by Barbara Joye | Jan 28, 2014 | AFRICA 2014-JANUARY-MARCH
On arriving in Tanzania every year for our work trips, the first thought that comes to mind is “the mountain”. Our first glimpse of Mt. Kilimanjaro and it’s glaciered peak rising above the clouds is an anchoring image for us. It is Africa, it is our work, it is ‘home’. Kilimanjaro’s image has even greater impact for the people who live here. Ever present, she looms as a daily reminder, defining everyone who lives nearby or on her slopes as those who belong to the mountain. And she in turn provides for them, with countless fruits from the forests… with earth to grow vegetables in … and water from the glaciers. Children sing songs about this beautiful mountain, men tell stories of heroic adventures and women may know her best as the giver of water and life. But in recent years, the mountain has been struggling to provide for her children. Climate shifts have created rapid melting of the glaciers that have supplied water for a millienium to those who live here. It is a melting of such speed as to create a catastrophic loss of surface water and impairment to life. Struggling to keep up with the receding water, the walks for water became longer and longer, leaving the women and children exhausted, ill and impoverished. But the mountain has a long reach. In 2006 a story of Kilimanjaro’s people and their struggles for water reached a small group of friends in the USA and from their story… It Can Be Done was born. Working in partnership with the Uru East community, a grass roots beginning based on...
