A Novel Invention

In the rural villages across South Africa, some 5 million people don't have access to clean drinking water. To get a sense of the severity of the water scarcity there, you have to go back to the early 1800s when Europeans and others started colonizing the country.

When these settlers arrived, they brought with them nonnative seeds and plants with the idea that they would be able to re-create the thick forests and vegetation of their homeland.


Two hundred years on, the pines and eucalyptus trees, along with 161 other invasive plants introduced to the country, are soaking up billions of gallons of water that used to flow into mountain streams and support wetlands and other precious arteries in this largely arid country. Add to that the needs of South Africa's growing population and you have a situation in which the competition for water has become fierce.

Which brings us in a roundabout way (no pun intended) to this week's Rough Cut -- reporter Amy Costello's surprisingly upbeat tale about a canny entrepreneur who decided to tackle South Africa's water woes in his own novel and enterprising way.

Trevor Field, a retired advertising executive, had done well in life and wanted to give back to his community. He noticed that in many rural villages around the eastern Cape, the burden of collecting water fell mainly to the women and girls of the household. Each morning, he'd see them set off to the nearest borehole to collect water. They used leaky and often contaminated hand-pumps to collect the water, then they carried it back through the bush in buckets weighing 40 pounds. It was exhausting and time-consuming work.

"The amount of time these women are burning up collecting water, they could be at home looking after their kids, teaching their kids, being loving mothers," Field tells Costello. He knew there had to be a better solution.

Field then teamed up with an inventor and came up with the "play pump" -- a children's merry-go-round that pumps clean, safe drinking water from a deep borehole every time the children start to spin. Soup to nuts, the whole operation takes a few hours to install and costs around $7,000. Field's idea proved so inventive, so cost-efficient and so much fun for the kids that World Bank recognized it as one of the best new grassroots ideas.

In true ad-man style, Field's next idea was to use the play pump's water towers as makeshift billboards, selling ad space to help pay for the upkeep. He reserves a spot for the national loveLife campaign, which helps educate children about HIV and AIDS. "We've got to get the message through to them before they become sexually active," he says. "It seems to be working."

In the film, Costello and producer/photographer Cassandra Herrman drive out to a small village where the taps have been dry for a week. There, a crew sets to work installing a play pump near a children's play area, boring 40 meters down until they hit the fresh water table below. As soon as the last colorful piece of the puzzle is in place, dozens of children show up to play -- much to Field's delight -- pumping cool, clean water to the surface as they spin.

The indefatigable entrepreneur wants to build thousands of these pumps to help water-stressed communities across South Africa, then expand to other African countries. He says, "It would make a major difference to the children, and that's where our passion lies."

Jackie Bennion

One Creative Idea Can Lead to Another

Taking a paper clip and turning it into a house sounds like a cheesy magic trick or a phony instance of resourcefulness on the 1980s TV show "MacGyver."

Kyle MacDonald, however, has pulled it off.

One year ago, the 26-year-old blogger from Montreal set out to barter one red paper clip for something and that thing for something else, over and over again until he had a house. (Watch how a snow globe and Corbin Bernsen led to house -- 1:49)

On Wednesday the quest is ending as envisioned: MacDonald is due to become the proud owner of a three-bedroom, 1,100-square-foot home provided by the town of Kipling, Saskatchewan. MacDonald and his girlfriend, Dominique Dupuis, expect to move there in early September.

"This is such a cool community project. It feels right," MacDonald said. "And now that I think about it, I can't believe that another small town didn't think of it. It will literally put them on the map."

What's in it for the town? The answer requires a quick MacDonald recap, featuring a menagerie of friendly folks, radio talk show hosts and aging celebrities, all bound together by the Internet.

It began when MacDonald, an aspiring writer, doer of odd jobs and apartment dweller, advertised in the barter section of the Craigslist Web site that he wanted something bigger or better for one red paper clip. He traded it for a fish-shaped pen, and posted on Craigslist again and again.

Roaming Canada and the United States, he exchanged the pen for a ceramic knob, and in turn: a camping stove, a generator, a beer keg and Budweiser sign, a snowmobile, a trip to the Canadian Rockies, a supply truck and a recording contract. Next, in April, he got himself really close, obtaining a year's rent in Phoenix.

His adventure became an Internet blockbuster. He did Canadian and Japanese TV and "Good Morning America." He made dozens of local radio appearances -- one of which, in Los Angeles, was heard by a man who ended up as a pivotal figure.

That man is Corbin Bernsen. You may remember him from his roles in "L.A. Law" and "Major League."

Hip to the publicity-generating machine that is Kyle MacDonald, Bernsen contacted him to say he was writing and directing a movie and would offer a paid speaking role as an item available for trade.

MacDonald was thrilled. But he feared the integrity of his journey would be compromised if he accepted the role without trading Bernsen something he really could use. Say what you want about "Major League 3," but Bernsen has done well enough that he doesn't need a free apartment in Phoenix.

So MacDonald kept Bernsen's offer off his blog, but plowed ahead with an eye to finding something Bernsen would legitimately want.

Seemingly disregarding good economic sense, MacDonald traded the year's rent for an afternoon with rocker Alice Cooper. (MacDonald's response: "Alice Cooper is a gold mine of awesomeness and fun.") Then in a move that really confused his blog readers, MacDonald bartered time with Cooper for a snow globe depicting the band Kiss.

Re-enter Corbin Bernsen.

You see, since the days when he'd get free stuff on promotional tours for "L.A. Law," Bernsen has amassed a collection of 6,500 snow globes. "One off, they look sort of goofy," Bernsen said. "Put them all together and they sort of look like pop art."

So MacDonald gave Bernsen the Kiss model and encouraged his blog readers to send the actor even more globes in exchange for autographed pictures.

All this delighted the elders in Kipling, a town of 1,140 believed to have been named in honor of author Rudyard Kipling.

Like many rural towns, Kipling is eager to stave off the perils of dwindling population by attracting new businesses, tourism and above all, attention. When the local development coordinator, Bert Roach, heard about MacDonald's odyssey, he suggested at the next council meeting that Kipling lure him.

Quickly the town purchased an unoccupied rental house on Main Street and offered it to MacDonald. Roach won't disclose the price because MacDonald says he doesn't want to know. But Roach says it was well under the going rate in Kipling, which is about $50,000 Canadian (U.S. $45,000).

The town also pledged to put a giant red paper clip at a highway rest stop and hold an "American Idol"-style competition for the movie role. Participants will have to make a donation to the town's parks department and a charity.

When MacDonald agreed last week, "I was holding back tears, I was so bloody happy," Roach said. "It's going to be such a great project for our community."

Bernsen says that if the right person emerges in the talent show, he'd be willing to cast him or her as a lead. "Maybe a career is going to get started. Maybe it's going to be huge. Maybe that's the magic of Kyle."

MacDonald doesn't expect to live in Kipling forever. But he says he'll make it home at least while he settles down to write a book.

Of course, even if the house came free, he'll have the usual homeowner headaches: taxes, utilities, upkeep. It should come as no surprise that MacDonald isn't worried.

"I'll figure something out," he said. "I can get a job. There's three grocery stores in town."

Charity Focus

Decisions

http://www.consciousone.com/friend/index.cfm?PID=330

Don't miss this one either, Dr. Joe

Healing With Angels

http://www.consciousone.com/friend/index.cfm?PID=151

I hope you don't miss this one, Dr. Joe

When Travel Is the Best Medicine

By MICHAEL MCCOLLY
WHEN I was a boy, on rainy days at school when we couldn't go outside for recess, we played a game in which we took turns twirling the globe. We would close our eyes and stab our fingers onto our miniature fifth grade earth, halting the revolutions to find where fate had landed us. We mostly found ourselves in the sea or behind enemy lines in the vastness of the Soviet Union or in the nowhere worlds our Midwestern mouths couldn't pronounce. The winner was the one closest to some place we all knew -- the paradises of our farm town America, California and Hawaii.

Secretly, however, some of us longed for the other worlds made magical in National Geographic, the smooth savannas of Africa, the solitary dots of the Indonesian Archipelago, the bumpy surfaces of Tibet and Peru. We wanted to be the ones at the end of the earth as far away from the cold February Indiana rain as our 12-year-old imaginations would allow.

Now again I am looking at maps and mentally twirling the globe as I set out for distant lands. I live out of the proverbial suitcase. I have no furniture, no bed. Boxes of books clutter my parents' garage, and stuff that only months ago had a purpose has been jettisoned to the Salvation Army. The journey that I have embarked on isn't so much one of distance, though it will ultimately cover four continents. This journey also has to do with the body and what is in it, namely a virus that has crossed every border and floated onto every shore -- the infamous and pernicious virus that causes AIDS.

Contracting H.I.V. in 1995 has not kept me at home. In fact it has inspired just the opposite: a desire for the remote, the otherworldly, and above all the meditative solitude of nature.

Travel has become my antidote: the farther I go the more aware I become of what has kept me alive -- my desire to be in and of the world. Since my infection, I've traveled to Mexico twice, Europe, India, Asia and Africa, not to mention countless trips around the United States to commune with friends, family and nature. Travel brings us back into the world, back into our bodies, and -- quite literally for me -- back to life.

Traveling with H.I.V. or other chronic conditions need not be more complicated than any other limitation traveling presents. You learn, as travelers do, to take calculated risks, prepare yourself and know your body and your limits. But most of all, you can never let fear have the final say in where and how you travel. I think more than anything else I travel to sharpen my wits against fear; like a martial artist I need to keep my form. With H.I.V. it is easy to find reasons you can't do this or that. Besides this virus, we carry with us a built-in fear. In fact, if we aren't vigilant we become the fear itself, embodying unconsciously the worst nightmares of those around us. If I had listened to the fears of people I know or read about, I'm certain I wouldn't be alive today -- maybe breathing, but not alive. There's a difference.

As I prepare for the second leg of my yearlong series of trips to write about how others around the world are learning to survive this disease, I still have moments of panic. But in my experience no trip is worth taking if it doesn't provoke some anxiety and a few bad dreams. Friends wondered why, after all I'd been through, I wanted to travel alone for three months in Asia last spring and then to parts of rural Africa. ''Your health is good, don't jeopardize it.''

I recalled the same reactions when I'd decided to go to India the year after I learned of my diagnosis. Pumped up with the first generation of cocktail drugs, I felt a certain invincibility, and when friends I practiced yoga with mentioned they were going to India to study with the Ashtanga guru Pattabhi Jois in Mysore, I believed I was healthy enough to follow. Then came the doubts and the worry, the confused faces from doctors and friends, ''India? Are you serious?''

THE day came when I had to buy my ticket, the moment when a trip moves out of the mind and onto the calendar. I recall pulling up outside the travel agency along Devon Avenue in Chicago's Indian neighborhood; for half an hour I went through the mental debate one more time. That night I couldn't sleep. I was haunted by images of crowded Indian hospitals, empty hotel rooms with creaking, mesmerizing ceiling fans churning the dead air over my supine body, airline attendants rolling me to the back of a plane in a wheelchair with an IV bag dangling over my head. But not going would have been worse -- giving in to the fear that inevitably comes with confronting the limitations of this life. Yet I would have to experience those limits in order to know that freedom has nothing to do with the physical world.

That night I could feel the claustrophobia of fear, the collapsing of the body in on itself. My bedroom became smaller and smaller as I imagined what my life would be like if I took away the possibility of traveling. And so before I left, I kept away from the naysayers. And a few weeks later I found myself clutching my bag with my six bottles of pills, standing on a train platform in Bangalore completely exhausted and confused as to what track led where. A student saw the panic in my eyes and took me by the hand into the train and found us a seat. ''I'm going to Mysore. This train is going to Mysore, right?'' He rolled his head from side to side as south Indians do, meaning yes, instead of what I was sure meant no. But then he smiled and offered his reassurance, ''Going to Mysore, I will take you.''

And so one by one, people led me along my travels as if all those I met, Indians and Westerners alike, had been sent by Vishnu himself to protect and guide me.

Sure, I got sick. Who travels in India for over a month and doesn't? I survived. I returned reanimated, not much better at my yoga practice but transformed. Strangely, I came out believing that this virus could liberate me.

When you travel, you get sick, you get lost, depressed and ripped off, and your schedule is routinely upended. There are days when you awake and you have no idea where you are or where you might end up that day, and then after a cup of something that is said to be coffee, you remember that you are exactly where you want to be -- traveling.


MICHAEL McCOLLY is writing a memoir of his travels to six countries affected by H.I.V. and AIDS.

A Pact which Came True

Thirteen years ago three African-American teenagers made a pact to raise themselves out of their tough inner-city neighborhood in New Jersey and become doctors -- together. Like their peers, they came from poor, single-parent homes in urban neighborhoods where survival, not scholastic success, was the priority. Today Samson, George and Remeck have each overcome wide-ranging obstacles to fulfill their shared dream -- and the effect on their communities has been tremendous. “The Pact” is the best-selling book authored by these three men, telling their stories of courage, temptation, and, ultimately, triumph. Today these young men continue to speak out on life's challenges and how to face them, inspiring thousands of teachers, parents and students from difficult backgrounds to look at their own potential with new eyes.

Charity Focus

"A lost key in a swarm of mosquitoes"

I've got to tell you about my recent short vacation to South Padre Island over last 4th of July weekend. I lost the key to our Suburban at a water park riding the rapids in an inner tube with my family. All money and family belongings were in the car and I had no spare key.

I sent my wife and kids back to the hotel while I sat barefooted in a swim suit on the hood of my truck swatting mosquitoes and waiting for AAA. A small truck drove up from the water park and asked if I needed help. I shut him down by saying, "No. I'm fine. Waiting for AAA."

Basically, I was saying go away, God will save me!

God sent me help and I turned it away.So I sat alone and waited 400 miles from home in a deserted parking lot swarming with mosquitoes. I called AAA again and they said the guy came back because someone had called saying they found the key. I was livid. I can't even repeat the language I used. How dare they interfere with my orders! I was in control, didn't they know that?

I was beyond frustration. First I never lose things. I had secured the key in my trunks. Nobody had told AAA to turn around and go home. Why was this happening? And did I mention all the mosquitoes? Alone in that deserted parking I finally realized that I had no control over this situation. Finally, I prayed out loud for God's help. I gave over my control to Him and I went through some verbal Now or Never and forgiveness matters and I really detached.

That detachment was like nothing I've known before.

Just then that same small truck came back. I shouted for the truck, realizing it had to be assistance from God. The driver roared over and this time I asked if they'd found a Chevy truck key. He gave me insect repellant and went back to see about the key. He returned in a matter of minutes with the key. At almost exactly the same time the AAA guy drove up. As well as a cab delivering my wife and kids.
You talk about letting go! I felt I turned everything over to God and the single key which I had "secured" in my swimsuit pocket came back to me! Miraculously, the key found me. People were sent to my assistance and the key came back to me.

That experience changed my life. It was a big spiritual convergence and confirmation of the Universe coming to my assistance.

I'm so thankful it happened.

Dan ....

Seven Lives

It made headlines, and broke hearts worldwide. Highway robbers shot Nicholas Green, a freckle-faced, 7 year-old from California holidaying in Italy. He died two days later. The story might have ended with that tragedy, but his parents Reg and Maggie Green made a very different decision, and one that had a dramatic impact. They donated their son's organs to seven Italians -- among them a mother who had never seen her baby's face; a diabetic who had been repeatedly in comas; and a boy of 15, wasting away with a heart disease. Today all seven are alive, healthy and leading full lives. The Greens' act of compassion in the midst of devastating circumstances led to an unexpected outpouring of love and support from around the world, and something now called "The Nicholas Effect" -- thanks to which organ donations in Italy alone have nearly tripled.

Charity Focus

Can You Restore?

Once there was a very violent man where Buddha lived. This man, Angulimala, had vowed to kill one thousand people. As a momento, and as a count of his victims, he severed an index finger from each victim and made a garland of fingers to wear around his neck. After his 999th kill, he fell pray to a slump . Nobody approached near enough for him to claim his thousandth victim. Ignoring all warnings and pleadings, Buddha approached Angulimala, which surprised Angulimala that Buddha came voluntarily. What kind of a man was this?

“Well, I’ll grant you one wish for your bravery,” Angulimala offered magnanimously.

Buddha requested that he chop off a branch from a nearby tree. Whack, it was done!

Why did you waste your wish?” asked Angulimala

“Will you grant me a second request, a dying man’s request?” Buddha asked humbly.

“All right, what is it?”

“Would you restore that fallen branch to the tree?” asked Buddha with perfect equanimity.

“I can’t do that!” exclaimed Angulimala startled.

“How can you destroy something without knowing how to create? how to restore? how to rejoin? It is said that the encounter so moved Angulimala that he became enlightened.

But the question that Buddha asked two-and-a-half-thousand years ago remains relevant today. Suppose we ask our scientists who use their creativity to invent weapons of destruction, the same question. How do you suppose they will answer?

And how do we answer? Do we use our creativity for ego gratification or for enlightenment? For criticism or for upliftment?

Amit Gaswami

Tame Your Tiger

Thirty years ago he was diagnosed with leukemia. Convinced that he had just a short time to live he made the decision to become a Buddhist monk. Today Abbot Archan Poosit is not just alive -- he is saving lives -- the lives of over a dozen tigers in the jungles of Thailand. He and his monastery are the caretakers of 18 tigers that were brought to him after being abused by poachers. They took them in with no formal training in wildlife care -- except that of a way of being that teaches love and kindness to all beings. Today they have established a unique relationship of mutual trust with the tigers that continues to amaze and delight the rest of the world!

A Lost Key in a Swarm of Mosquitos

I've got to tell you about my recent short vacation to South Padre Island over 4th of July weekend.I lost the key to our Suburban at a water park riding the rapids in an inner tube with my family. All money and family belongings in the car. No spare key.

I sent my wife and kids back to the hotel while I sat barefooted in a swim suit on the hood of my truck swatting mosquitoes and waiting for AAA. A small truck drove up from the water park and asked if I needed help. I shut him down by saying, "No. I'm fine. Waiting for AAA."

Basically, I was saying go away, God will save me!

God sent me help and I turned it away. So I sat alone and waited 400 miles from home in a deserted parking lot swarming with mosquitoes. I called AAA again and they said the guy came back because someone had called saying they found the key. I was livid. I can't even repeat the language I used. How dare they interfere with my orders! I was in control, didn't they know that?

I was beyond frustration. First I never lose things. I had secured the key in my trunks. Nobody had called AAA to turn around and go home. Why was this happening? And did I mention all the mosquitoes?

Alone in that deserted parking I finally realized that I had no control over this situation. Finally, I prayed out loud for God's help. I gave over my control to Him and I went through some verbal Now or Never and forgiveness matters and I really detached.

That detachment was like nothing I've known before.

Just then that same small truck came back. I shouted at the truck, realizing it had to be assistance from God -like the man in the flood. The driver roared over and this time I asked if they'd found a Chevy truck key. He gave me insect repellant and went back to see about the key. He returned in a matter of minutes with the key. At almost exactly the same time the AAA guy drove up. As well as a cab delivering my wife and kids.

You talk about letting go! I felt I turned everything over to God and the single key which I had "secured" in my swimsuit pocket came back to me! Miraculously, the key found me. People were sent to my assistance and the key came back to me.

That experience changed my life. It was a big spiritual convergence and confirmation of the Universe coming to my assistance.

I'm so thankful it happened.

Dan ....