KEENE, N.H. (August 1) – The Tuareg and Woodabe Fulani people, desert nomads who inhabit West Africa's extensive Sahara and Sahel regions, will be brought to life at MURPHYARTS this summer through a series of photographs. The images, taken in the Republic of Niger by Ariane Kirtley—a former Fulbright scholar who has made it her mission to help save the lives of these desert dwellers—will showcase a rich, artistic, poetic culture now struggling for survival. Kirtley's photographs are not so much reflective of the death and disease these Nigeriens fight each day, but of families in colorful veils who make intricate jewelry and modestly celebrate the life they still have to live.

The daughter of two National Geographic photographers, Kirtley spent parts of her childhood traveling throughout Africa. Although she witnessed poverty and hardship in her travels as a young girl, when she returned decades later, what she saw in parts of this West African desert alarmed her. "I thought I knew about water problems in Niger," said Kirtley, referring to her travels through the Azawak Valley, a region of the southern Sahara Desert stretching through Niger and Mali. "I had no idea… I had never before seen people literally dying of thirst."

What she photographed in the Azawak were 500,000 people who suffer from severe water shortages in a region largely abandoned by the world. What she witnessed was little girls—9, 10 and 11 years old—traveling up to 35 miles roundtrip just to get to the nearest source of water. What she is trying to save is a dignified and generous community—severely affected
by a warming climate—currently dying of thirst.

Part photographer, part activist, Kirtley has not only taken a collage of impressive photographs, but has also started a deep well-digging program called Amman Imman, or "water is life," to help people living in the Azawak. In this remote region with no roads or trails, health centers or schools nearby, Amman Imman is the only organization working to dig deep, permanent, sustainable wells called boreholes. Last summer, the organization dug its first borehole well 600 feet below the Earth's surface, which serves the needs of up to 25,000 people and their animals.

Although currently half of children born in the Azawak die before they turn five, with one quarter dying from dehydration alone, Kirtley hopes that by building more borehole wells Amman Imman will act as an impetus to change all of this. "Until there is a permanent and sustainable flow of water in the region, no organization will come to the Azawak," she said. "I hope that our work will serve as a catalyst for humanitarian organizations to bring much-needed developmental aid, such food aid, health care, education and gender equity to the region."

The photography exhibit, Amman Imman: Water is Life—Bringing Water and Hope to Those Who Have None, will be a testimony to the need for this change. The exhibit will open Friday, August 1, 2008, at MURPHYARTS. A reception will follow Thursday, August 7, 2008, from 5 to 8 p.m. The photographs will remain on display through September 14, 2008.

MURPHYARTS is located at Colony Mill Marketplace, 222 West St., in Keene.

Julie Snorek, a volunteer with Amman Imman who lived and worked with Tuareg nomads in Niger, and Dennis Hamilton, the project's associate director, will be present to answer questions and provide information about Amman Imman's work and the cultures depicted in the exhibit. All proceeds from the sale of the photographs will go to Amman Imman.

Program Amman Imman is a Washington, D.C.-based program, working in partnership with the American non-profit The Friendship Caravan. For more information, please visit: www.waterishope.org.

Communications today make it possible for us to be connected around the world in the click of an email or push of a mouse for an instant message. We can beam video to remote areas and catch events across the globe as they happen. Thus, our world has become an interconnected global community.

We have this vision that the children of the Azawak and the children in Montessori schools who are helping to bring them water can understand that they are connected and part of the global community.

Not everyone can go to the Azawak. And the children of the Azawak can't easily come here. But we can use technology for a really sweet purpose. We can demonstrate to children that what they do - their actions - bring a real smile.

In March, 2007, Ariane Kirtley hand-delivered gifts from the children in America to the children in Azawak. The following 13 minute video allows us to view that heart-to- heart sharing. Ariane and Moustapha tell the children and nomads about the children and teachers in the schools who are helping Amman Imman bring them water. Ariane hands them some of the rosemary that Odyssey Montessori upper elementary student Wyatt collected and sold. The girls wear the scarves that then 8 year old Catie McCoy knitted for them. She explains to them that students at Oneness-Family School and the Barrie School are making presentations and telling the world about their water problems. She shows them the cards from classrooms around the world that have pledge to help them get water. Ariane and Moustapha explain the different ways that children in America are helping.

The nomads smile. The children smile. We smile.

Simple giving. Modern technology. Global connections.

How lovely to see the children in this video, for they are many of the same children that Ariane photographed when she first went to the Azawak in 2005. We have seen them in many of her photos: Takat, Hassan, Abdoulaye, Moussa, Anaou, Rabbi, Mariama, Raichatou, Soutout, Mariama, Hazzi, Saleh.

Please share this video with all students, and let them know their hands can reach across the world and change lives!

See photos of Ariane's visit with the nomads and children in this post:
Sharing Gifts: Pictures from Tangarwashane

I am told that when you are in Africa, in places like rural Azawak, time changes. What happens in our safe lives in the span of two hours is like a ride down a lazy river, compared to what happens to people who live each day making extreme efforts just to get their basic needs met. On top of searching for water and getting enough food, the perils of walking long hours in surging temperatures through terrain without trails to get to a school, or riding on the back of a donkey for two days while sick in order to reach a health center, is unimaginable. We who simply hop into cars on a whim to buy groceries, go to the movies, or sightsee in the countryside cannot possibly fathom life in a place like the Azawak.

How can we convey these real-life challenges to young students without traumatizing them with harsh realities? What can we do to widen their vision beyond their comfort zone, but still protect their innocence? How can we present life in an environment completely unlike their own in a way that inspires within them a sense of compassion and possibility rather than despair, guilt and gloom?

There are some things you simply can’t explain to a three year old, and some things you would not want them to see. But even three year olds can understand a smile. Even three year olds can understand the difference between muddy water and clean water. They know the bond of a mother and a child. There are some things that cross boundaries of place and circumstance.

Stories reach even the youngest among us. The tribulations of the people in the Azawak, due first and foremost to their lack of water, combined with the beautiful photos that convey their humanity, beauty and love, allow students of all ages to identify.

Engaging students in the Amman Imman project gets them involved across the boundaries of schools, communities and countries to make a difference in the lives of people that no one else is helping. A global problem is identified, explained through stories and photos, and a solution is presented.

What the people of the Azawak need most is water – before they can have schools, before they can have health centers, water must provide life and be the spring from which all the other improvements will come from.

A window opens. Children identify with the humanity of the people of the Azawak who live in loving families, get hungry and thirsty just like them. Although our children cannot experience what it is like for the children of the Azawak to travel 30 miles for a little bit of water, through stories and pictures that convey their spirit, they can begin to empathize.

Compassion crosses the borders of place and time, widens vision and opens up the possibility for real change. To see the people of Tangarwashane turning on a faucet from the Amman Imman tap when previously they were scooping mud from the marsh before it dried, conveys a real possibility of changing lives and gives our children a sense that their efforts, however small and far away, reaches across boundaries and means something.
* all photos courtesy of Ariane Kirtley

The students of the Berkeley Montessori School in Berkeley, California heard about Amman Imman: Water is Life and the Montessori Wells of Love project at the Global Citizenship Action Conference (GCAP) held in New York City in October, 2007. It was there that Ariane Kirtley spoke to the conference attendees about what life is like for the people of the Azawak who live for at least 9 months of the year without any viable sources of water.

Ariane’s offer to the young activists attending the conference - to help development organization Amman Imman: Water is Life build a borehole in the Azawak and begin to bring relief to the half million people who reside there - inspired students at several schools to initiate fundraising and awareness projects to contribute and support Amman Imman.

The students at Berkeley Montessori planned a series of fundraisers for their school, intending to raise awareness about the plight of these people that the rest of the world seems to be forgetting about.

Back in Feburary, the students organized an event that not only raised money toward a Well of Love in the Azawak and informed their community about how people in the Azawak survive without water, but also engaged their own creative spirit.

The students performed five one-act plays, selected after a classroom drama unit: "It's Not You" by Craig Pospisil, "Balcony Scene" by Donald Elser, "The Ugly Duckling" by A.A. Milne, "Arabian Nights" by David Ives, and "Sorry, Wrong Number" by Lucille Fletcher.

Referring to the blog and the resources listed there, they wrote an informative essay that became the event’s playbill. They structured a presentation about Amman Imman and the Azawak during the intermission. Over 100 audience members – from six years old to alumni students to parents – heard about the plight of the people in the Azawak due to lack of water. All were fully entertained while also learning how they could help relieve their suffering through Amman Imman’s project of building boreholes. The event raised $800 for the project.

In April, the students held a 2nd dramatic-art production fundraiser at their annual class play. This year they performed an original adaptation of "Alice's Adventure in Wonderland" on four stages scattered around the campus. 32 actors and 4 musicians also performed five songs taken from the British Invasion and the Summer of Love. Proceeds from boxed dinner sales were also donated to Amman Imman, raising just under $1200 across two nights.

Thank You,
Students of Berkeley Montessori.
You are truly our Heroes of Compassion!

Several weeks ago a reporter from Newsweek interviewed Ariane Kirtley for an article he planned to write about Niger. This week Newsweek online contains the article by Scott Johnson, African Bureau Chief, who writes about "The Least Green Country on Earth". From Ariane:

This Newsweek article was mostly based on this reporter's experience in the Azawak, after I convinced him to go there. He is going to write a personal letter of his experience there, how he witnessed that our borehole was a haven in the middle of utter misery, and how the people of Tangarwashane literally worship the borehole. He agrees that many more need to be built, and he told me that this was the first time he saw one project make so much difference in people's lives.

The Least Green Country On Earth

What happens when environmental weakness, poverty and poor governance collide.

Scott Johnson

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 2:00 PM ET Jun 28, 2008

Niger scores 6 on the 100-point green index, last among all nations.

Several hundred head of camel, sheep and cattle shoved and bustled in the blistering afternoon heat to get closer to the well. Many of them were crying and braying from thirst. Nearby, also waiting their turn, half a dozen Touareg nomads sat on donkeys carrying empty yellow water containers. Some had traveled a day or more just to get to this well. But the laws that govern water access in this vast and inhospitable stretch of the Niger Sahel dictate that everyone, man and beast alike, wait his turn. "This life has to end," said Mohammed Mousa, a craggy-faced, 60-year-old clan chief who has been feeding his herd from this well for half a century. He knows the desert is advancing, and that the rains are no longer reliable. "Our life is blocked now because of water. We have to find a way to end the thirst."

It's difficult to imagine a more fundamental human need than water. Its absence in landlocked Niger, which development studies identify as the world's poorest country, is relentless. It also partly explains why, in Yale and Columbia's Environmental Performance Index, Niger came in last: the world's least green country. Poor scores across the board, from the burden of disease (a measure of illness from environmental causes) to water quality and education rates, confirm Niger as an example of the disaster that can result when environmental weakness, poverty and poor governance collide (Niger scores a pitiable 6 on the 100-point EPI scale). It was also a reminder of how, in those parts of the world that lie on the vulnerable fringes of the development spectrum, environmental degradation and societal collapse often go hand in hand. "If there is anything called extreme vulnerability, it's what I saw in Niger," says Jan Egeland, the United Nations' special adviser on conflict, who is evaluating the impact of environmental damage and climate change on the Sahel region on the Sahara's border.

Niger has never been all that green. Most of the countryside is an immense sweep of infertile windswept scrubland. Prolonged periods of drought and flooding have been problems here for as long as anyone cares to remember; almost 90 percent of Nigerois live in rural areas and depend on either agriculture or grazing for survival. Since the 1960s, however, researchers have recorded a 25 percent decrease in rainfall across the Sahel, where desert swallows 120,000 hectares of arable land each year. Nigerois compensate by overusing their shrinking farmland, creating erosion and exacerbating the land loss. This process is why Niger scores low on environmental health in the EPI. "It's extremely difficult for people here to think from year to year or month to month or even day to day," says Jean Bernard Duchemin, director of the Sahel Medical Research Facility. "They are in survival mode, all the time, every single day."

Niger's herdsmen and farmers might be able to cope with the erratic rainfall by the time-honored method of diversifying their crops and herds if it weren't for another damaging trend: rising population. In the past 40 years, Niger's population has quadrupled, from 3 million in the 1960s to more than 13 million today. It is still expanding at 3.4 percent a year—faster than any other country. That's partly because cultural norms favor big families, but also because parents try to compensate for an infant mortality rate of one in five. It's a big reason Niger did worse on the EPI than Sahel neighbors such as Burkina Faso and Mali, where birthrates are lower.

Most of Niger's citizens do without basic amenities like clean drinking water, and suffer from waterborne illnesses such as diarrhea, parasites and various stomach ailments. In the small settlement of Tandarbouka, a gathering of a few mud huts in the middle of a vast rocky plain filled with the carcasses of goats and camels, a herder named Amadour recently spent four hours hauling muddy water out of a 23-meter-deep homemade well to feed his small herd of five cows and 10 goats. The brackish water was all that remained of last year's watershed. The clean-water table lay another 120 meters below the surface—too far to dig, and the nearest deep well is 20 kilometers away, too far for Amadour to travel safely with his animals. After feeding his cows, he brought the bucket to his lips and drank deeply of the brown mud. "These people don't have access to even one glass of clean water," says Ariane Kirtley, a Yale researcher who spent years in Niger working to improve water conditions. "They don't know that they need to boil the mud they drink."

Without water, the locals can't build infrastructure that would bring education, health care or employment. Fifty percent of Niger's population has no access to basic health care, according to a 2006 study. Kirtley conducted an improvised survey of health awareness and was shocked by the results. "Not one of the people I interviewed had heard of HIV/AIDS," she says. One little girl's face had swelled up so much she had trouble breathing. The culprit? An unwashed pimple.

Nutrition is lacking, too. As water diminishes, livestock herds have shrunk, which means less meat and milk to go around. With farms failing, many Nigerois rely on wild plants. In the village of Saroki Soulay, vendors at a local market were unloading a truck of huge sacks of leaves, from which people make a staple sauce. "The dependence on wild products is an effective indicator of low levels of well-being," says a recent U.N. report on the Sahel.

With such vast challenges, the government has taken a shotgun approach to development, with some success. Child mortality figures have dropped slightly, access to clean water has improved, and several thousand small clinics have opened in some of the most inaccessible areas. The government would also like to see industrial-scale farming, modern machinery and large-scale irrigation projects replace small-scale agriculture, which worries some experts. Government officials "believe the modernization of the agricultural sector is the pathway out of poverty," says Ced Hesse, director of the drylands program at the International Institute for Environment and Development. "There's less emphasis on how do you help the small farmer that represents 80 percent of the population." And with just over a decade of democracy under its belt, Niger is struggling to stay politically stable. Even as China invested $5 billion in June in an oil exploration and prospecting deal, Touareg rebels in the north threatened to attack, briefly kidnapping four French nationals working on uranium mining to protest the government's refusal to negotiate with them.

There's not much relief on the horizon. By 2050, the population is expected to have quadrupled again, to 55 million. Before that, "you could very soon have a tipping point in which you have just too many people, too much livestock," says the United Nations' Egeland. "Then you will suddenly see child mortality go from normally unacceptable levels to exceptionally horrific levels." As global warming threatens food supplies throughout the world, nowhere is the hunger crisis edging closer to catastrophe than in Niger.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/143697

© 2008 Newsweek