It’s that most wonderful time of the year, and the stores are all about to be filled with people frantically shopping for that perfect gift for that special someone. This year you can avoid the crowded stores and pick up the perfect gift without having to brave the traffic or the cold weather. We are happy to bring you the new Drop in the Bucket Holiday card!
The cards are printed with a photo from a well we built this year in Uganda and this particular photo really does a great job of showing the life changing effect of clean water. The cards come in packs of 10 and 20, are printed on high quality glossy paper and come with their own envelopes.
Inside the cards have the words “Happy Holidays and best wishes for the New Year” in large letters, and below that “A donation has been made in your name to help build wells and sanitation systems at schools in Africa.”
This year give the gift that keeps giving. The gift of water is the gift of life!
To pick up your cards please click this link.
Sarah Awelping is currently a 19-year-old sixth grader at the Salam Girls’ School in Aweil, South Sudan. When she was 15 years old, she became close with a boy, Garang, from her neighboring village and over time, the two fell in love. They hoped to one day marry, but first, they wanted to focus on school since the war put them so behind in their studies.
Around the same time Sarah and Garang started their relationship, a 60-year-old man, who was already living with four wives, offered Sarah’s parents a large dowry of 100 cows for the girl. Sarah was only 15 years old at the time. She knew that if she was forced to marry the old man her life would consist of a loveless marriage in which her main job would be to provide the man with children until he grew tired of her and took yet another wife. Sarah became so terrified that she ran away with Garang.
In South Sudan, a dowry is one of the few times people can receive a large sum of money, so for the Awelping family, Sarah’s potential dowry was a huge deal. In rural South Sudan, 100 cows signify a great deal of money and for a family living below the poverty line, like the Awelpings, this size of dowry was life changing despite the impact it would have on their daughter’s future. Sarah knew it was her duty, but she also knew she did not love the man. Sarah was aware with how much girls suffer, as they are rendered powerless once they are sold as property to the highest bidder. Unlike marriages of love and trust, these arranged marriages leave wives in unfair, emotionless, and abusive relationships. Sarah says she couldn’t even imagine having to get permission from her husband every time she wanted to leave the house to run errands, since her husband would fear that she’d run away from the unhappy marriage.
Sarah felt so helpless and devastated with the arrangement her parents were making and even though the idea of running away was daunting, she knew it was her only option if she ever wanted to be happy. She understood that her parents could choose to never accept her back into the family, but she just wasn’t able to bear the thought of spending the rest of her life married to a man 45 years older than her who she did not even know, let alone love.
Sarah’s aunt strongly supported her decision and once other community members learned of the situation, they also defended her right to stay with Garang. While Sarah’s parents were initially upset that they lost the dowry, they eventually grew to accept and support her relationship with Garang.
Now, four years later, Sarah is happily married to Garang. She is still in school and dreams of one day becoming a doctor so that she can spend her time helping others. Looking back, Sarah is so thankful she made the decision to run away, because now she is able to choose how she’d like to live her life.
Having been a huge Mighty Boosh fan for over a decade, I was beyond excited when Noel Fielding agreed to perform for our charity Drop in the Bucket. Then when I was told that all of The Mighty Boosh would be performing, I almost dropped the phone in shock.
Bobcat Goldthwait was hilarious and after his performance adlibbed what may be the funniest and most politically incorrect PSA ever made by a water charity.
Ian Edwards and Nick Youssef both delivered great sets that had the sold out Comedy Store crowd in hysterics. Justin Martindale did an amazing job as the evening’s host. He managed to keep everyone laughing while still making sure the audience knew exactly why they were there.
The Mighty Boosh opened with the group coming onstage dressed as monks for the first song. Their performance proceeded to show everyone why they are one of the most beloved and creative comedy groups ever to come out of England. The laughs were non-stop and everybody in the room knew they were witnessing a night they would remember for years. We were so honored to have it be on behalf of Drop in the Bucket.
The night exceeded all expectations and all of the performers really got into the spirit of the evening. The event raised over $12,000, enough to pay for Drop in the Bucket to drill two more wells for schools in Uganda.
Water wells at schools make it possible for children to go to school and when properly maintained, wells can last for decades. To keep up on the progress of the wells that this show made possible, please check out Drop in the Bucket’s Facebook page . We will also be posting videos from some the performers that were shot backstage during the event.
We cannot thank everyone enough at High Voltage, the Comedy Store, all of the artists and everyone who came and showed their support. One night of fun will continue to change thousands of lives in Africa for years to come.
-John Travis
Jimmy Apunyu is a 15-year-old boy in seventh grade at Ating Tuo Primary School in Alebtong, Uganda. He and his older siblings are responsible for collecting the water his family drinks, and that his sisters and mother use for making dinner and washing clothes.
Jimmy’s family live in a village called Oyon Alwevi. It is less than one mile away from their school. But, because of the powerful intense and unsteady dirt roads, the walk to and from school can seem like it takes several hours. One day Jimmy and his sister stopped at a hand-dug well that they passed on their way home from school. It was very hot that day, so, they decided to take a rest. They drank the well water, poured some on their heads to cool off and played around in it. When they were ready to leave they filled up jerry cans with the water so they could bring some home with them.
An hour later, just after they returned home, both Jimmy and his sister started to feel sick. They had strong stomach pains that Jimmy described by saying “It was like my intestines wanted to climb out of my body”. Jimmy knew it was because of the water since it came so soon after they drank it. His sister said that she had been nervous about drinking the water at the time, but she was just too thirsty on the walk home to not stop for water. After a few weeks of feeling ill, Jimmy told the head teacher at his school, “I am sick with stomach worms and need help. Can we get someone to come to our school and help us.” One of the village elders knew the Uganda Program Manager for Drop in the Bucket who arranged for Jimmy and his sister to get medical attention. Two weeks, Drop in the Bucket built a well the Ating Tuo Primary School so that the school could have their own source of clean water well on the premises.
The medicine Jimmy and his sister were given quickly had them feeling better, and now that their school has a well, they won’t ever have to worry about getting sick from unsafe water again. Jimmy hopes to one day become a teacher so he can help other children to improve their lives.
Gulu High School is a mixed boarding school in northern Uganda, with a population of 1065 students: 464 girls and 601 boys.
In 2007 Drop in the Bucket first visited this school and found that near the main part of the school there were only toilets for the boys. The girls had to either walk to the dorms or wait until after class was done for the day.
Studies have shown overwhelmingly, that a lack of decent toilets is a major contributing factor in girls dropping out of school. After puberty, the female dropout rate increases dramatically, mainly because many girls do not have an effective way to manage menstruation. Missing up to one week of school every month, causing them to fall behind with their studies and ultimately leading them to drop out.
Earlier this week we visited the school and sat down with the school’s Deputy Head Teacher, Sarah Jokit Odong (pictured above). She told us that the toilets have contributed to the school’s 70% girl retention rate. “The girls are happy and feel like they are being listened to and taken care of.”After seeing the problem, Drop In The Bucket decided the girls needed their own set of toilets. The system we constructed at Gulu High School consists of a hand-washing station, ten pour-flush toilets, and our unique septic system, that actually treats sewage rather than just storing it.
Today is International Day of the Girl and hearing this news from one of our schools was a great way to commemorate the day. There is a sign you often see at schools in Uganda that states: “If you educate a girl, you educate a nation”. Installing toilets at Gulu High was just the first step of many as we continue to build wells and sanitation systems throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Let’s take today to be grateful for the girls that can now harness the life-changing power of education, and let’s also use today as inspiration to join together to fight for the rights of the many girls still out there whose voices are still not heard.
Sanitation and menstrual hygiene management keep girls in school. It’s time to break the silence.
Akok Aschai Deng was forced to move to Khartoum during the war a few years ago. She moved into a new home, started at a different school, had to make new friends and be taught in Arabic, the national language of Sudan, when she was used to school taught in English in South Sudan. It was a challenge to start her education all over again, but Akok was up for it because she loved school so much. Akok learned the new educational system and got really good grades while living in Khartoum. She even made it all the way to secondary school in just a few years. When the war subsided and she was able to return home to Aweil in South Sudan, Akok was welcomed with having to start school all over again, again! Akok was bummed that all her progress would be thrown away, but she held her head high and decided she was ready to start over from fourth grade, which is the grade she currently is in today.
When Akok finishes primary and secondary school, she wants to leave Aweil and go to the best college to study “Development.” She thinks that South Sudan desperately needs to advance and reform its policies so that people can benefit and live better lives. Right now, too many people don’t have clean water, electricity, enough food, and so much more. Akok insists that the most important way South Sudan will develop is through educating the people. According to Akok, South Sudan must start by educating girls “so that girls can feel in control of their lives just like boys already do.” Akok considers education to be the key to opening girls’ minds to new methods of living and feeling. That way, girls get to decide for themselves what makes them happy. These feelings of empowerment will then lead to a more equal society in South Sudan.
When Nobert Alupo was just shy of 7 years, her father passed away. Nobert’s whole family was devastated with grief and was unsure of how to support themselves without him. Nobert’s mother took his death the hardest and after only a couple of months, she abandoned her family. As the eldest sister, Nobert was responsible for taking care of her younger sisters who she remembers crying all the time because they were so sad about losing both of their parents.
Since the family was already below the poverty line before Nobert’s dad died, they didn’t have much to go on. The siblings relied on their extended family members, like aunts, uncles, and grandparents to support them. However, no one in their family was well off, so daily necessities like food, clothing, schooling costs, and shelters were a struggle to manage. Luckily Nobert’s aunt was able to pay for the girls’ educations. However, being a girl made an already hard life that much more difficult for Nobert. As she matured, Nobert found attending school to be quite challenging during her menstrual cycle since her aunt couldn’t always afford to send her pads and since at that time, there was no sanitary water near the school. Every month, she would miss out on learning, simply because of her gender. Nobert is so thankful to Drop in the Bucket, who provided a sanitary well at the school. “It has been of help that Drop in the Bucket has protected a well for the school, water has been brought closer and constantly available which has lessened the burden in times of emergencies,” Nobert says.
Abdallah Linos is 31 years old and works as a teacher at the Oguruny Primary School in the village of Oguruny in South Sudan. He has been teaching at the school since 2010. The school has only six classes, P1-P6, with 408 pupils.
When the civil war broke out, Abdallah left the village to live in the Kahuma Refugees Settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. In 2009 he came back to his village with his wife and family and started teaching.
Since the well was completed in May everything has changed for the school. For a large part of the year the students would get their water from the nearby hills, but during the dry season this water source from would dry up. He explained to us that once the waterholes dried up and there was no water for drinking, there was also no water to use in food preparation, so the children would be forced to be at school all day hungry. This made things very difficult and affected the children’s ability to learn.
I recently watched a segment of the HBO show Vice about the Fat Farms of Mauritania. In it, a reporter traveled to the West African country to profile the ancient practice of brutally force-feeding young girls to fatten them up to make them more attractive for marriage.
In their culture, a fat woman is seen as a symbol of a man’s wealth. So the fatter the girl, the higher her perceived value. Girls are used to elevate the social status of fathers and husbands, to forge alliances between families. It’s about buying into the girl’s family. The girl herself is just bait.
I spend half the year in East Africa with Drop, constructing water wells at schools to help girls get an education. Without those wells, education is not even an option for many girls in this region. Instead, they are forced to serve the family by spending a major part of every day fetching water. Another way they are meant to serve the family is through their bride prices or dowries.
A dowry is when the groom’s family makes a payment to the bride’s family, usually in the form of cows or money. Protecting this exchange is of great importance to a girl’s family, so her childhood is very often cut short by an arranged child marriage. Many girls are married off as soon as they reach puberty. This avoids the risk that she could lose her virginity before marriage, or worse, that she might get pregnant. These families have been counting on these dowries since the girls were babies. They often need it to feed the family and provide for the brother’s dowries.
In Mauritania, the girls don’t want to eat all of that food. If a girl refuses to eat because her stomach hurts, the family beats her or cracks her feet with a stick, sometimes breaking her toes. If she can not hold down the food and vomits, she is often made to eat the vomit.
These girls are being dragged into a pattern of bad health that they will carry for the rest of their lives. In other parts of Africa, a girl is fed less than her brothers. It’s the same oppression, just opposite extremes.
Whether it is fattening a girl to marry her off or marrying a 13-year-old who then dies trying to deliver a baby that is too big for her small frame, the girl’s health is of little concern. Imagine being a young scared teen delivering a baby in the deep village with no medical assistance. According to the UN, in South Sudan, a 15-year-old girl has a higher risk of dying in childbirth than of finishing secondary school.
Regardless of how it’s packaged, it’s a systematic, long-standing acceptance of objectifying, oppressing and abusing young girls. From birth, a girl is viewed as a product to be owned by men. Since she will eventually be married into another family, there is generally little concern for educating a girl. It is expensive, and everybody knows she will be traded off at 15 years old in a family arrangement, in which she has no say. And her husband can do with her as he pleases, since he paid for her. Until that time, she is merely a female form to be manipulated and molded in order to meet a standard that will hopefully lead to a higher bride price. After that, her primary duties will be bearing as many children as possible and serving her husband.
In a study conducted by Mifumi, a non-government organization in Toroto, Uganda, 60 percent of the women surveyed believed that bride prices contributed to domestic violence. Women are treated as possessions, which leads to inequality. But the system is slowly changing. In many countries, including Uganda and South Sudan, the government has outlawed underage marriage. But long-held traditions are hard to break, and these laws are rarely enforced in the deep villages.
I enjoy watching Vice, and I think it is a brave show. I just wish they had delved a little deeper into this topic. It’s not about men preferring heavy women – it’s a human rights issue that, fortunately, more and more people are starting to become aware of.
We can’t keep looking at situations like Fat Farms and think they are cultural quirks. There is a global humanitarian crisis of oppressing women and girls. Whether it’s girls being sold into sex slavery, publically flogged for being raped or fattened up to be traded like cattle, these are our wives, our sisters and our mothers. It’s our duty to help them.
It’s not our job to change other cultures. That change must come from within. But I meet girls everyday who desperately desire change. They just need their voices to be heard. And the key is education. An educated girl demands more for herself, and an educated mother demands more for her children. The work we are trying to do with Drop in the Bucket is not just about supplying children with clean water, though that is certainly the first very important step. It is about getting children educated so that they can stand up for themselves and end the cycle of this oppression.
Students from the Day Middle School in Temecula, CA decided to help children in Africa gain access to clean water after learning about the water crisis from Skye McNeil, founder of the website Skyetime.com. She explained that children in Africa spend hours every day walking 6 to 7 miles to fetch water for their families and in turn, miss school. Skye also told the kids about how Drop in the Bucket builds wells and toilets at schools in Africa and the Day Middle School students jumped at the chance to get involved.
They got together with Skye and designed a silicon bracelet with the words “start a ripple, create a wave” and before long they had raised $250! The kids are so excited about their fundraising success that they want to continue and even possibly start raising money for other charitable causes too. Thank you students of Day Middle School and Skye McNeil!
Abdallah Linos is 31 years old and works as a teacher at the Oguruny Primary School in the village of Oguruny in South Sudan. He has been teaching at the school since 2010. The school has only six classes, P1-P6, with 408 pupils.
