Death on the Nile?

The two hours journey to the location was quite an adventure. I have attached some pictures of my crossing the Nile River in a boat that had rusted through all over the place. You are going to laugh, they patched up the holes as best they could with mud and with no paddles or safety equipment we poled across the river praying the whole time.

Yesterday we went out to the Dasra village by the Nile where Ababo lived and the twelve families he was supporting. They are very poor and lived a very traditional rural life. He had received a micro loan from Devxchange through the New Hope project several years ago for a reforestation project on land given to him by his father. He had heard of Devxchange from a volunteer. Sue, the lead member with Devxchange, had found some money to loan towards a pump and the project proceeded to plant banana trees and mango trees and about two acres of trees to prevent erosion of the mountain side. They have

made use of every inch of land in the lower land, planting hot peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, corn, and a few other plants among the mango trees and banana trees for an income while they wait the seven years it takes for the first mango's to appear. The first bananas are starting to appear. Abado paid off the first loan of $1,000 brr with a good crop of onions. The piping they initially used disintegrated or broke so they are using fire hose for some of the irrigation on the lower part of the project.

We hiked the mountain examining damage done by insects because of the drought and prayed as a team for rain. The villages brought us fresh milk and some injura and what I think was a kind of cottage cheese with berry berry mixed with it, that was lunch and we set off for the 15km hike back to the town where we could catch the minibus back to Bahi Dar. We no sooner got back to town and it began to pour rain. There had been no rain for one month. We also prayed for rain in Bahaidar for that night and about 8:00 there came an amazing torrent of rain that flooded the floors in this guest house.

To learn more about this project or find out how you can help go to https://devxchange.org/new-hope