Bridge Over the River “Why?”

There’s an area of a “road” here in Minembwe that typically floods during the rainy season. Like everyone else, we circumvented the flooded area by walking around it through peoples’ fields right next to the road. But, as the flooding of the road got worse, more and more people decided to take the path through the fields, which eventually lead to large-scale crop damage. We were made aware of the damage as one of these fields belonged to a woman, Momma Chance, who works with us, so Miles decided to look into the situation. Since a permanent solution was impossible to construct due to the current flooding, Miles temporary solution was to use two rows of sandbags sandwiching a row of rocks.

Miles initially made an effort to get the community involved in the project, but we often heard the excuse “why?”

“Why should I do this if you are not going to pay me?”

“Why should I volunteer if others won’t?”

“Why spend the effort when we can simply wade through the water?”

If you’re a man, wading through the water means stopping to pull off your boots and socks, then rolling up your pants. Women have it “easier” as they mostly wear plastic shoes, so they simply lift their skirts up to their upper thighs and walk on through, although the shorter women have to hike up their skirts to their waist, which exposes way more of Africa than I wish to see. One might think I’d get used to this with how many times a week I walk past naked women bathing at the spring along our path to nearly everywhere. I’m still not sure whether I’m culturally supposed to still verbally greet these women as I walk on by, or if there is a special greeting I haven’t learned yet of “Good day, my naked neighbor.”

Undaunted, Miles began the project with help from the boys at the orphanage, who saw this as a cool opportunity to be a part of building something unique.