Tim & Samaritan's Purse on the job

Hi! Fo-fo! Bonjour!
It's December and it's hot here, actually Dec is the coolest month of the year, so it's like having nice summer days. We've been busy! and time flew by, at last some time to update our news.

I've gone to visit most of our main project sites, and I've got a lot of photos - this is just a few. Note on any photo you can click and see the full (bigger) size of the photo.

SP has nutrition projects where under-nourished children are provided food and medicine, and their health regularly monitored. I'm standing here in our stock room in the village of Bani-Bangou (NW border with Mali) along with our project worker Adamou. Next to us are 25kg bags of Corn-Soya from Canada (through WFP World Food Programme). This is a multi-year project, as malnutrition is chronic in some areas. The children receive some other food too, as well mosquito nets, and a toy if their health level goes up high enough to get off the program!

Getting out to our project villages can be a real interesting challenge! One of the govt authorities here recently commented to us that he applauded us that we went to the difficult and remote areas where other charitys/NGOs generally didn’t go, as those places are hard to get to and are more rural and spread out. One photo shows our 4x4 on my way to Inates ("ee-na-tez"), a Tomcheq village near Mali. There is no road there, we are following tire tracks. Most of the traffic out there is by camel. This part of the trail is not too bumpy, but some places certainly are.

The other “travel” photo shows us in a canoe (called a pirogue, sounds like the French word for perogie) I took the photo while in the pirogue. Some of our villages are on islands in the Niger river, which is quite a large river. We access the islands from the shallow side of the river which is heavily grown with vegetation as you can see. The pirogues all have hippo spears, which are large nasty things, and hippos are very dangerous.

There are hippos near our island villages but they swim in the deep side. So speaking of hippos! Here’s one we saw from a safe place!

One our projects is about rebuilding livestock herds that get decimated during hard times, and introducing better goats and vaccination for goats. This photo has our vet Dr Aziz holding onto a goat, in one of our project villages. Goats are nice animals, quite interesting. They are mainly for providing milk, but also for meat and potentially income from selling them (the offspring).

Next is me (Tim) with some baby goats in Koutougou. I like the sound of these village names :-) These baby goats are offspring from our seed project goats, in order to build up people's stocks. These red goats are new to the region (coming from central south Niger).

Millet, mmmmm. This is a common grain eaten here. Millet is quite impressive as it grows in sandy soil and harsh conditions and yet is quite nutritious. Typically the women will pound the grains manually using a heavy large mortar approximately as big as themselves. We have a pilot of a grain mill in one village, where villagers can optionally have their grain ground by a diesel powered mill. 15 minutes waiting instead of 2 hours hard labour.

Next photo - water, clean drinkable water, very essential for living. The BioSand Water filters are the "baby" of the Canadian Samaritan's Purse, these are specifically Canadian originated projects. The filters are able to transform water from the river into safe drinkable water (dripping into the blue bucket). The people in the villages have reported a dramatic reduction in diarrhea since the filters have been introduced. I've drunk the filtered river water - no problem!


Many more filters are on the way! The picture on the wall is a picture-based training manual on using the filters, do's and dont's. The guy next to me is a water filter technician we hire and trained in the village.


Last for now - earlier in the year SP in Niger built 50 temporary homes, huts, for people who lost their homes from heavy rain and flooding in the rainy season. This picture has a widow beside the home which we had built to replace her previously destroyed home, and which she presently lives in. It is a temporary home though, a new one will be needed sometime. This project was one that the local Niger govt and press came out to view. As I mentioned ot some of you, I was on their national TV (RTN) - and seen by many people.



that's it for now! It's great to have interesting and meaningful work.



Merry Christmas and a happy new year!