister was used to monastic life being orderly, precisely timed and ship-shape. When we visited at her Pennsylvania monastery, dinner was always at a specific hour. While Sister modestly ate one serving, we kids, cousins, great nieces and nephews scarfed up food like lusty pirates at an all-you-can-eat buffet, running back for seconds before they whisked the big metal pans back into the kitchen.

Once, we had so much food to finish that the sisters on the clean-up detail were hoisting chairs up on the tables and vacuuming around us. Our plates were loaded like we hadn’t eaten for weeks, rather than just the five hours since lunch.

If we gifted Sister with a box of candy, she took one piece and set the rest out to share with her community. Who was this woman/martyr/saint? How could she have so much self-control to not indulge in what she clearly liked? How could she be so disciplined and moderate?

When I was 16 I experimented with convent life to see if I had a vocation, only to realize that I had a temperament more like Zorba the Greek.

Six years later I spent the summer in Marine Corps boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina, home of sand fleas, intense heat and humidity. Everything we recruits were commanded to undertake was supposed to be accomplished faster than possible. That included eating.

The sequence through the chow line was as follows: The recruits who needed to put on weight filed in at the front of the line so that they could go through a second time to get more chow. The weight control recruits were put at the rear so that they didn’t have enough time to eat. We all ate as fast as we could because if one of us finished bolting her food, we were all supposed to be finished, then jump up and clear our trays.

This routine wasn’t cutting it for me, so one chow time I decided to shovel in a few more bites before jumping up. The red-headed sergeant drill instructor who I was terrified of planted her oxfords in front of me with her hands curled in fists on her hips and yelled, “YOU PIG!” Let’s say, I heard her. My first pseudo-satori.

From that day until the end of the nine-week boot camp I ate only what I could mindfully chew and whittled to an alert-minded, lean-bodied 111 pounds. On graduation day when another drill instructor pinned the eagle, globe and anchor emblem on my cover and called me a marine for the first time, I felt invincible.

Actually, for the first time I felt like I imagined my aunt did. Clear. Capable. Courageous. I could probably even wash a humongous pile of Thanksgiving dishes.

 

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Global Goat Giveaway

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A teenage boy herds goats in La Laguna Perdida in the Peten district of Guatemala.

Fluffy and Fido are fine for some, but our youngest Heifer project participants tend to prefer goats. Heifer’s 2012 Kids 2 Kids campaign is in full swing right now, making it a good time to list all the reasons goats are the greatest.

1. Goats are gentle enough for even small children to feed and play with. Children get a fuzzy buddy to snuggle with, and learn some responsibility at the same time.

2. A goat can produce up to a gallon of milk a day, and it’s the good stuff. More protein, more calories and more calcium make it nutritionally superior to cow’s milk, and goat milk is often easier to digest.

3. Are you going to eat that? No? Well, a goat probably will. Goats are indiscriminate munchers, chowing through scrub and scraps that people and other animals wouldn’t touch.

4. Goat manure mixed into soil is a great fertilizer. It’s free and easy, no composting required.

5. One nanny goat can have two to three kids per year, making it easy to pass on the gift of self-reliance to another family quickly.

Not a bad investment in the future.

Learn more about the Kids 2 Kids campaign.

 

 

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Trapped in Transition

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As home to roughly 465,000 people, the Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya is the largest refugee camp in the world. It has a population equivalent to that of Kansas City, Mo., but at a tightly packed 31 square miles, the entire camp sits on roughly the same area allotted to a single off-the-grid tribesman in the Brazilian Amazon.

Refugees continue to trickle in, most of them Somalians fleeing hunger and conflict, while older residents now consider the camp their long-term home after living there for a decade or more. So what does life in this accidental city look like?

The BBC posted a slideshow this week to show us. Some of the photos capture the mundane, like the shot of Asha Mohamed, who runs a beauty shop inside the camp. Others depict the privation that promises to worsen as the camp recedes from the public eye and donations slow. In one shot, a mother sits on the floor of her house crafted from  plastic bags, her two bleary-eyed sons with her clearly in poor health.

Faced with real threats of kidnapping, aid workers and journalists are avoiding Dadaab, a factor that will almost certainly add to residents’ hardships.

As Dadaab’s population continues to rise, Heifer International is working in the drought-addled region, planning projects that will help people in the Horn of Africa weather future crises.

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The 5 B’s

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I’m wishing there had been a bit more buzz about this being designated Pollinator Week by the U.S. Senate. Here it is already Thursday, leaving just three more days to officially geek out about bees and such until Pollinator Week, always the last week in June, rolls around again in 2013.

There’s plenty to geek out about. The worrisome decline in bee populations over the past few years is putting our food supply at risk. After all, every third bite or sip we take is dependent on pollinators. Butterflies, bats, birds and beetles are pollinators too, but bees do most of the work. There’s actually more than the five B’s, since small mammals, moths and wasps pollinate, too.

Still, we can be hopeful that pollinator-dependent food crops (coffee, chocolate, melons, apples, pears, peaches, vanilla, etc.–pretty much everything) will make it. Hives of entomologists are working on the mysterious colony collapse disorder, the term used to describe the unexplained disappearance of an alarming number of honeybees in North America and Europe. And perhaps it’s a good sign that New York City is suddenly finding itself with more bees than it can handle.

Factoids abound at the Pollinator Partnership website, which is up year-round. The niftiest feature is a tool that lets you enter your zip code to find out what you should plant in your yard to promote pollinator health.

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Cows in Malawi are a Daughter’s Piggy Bank

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Belia Mzukani, 21 years old, (left) her husband Baptista Mzukani, 21, and their 9-month-old baby Esnart in Gomani Folotiya Village, Malawi. Photo by Russell Powell

Baptista and Belia Mzukani have big plans for their daughter, Esnart. At 9 months old the baby is sharp and healthy, and her parents are laying the groundwork for her to stay that way.

The parents each grew up with seven siblings, meaning money, food and other resources were tight. Neither of them made it past 7th grade. That won’t be the case for Esnart, Belia said. She and Baptista plan to have only one more child, an unusual choice in Gomani Folotiya Village in central Malawi, where seven or eight children per family is the norm.

The family has two Heifer cows: Tiyamike, whose name means “Giving Thanks,” and the calf Madalitso, whose name means “Blessings.” Tiyamike’s milk is pulling in enough money that Esnart already has a savings account earmarked for education expenses. “I don’t want her to be denied what she needs,” Baptista said.

Belia and Esnart gather fodder for their Heifer cows. Photo by Russell Powell

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Making Your Own Fun

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13-year-old Chikondi Phiri holds two homemade soccer balls near his home in Bulipoti Village, Malawi.

We didn’t speak the language and we looked totally ridiculous with our huge sunglasses and camera gear and whatnot, but photographer Russ Powell and I had no problem making new friends in Malawi. All we had to do was invite ourselves into a soccer game and we were collecting high fives in no time.

Soccer is the favorite pastime for boys in this southern African country. Girls still watch from the sidelines, although gender restrictions seem to be easing a tiny bit, and I did spy a couple girls venturing into games during our week-long visit.

An example of a homemade soccer ball in Kasiya Village, Malawi.

Matches took place on grassy fields, but also on dusty paths and roadsides. No one seemed to have shin guards or cleats or goals with nets, and we spotted only one inflated soccer ball the whole time we were there. Instead, these games were played with bare feet and goals marked by pairs of rocks. Boys made their own soccer balls by stuffing plastic shopping sacks together and tying them with rags and string, or melting bags together over a fire into a perfectly smooth, solid ball.

This soccer ball was made in Bulipoti Village, Malawi, by melting plastic sacks together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos by Russell Powell

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