"Deer hunters help feed the hungry"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34108567/ns/us_news-giving/
Associated Press
Nov. 23, 2009

Hunters are donating more venison to strapped food banks as Ohio and other states offer financial aid aimed at managing high deer populations. It's a much-needed boost for pantries struggling to meet rising demand. The national food bank association Feeding America has seen demand for help more than double at some food banks. The Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks says the number of people served by its member charities was up 37 percent in the fourth quarter ending June 30, compared with the previous fourth quarter.

Groups like Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry and Safari Club International have promoted venison donations to pantries in Ohio and other states, but processing and packaging costs deter hunters, especially in tough economic times. Processing one deer can cost $70 or more in addition to hunting equipment and license costs. "Anything that can help hunters with that is great," said Hunter Mike Samsel of suburban Cleveland, who has donated venison for more than 20 years. "It gets more deer harvested and helps the needy at the same time."

Ohio has joined a growing number of states — Indiana and Minnesota among them — that saw increased donations after they began offering a financial incentive for venison processing in order to curtail rising deer populations. Ohio's wildlife division provided a $100,000 grant for processing fees for the first time last year, which was matched by Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry and the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks. Ohio hunters last year donated more than 1,000 deer — more than double the previous year's total — providing venison for 220,000 meals.

The agency hopes to double donations again this year, but its main goal is deer population management. The state would like to reduce the 650,000 deer estimated in areas where hunting is allowed down to 500,000, said division deer biologist Mike Tonkovich. Management helps control deer disease, prevents damage to crops and lawns and hazards to motorists and prevents deer from depleting food sources needed by other wildlife, he said.

Venison can have what a stronger flavor than other meat, but the low-fat ground meat is often used in chili and stews. "If we didn't get that, it would be hot dogs and baloney for us," said Linda Douglas, 57, of Albany in southeast Ohio, who depends on pantry venison to help feed her family. "One package will last us a month."

Households served in the Southeast Ohio Regional Food Center's 10 counties rose more than 1,000 from September to October, said manager Marilyn Sloan. Ohio's Second Harvest association received increased state budget funding and some donors have given more, but rising demand is straining supplies, said executive director Lisa Hamler-Fugitt. "We are seeing people who have never been to pantries before," she said.

"Ariz. taxi driver offers kidney to frequent passenger"

By Ross D. Franklin, AP
USA Today

PHOENIX (AP) — Rita Van Loenen had no idea that a trip in Thomas Chappell's taxi cab could end up being the ride that saves her life. "There are better odds of getting struck by lightning," Van Loenen said. "A random taxi driver offering to give me his kidney and all these pieces match. There has to be something behind this. How can this be?"

Chappell, who has been driving Van Loenen to dialysis appointments, shocked the Gilbert, Ariz. woman a month ago by offering to donate his kidney. But even more shocking to her was that doctors found they had the same blood type, that they were compatible. "He calls me all excited. If we were a closer match, we would've been siblings. I was ready to fall off the floor," Van Loenen said.

The Phoenix taxi driver said he was a man of faith and that a higher power wanted him to step in. "By then, me and the good Lord already had a talk. He said 'Tom, you go give her one. It will work,' " Chappell said.

Last year, Van Loenen, an instructor in special education methods, began feeling ill and experiencing water retention in her legs. She went to see a doctor and was diagnosed with kidney disease. With kidney failure setting in, friends and family were tested but there was no match. In February, she received her cousin's kidney but that transplant failed. One day, Van Loenen, 63, found herself telling Chappell, 56, about how her son was now going to get tested. Chappell decided to add his name to the list.

"I said 'Rita, your son's a whole lot younger than me. He's got a lot more years. I'm gonna go down and go through the process and see if it will work.' I don't think she really believed I was going to." The gesture evoked tears of gratitude from Loenen but she was still skeptical. "A little bit in my heart I didn't believe it. He said 'give me the number' and I have the transplant number at Mayo (Clinic in Scottsdale) memorized."

The two first met more than three months ago. It wasn't an auspicious beginning. Chappell was half an hour late picking Van Loenen up for a dialysis appointment. "When I got there she was not happy," Chappell said. "And I can understand it now. She's sick and all these things she goes through ... The next day, it just so happens I got her again."

Since then he has — and he insists it is by happenstance — been her taxi driver three to four times a month. For the last month, Chappell has started undergoing the arduous process of donor screening, undergoing numerous tests and exams. But none of it has brought second thoughts.

"This has put a whole new kind of lift in my boots. I never knew what it felt like to give somebody life and that's what I'm doing," Chappell said. Van Loenen said Chappell never asked for any compensation. She still can't quite believe his level of commitment. "I've never known anybody so enthusiastic to get a body part removed," Van Loenen said.

After the transplant, which hasn't been scheduled yet, Chappell will need to tread carefully. He will have to rest between four and six weeks but his work has promised to cover his lost wages. "I've had drivers do some pretty incredibly amazing things for no charge. But this is just over the top," said Jim Hickey, national sales and marketing director for the company that owns VIP Taxi. "We're just so proud of him."

Van Loenen said that, thanks to Chappell, she can actually make plans for the future. "Whenever I tell my friends or my family, they just find it so incredible," Van Loenen said. "They do call him an angel. My friend says there's angels everywhere. That's the right way to capture it."

"Staff Benda Bilili, Africa's unlikely pop stars"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8369900.stm
By Robin Denselow
Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo

They rehearse in a tumbledown zoo, they are disabled and they come from one of the poorest nations on Earth. Congolese band Staff Benda Bilili have overcome more than most to put together an acclaimed tour of the UK.











Ricky Lickabu and his wife, Mafuta, usually makes their money trying to sell cigarettes from a stall outside the market in Kinshasa. But business is rarely brisk in the Congolese capital and Lickabu sells just $18 (£11) worth of cigarettes a day if he is lucky. And the challenges he and his wife face are heightened as they are both disabled from polio.

This week, however, Mafuta Lickabu is on her own at the cigarette stall because her husband is in Britain on the first-ever UK tour with his band. Staff Benda Bilili are being feted as among the most exciting and extraordinary newcomers of the year. There is nothing new about a story of unexpected success in the music industry, but Staff Benda Bilili are surely unique.

They have overcome hardship and disability to make it from the streets of Kinshasa to the concert halls of Britain, and shown extraordinary ingenuity in the way they create their music. And they are surely the only band in the world who have rehearsed their music, and then recorded an album, in a zoo.

Like much of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kinshasa zoo is gradually recovering from years of hardship. During the chaotic period that marked the end of the Mobutu era, many of the animals here were taken as food by the hungry city population. Today, there are leopards and monkeys in the cramped cages, and on a patch of grass in the middle of the zoo there are a group of polio-victims sitting playing electric guitars in their wheelchairs. They have very basic equipment and only small amplifiers, but they sound tremendous, mixing gentle harmony songs about their disability with rousing rumba tunes - the basis of most great Kinshasa music - with other influences from reggae to R&B. Staff Benda Bilili came here because it was quiet and they had nowhere else to go. The zoo is a place of relative calm amidst the noise and chaos, amidst the poverty and energy of the third largest city in Africa, and it happens to be close to the disabled centre where they had spent much of their time.

Lickabu first met fellow band-member and polio victim Coco Ngambali when they were both working on the ferry that crosses the vast Congo river between Kinshasa and Brazzaville, a good place for the disabled to do business as Mobutu had decreed that the disabled could travel on the ferry tax-free. They were both musicians, but formed a band with other polio victims simply because other bands in Kinshasa refused to work with them. "I knew how to sing and play guitar but other bands wouldn't work with me," said Lickabu. "They said that I turned up late because I was in a wheelchair, and I couldn't dance. "So I had to start a band with other handicapped musicians, and it worked out well." The owners of the zoo gave them permission to rehearse, and they gradually developed their own style, while managing to keep themselves and their families alive by working as electricians, tailors or street vendors.

They started out playing in the streets, trying to target areas where they might be heard by foreigners who had more money than the average city dweller, and might drop the occasional dollar at the feet of the buskers in their wheelchairs. Amazingly, it paid off. They came to the attention of the Belgian record producer Vincent Kenis, a specialist in Congolese music, and he helped them to record not in a studio but in the open air, out in the zoo.

The band's debut album, Tres Tres Fort (Very Very Strong) was recorded by Kenis using microphones connected to his large laptop computer, with power provided by a mains cable connected to a deserted refreshment bar nearby. The album features the guitarists in the wheelchairs, of course, along with one other remarkable Kinshasa survivor.

Roger Landu is a teenager who used to live on the streets, but spent much of his time hanging around with Staff Benda Bilili. They eventually invited him to join them. He had no money, but designed his own home-made instrument, which he made from an empty fish can, a piece of wood and one guitar string. Kenis showed him how to amplify the instrument, and he now plays like some DIY Jimi Hendrix.

Staff Benda Bilili are still not fashionable in Kinshasa - few people come to watch them rehearse in the zoo, or at the little club where they play near the airport. But in Britain it has been a very different story. Their first British tour has been a triumph, with five-star reviews from national newspapers.

It has been an extraordinary story - and now, hopefully, Staff Benda Bilili will be able to give up their day jobs and become full-time musicians.

"Malawi windmill boy with big fans"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8257153.stm
By Jude Sheerin
BBC News

The extraordinary true story of a Malawian teenager who transformed his village by building electric windmills out of junk is the subject of a new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.









Self-taught William Kamkwamba has been feted by climate change campaigners like Al Gore and business leaders the world over. His against-all-odds achievements are all the more remarkable considering he was forced to quit school aged 14 because his family could no longer afford the $80-a-year (£50) fees. When he returned to his parents' small plot of farmland in the central Malawian village of Masitala, his future seemed limited.
But this was not another tale of African potential thwarted by poverty.

The teenager had a dream of bringing electricity and running water to his village. And he was not prepared to wait for politicians or aid groups to do it for him. The need for action was even greater in 2002 following one of Malawi's worst droughts, which killed thousands of people and left his family on the brink of starvation.

Unable to attend school, he kept up his education by using a local library. Fascinated by science, his life changed one day when he picked up a tattered textbook and saw a picture of a windmill. Mr Kamkwamba told the BBC News website: "I was very interested when I saw the windmill could make electricity and pump water. "I thought: 'That could be a defence against hunger. Maybe I should build one for myself'."

When not helping his family farm maize, he plugged away at his prototype, working by the light of a paraffin lamp in the evenings. But his ingenious project met blank looks in his community of about 200 people. "Many, including my mother, thought I was going crazy," he recalls. "They had never seen a windmill before." Neighbours were further perplexed at the youngster spending so much time scouring rubbish tips. "People thought I was smoking marijuana," he said. "So I told them I was only making something for juju [magic].' Then they said: 'Ah, I see.'"

Mr Kamkwamba, who is now 22 years old, knocked together a turbine from spare bicycle parts, a tractor fan blade and an old shock absorber, and fashioned blades from plastic pipes, flattened by being held over a fire. "I got a few electric shocks climbing that [windmill]," says Mr Kamkwamba, ruefully recalling his months of painstaking work. The finished product - a 5-m (16-ft) tall blue-gum-tree wood tower, swaying in the breeze over Masitala - seemed little more than a quixotic tinkerer's folly. But his neighbours' mirth turned to amazement when Mr Kamkwamba scrambled up the windmill and hooked a car light bulb to the turbine. As the blades began to spin in the breeze, the bulb flickered to life and a crowd of astonished onlookers went wild.

Soon the whiz kid's 12-watt wonder was pumping power into his family's mud brick compound. Out went the paraffin lanterns and in came light bulbs and a circuit breaker, made from nails and magnets off an old stereo speaker, and a light switch cobbled together from bicycle spokes and flip-flop rubber. Before long, locals were queuing up to charge their mobile phones.

Meanwhile, he installed a solar-powered mechanical pump, donated by well-wishers, above a borehole, adding water storage tanks and bringing the first potable water source to the entire region around his village. He upgraded his original windmill to 48-volts and anchored it in concrete after its wooden base was chewed away by termites. Then he built a new windmill, dubbed the Green Machine, which turned a water pump to irrigate his family's field. Before long, visitors were traipsing from miles around to gawp at the boy prodigy's magetsi a mphepo - "electric wind".

As the fame of his renewable energy projects grew, he was invited in mid-2007 to the prestigious Technology Entertainment Design conference in Arusha, Tanzania. He recalls his excitement using a computer for the first time at the event. "I had never seen the internet, it was amazing," he says. "I Googled about windmills and found so much information."

Onstage, the native Chichewa speaker recounted his story in halting English, moving hard-bitten venture capitalists and receiving a standing ovation. A glowing front-page portrait of him followed in the Wall Street Journal. He is now on a scholarship at the elite African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Mr Kamkwamba - who has been flown to conferences around the globe to recount his life-story - has the world at his feet, but is determined to return home after his studies. The home-grown hero aims to finish bringing power, not just to the rest of his village, but to all Malawians, only 2% of whom have electricity. "I want to help my country and apply the knowledge I've learned," he says. "I feel there's lots of work to be done."

Former Associated Press news agency reporter Bryan Mealer had been reporting on conflict across Africa for five years when he heard Mr Kamkwamba's story. The incredible tale was the kind of positive story Mealer, from New York, had long hoped to cover. The author spent a year with Mr Kamkwamba writing The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which has just been published in the US. Mealer says Mr Kamkwamba represents Africa's new "cheetah generation", young people, energetic and technology-hungry, who are taking control of their own destiny. "Spending a year with William writing this book reminded me why I fell in love with Africa in the first place," says Mr Mealer, 34. "It's the kind of tale that resonates with every human being and reminds us of our own potential."

Can it be long before the film rights to the triumph-over-adversity story are snapped up, and William Kamkwamba, the boy who dared to dream, finds himself on the big screen?