Thousands Displaced by Clashes in West

Clashes between two communities in western Kenya’s Rift Valley Province have led to the displacement of thousands of people, the closure of several schools and calls for the government to beef up security.

Relations between the Tugen and the Pokot in what is now known as Baringo County have for decades been marked by tit-for-tat cattle raids and the occasional attendant fatality. Over the years, firearms have replaced more traditional weapons, especially among the Pokot.

An escalation - in intensity and frequency - of hostilities since January has, according to the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), left more than 7,500 Tugen people displaced from their homes, living either with other members of their community or in rudimentary shelters in the bush.

A dozen schools have been forced to close, affecting around 2,000 children, said KRCS.

Local media listed the worst-affected locations as Rondinin, Chepkewel, Kaborion, Tuluk, Kapturo, Chepkesin, Kamwetio, Boruiyo, Chemoe, Barketiew, Kagir, Kosile, Yatia, Loruk and Kalabata.

Five deaths and at least 16 serious injuries have been reported.

KRCS has warned of a risk of communicable diseases among the displaced, which could be exacerbated by inadequate sanitation as well as limited access to health care. The conflict has forced some health centre staff to flee their posts, meaning the only functioning health facility is up to 40km away.

The displaced are in need of health care, mobile toilets, food and other humanitarian aid, according to KRCS.
 
“The clashes are foreseen to continue if security measures are not addressed well,” KRCS warned in a statement.

KRCS assistant secretary-general for the Rift Valley, Patrick Nyongesa, told IRIN a dispute over the boundaries of administrative areas established under a 2010 devolutionary constitution had contributed to the escalation of hostilities. 

“The government must… look into the boundaries issues so that communities may not fight for land resources in the name of cattle rustling,” said Nyongesa, adding that in the absence of adequate government intervention the Tugen were likely to try to acquire firearms.

Even children among the Tugen community are determined to use force to protect their families and livestock, with many using bows and arrows to do so. “I will not wait for the Pokot to kill my family, I have to take charge and remain alert,” Brian, a 12-year-old boy, told IRIN. “Raiders stole our 11 cattle. Only three remained and I have to guard them,” he said, adding that he had dropped out of primary school because of the conflict.

Mary Chemos, who was displaced from the village of Setek after an attack by cattle raiders, told IRIN: “I am lucky to be alive, the attackers shot at my house but somehow, no bullets hit either me or my three children…
 
“I know the Pokot will come again if I restock my cattle. I am now poor and without peace. I wish I would get somewhere to live peacefully even without owning a single head of cattle.” 
 
Security

In a recent pastoralist peace meeting in Rift Valley’s capital of Nakuru, Internal Security Minister George Saitoti said additional security officers had been deployed to Baringo North. 
 
But residents insist the government is not doing enough. 
 
“We have been reporting to security agents but no action has been taken. Sometimes we have given the names of suspects,” said Richard Chepchomoe, a local leader.
 
Ten government security officers have been killed in the past year in cattle-rustling incidents, according to Rift Valley Provincial Commissioner Osman Warfa. 
 
“Our officers don’t want to be posted in cattle-rustling prone areas,” said Warfa. “Leaders must learn to preach peace rather than division… It is a shame that we are still talking about cattle-rustling in this century.” 
 
At least 82 people have been killed in cattle-rustling incidents across Kenya in the past year, with 47 injured and 24,000 heads of livestock stolen, according to Saitoti.

Ethnic clashes, fuelled by pre-election politics and planned development schemes have also been reported in the northcentral county of Isiolo.

Source: irinnews.org

Water & Poverty, an Issue of Life & Livelihoods

Water is essential for all socio-economic development and for maintaining healthy ecosystems. As population increases and development calls for increased allocations of groundwater and surface water for the domestic, agriculture and industrial sectors, the pressure on water resources intensifies, leading to tensions, conflicts among users, and excessive pressure on the environment. The increasing stress on freshwater resources brought about by ever rising demand and profligate use, as well as by growing pollution worldwide, is of serious concern.

What is water scarcity? Imbalances between availability and demand, the degradation of groundwater and surface water quality, intersectoral competition, interregional and international conflicts, all contributes to water scarcity. 

Scarcity often has its roots in water shortage, and it is in the arid and semiarid regions affected by droughts and wide climate variability, combined with population growth and economic development, that the problems of water scarcity are most acute. 

Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and, although there is no global water scarcity as such, an increasing number of regions are chronically short of water.  

By 2025, 1 800 million people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions. The situation will be exacerbated as rapidly growing urban areas place heavy pressure on neighbouring water resources. 

Addressing water scarcity requires actions at local, national and river basin levels. It also calls for actions at global and international levels, leading to increased collaboration between nations on shared management of water resources (rivers, lakes and aquifers), it requires an intersectoral and multidisciplinary approach to managing water resources in order to maximize economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems. 

Integration across sectors is needed. This integration needs to take into account development, supply, use and demand, and to place the emphasis on people, their livelihood and the ecosystems that sustain them. On the demand side, enhancing water productivity (the volume of production per unit of water) in all sectors is paramount to successful programmes of water scarcity alleviation. Furthermore, protecting and restoring the ecosystems that naturally capture, filter, store and release water, such as rivers, wetlands, forests and soils, is crucial to increasing the availability of water of good quality. 

First and foremost, water scarcity is an issue of poverty. Unclean water and lack of sanitation are the destiny of poor people across the world.

Lack of hygiene affects poor children and families first, while the rest of the world's population benefits from direct access to the water they need for domestic use. One in five people in the developing world lacks access to sufficient clean water (a suggested minimum of 20 litres/day), while average water use in Europe and the United States of America ranges between 200 and 600 litres/day. In addition, the poor pay more. A recent report by the United Nations Development Programme shows that people in the slums of developing countries typically pay 5-10 times more per unit of water than do people with access to piped water (UNDP, 2006).

For poor people, water scarcity is not only about droughts or rivers running dry. Above all, it is about guaranteeing the fair and safe access they need to sustain their lives and secure their livelihoods. For the poor, scarcity is about how institutions function and how transparency and equity are guaranteed in decisions affecting their lives. It is about choices on infrastructure development and the way they are managed. In many places throughout the world, organizations struggle to distribute resources equitably.

Water for life, water for livelihood. While access to safe water and sanitation have been recognized as priority targets through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Johannesburg plan of action of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), there is increasing recognition that this is not enough. Millions of people rely in one way or another on water for their daily income or food production. Farmers, small rural enterprises, herders and fishing people - all need water to secure their livelihood. However, as the resources become scarce, an increasing number of them see their sources of income disappear. Silently, progressively, the number of water losers increases - at the tail end of the irrigation canal, downstream of a new dam, or as a result of excessive groundwater drawdown.

It is probably in rural areas that water scarcity affects people most. In large parts of the developing world, irrigation remains the backbone of rural economies. However, smallholder farmers make up the majority of the world's rural poor, and they often occupy marginal land and depend mainly on rainfall for production. They are highly sensitive to many changes - droughts, floods, but also shifts in market prices. However, rainwater is rarely integrated into water management strategies, which usually focus exclusively on surface water and groundwater. Countries need to integrate rainwater fully into their strategies to cope with water scarcity.

You can help us fight this problem!  Please click HERE

Source: fao.org

Meet Water Maniac Walter!

On October 17, 2011, we saw the launch of "Generation Awake. Your choices make a world of difference!" an EU campaign designed to encourage consumers to make resource efficiency habit. The campaign was unveiled in Poland by European Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik and Polish Environment Minister Andrzej Kraszewski. Its aim is to raise awareness about the need to use scarce natural resources wisely, and to encourage citizens to think about their impact on the planet when making purchasing decisions.

Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik said: "With our economy in difficulty and our resources dwindling, it's time to start rethinking some of our habits. Using resources more carefully not only helps protect the environment, but saves money and reduces business costs. It's about using less to do more. Everyone can do their bit. We just need to wake up!"

Generation awake

The key message is 'consume differently, and think before you choose'. By making the right choices we can all help preserve natural resources, save money, reduce our impact on the environment and make our future more sustainable.

The main tools are a viral clip, a dedicated website and a Facebook page where visitors are encouraged to join "Generation awake'' and accept challenges, like using only public transport for a month or reducing showering time to save water.

The Europe-wide campaign is being launched in Poland, which currently holds the rotating EU Council Presidency. The launch event in Warsaw features a stand where visitors will be given tips on sustainable cooking, fashion, and efficient energy use, and a public debate on "Your choices make a world of difference", featuring Janez Potočnik, Minister Kraszewski, and representatives of NGOs and the private sector.

Resource efficiency is about using resources sustainably – doing more with less and minimising impacts on the environment. It is about making the right choices to ensure a good quality of life, not just for now, but for generations to come.

Using natural resources more efficiently is the only way to achieve the health, wealth and well-being we all aspire to within the limitations of the planet. Becoming resource-efficient means changing our way of thinking and patterns of behaviour and taking account of how our choices affect natural resources. It's not about consuming less – it's about consuming differently.

Our future depends on how we use resources now. In our eagerness to improve our standard of living, we tend to consume without thinking about the consequences. We forget the impact of our behaviour on natural resources such as water, fertile soils, clean air and biodiversity. And this has a price: as these resources become more scarce, we put our future welfare at risk.

Businesses can use this opportunity to their advantage. Increasing efficiency can save costs. Sustainable products and new services open up new markets. Innovation can increase competitiveness and create new jobs.   Source:  generationawake.eu

Help TSF to provide clean safe water to adults and children in Ghana by clicking HERE

Healthcare in the Crossfire

As Mohammed Mohammedi lay trapped in the car with his co-worker, pinned down by heavy gunfire, they promised each other that whoever made it out alive would tell the other’s family. Now, 12 years after he was captured and beaten by militias in Somalia while carrying out a polio vaccination campaign, he realizes this was a “futile promise”. 

“If you ask someone at WHO [World Health Organization], ‘What is the extent of the problem?’ [of attacks on health facilities and workers],” said Rudi Coninx, with the Emergency Risk Management and Humanitarian Response team at WHO. “If they were honest they would say, ‘I don’t know,' as nobody collects these data in a systematic way."

Mohammedi said he was released after clans who knew the polio vaccination health staff paid the militias. If he or his co-worker had died, there was no international mechanism, then or now, to record that he had been hurt while doing his job as a health worker.

“One of the first victims of war is the healthcare system itself,” wrote Marco Baldan, the chief war surgeon at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in an August 2011 agency report, which noted that violence against healthcare is “one of the most crucial yet overlooked humanitarian issues of today".

Less than one year after launching this report, and a campaign to document and rein in violence against healthcare facilities and workers, the agency suspended its work in Pakistan after one of its programme managers was kidnapped and killed while travelling home in an ICRC vehicle. 

Mohammedi, a WHO polio operation and technical officer now working in Pakistan, told IRIN that regardless of the precautions, humanitarians always face danger. “An agreement with the war-lords, clan, [or] military leader is the best valid agreement, though even that is not a 100 percent guarantee of a person’s safety.”

Fighting often hampers access for health workers in two of the four countries where polio is still endemic - Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Despite international conventions in place to protect health facilities, workers and marked vehicles, as long as they maintain a “neutral function and treat all patients equally, irrespective of political, religious or ethnic affiliation”, the Geneva Convention carries little authority with militias, said Mohammedi.

“Free access is not and will never be possible if the agreements are made by people sitting around a table outside of conflict areas. The militias have a different way of thinking - the only agreement for a militia at war is to kill… For the militia, a prisoner of war is still the enemy.”

The Geneva Convention forms a major part of negotiating access for the medical humanitarian NGO, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), but it is difficult when “non-state actors” never agreed to it in the first place, said Michiel Hoffman, a Brussels-based operational advisor to MSF.

Somalia is the only country where MSF is forced to use private guards to protect its health facilities, which is not ideal, but necessary, Hoffman told IRIN. “It is hard to provide healthcare when there is a general disregard for everyone’s lives,” he said. “To have any weapons near a health structure makes them the target of conflict.”

Health facilities have become even more vulnerable as soldiers increasingly enter hospitals to “settle scores”, said Robin Coupland, an ICRC medical advisor, in a January 2012 WHO bulletin.

From a review of internal and public sources, ICRC documented 655 violent events affecting healthcare in 16 countries in conflict from 1 July 2008 to December 2010, of which 41 percent were reported only in internal agency reports.

Documenting the extent of the problem is the first step to start doing something about it, said Coninx.

The “compounded cost” of violence on healthcare, such as healthcare staff fleeing, inventory stock-outs and curtailed vaccination campaigns are also hard to measure, ICRC noted.

On 21 January 2012, WHO’s executive board passed a resolution committing the agency to collecting and distributing data on attacks on health workers, facilities, vehicles and patients in the next two years.

UN member states will vote on this proposal on 25 May 2012 at the ongoing World Health Assembly in Geneva. 

Source: irinnews.org

Want to Try Organic Gardening?

1. Improve your soil. Good soil promotes healthy plant growth. Leaf mould, composted bark and garden compost can be dug into the soil or spread across the surface, where weather and worms will work them in. Their bulk will improve the drainage of heavy soils and allow dry soil to hold onto moisture and nutrients.


2. Make your own compost. Prunings, peelings, tea bags, old flower heads and even bits of newspaper can be turned into nutrient-rich compost. Fill a compost bin with a good mixture of green and brown materials, not just lots of green stuff such as grass clippings, which will produce a smelly sludge. Go for the largest compost bin you can fit in your garden. If it's tiny, try a neat and compact worm bin.


3. Choose the right plants. Strong plants are less likely to succumb to diseases or pests, so always grow a plant that suits your site and soil. Choose naturally disease resistant varieties whenever you can, such as blight-resistant tomato 'Ferline' or carrot 'Resistafly' which is resistant to carrot fly.


4. Control weeds naturally. Prevent weeds by spreading a carpet of bark mulch, leaf mould or composted straw across soil. If weeds appear, pull them up or hoe before they set seed. Compost weed seedlings, but discard tough weeds with long roots in the dustbin as they could reproduce in the compost heap.


5. Control insects naturally. If you have pest problems you can use biological controls bought from mail-order suppliers. There are many available, including tiny parasitic wasps that can be used to control whitefly in greenhouses and a microscopic worm that kills vine weevil grubs.


6. Make wildlife work for you. Don't reach for a chemical spray when your plants come under attack. Instead make your garden a haven for animals, birds and insects and they'll do the work for you. Hedgehogs and toads will devour slugs and snails, while lacewings and ladybirds have a voracious appetite for greenfly. Install bug boxes and habitats for creatures to hibernate.


7. Control diseases naturally. Rotate your crops by changing the position of your vegetable crops each year to prevent the built up of diseases in the soil and don't let plants dry out - they'll become stressed and vulnerable to disease.


8. Try companion planting. Grow strongly scented plants alongside crops so they either confuse pests or attract them away from the vegetables. For instance, plant French marigolds near tomatoes to deter whitefly.


9. Patrol your garden. Prevent major problems by regularly inspecting plants. A few greenfly can be squished before they become an infestation and diseased parts of plants can be pruned out before they have a chance to spread.


10. Learn to live with imperfection. Organic gardeners want their plants to grow well, but learn to accept the odd nibbled leaf, and be prepared to sacrifice a few seedlings or fruits, and you'll learn to garden without fertilisers and pesticides.

Source:  bbc.co.uk/gardening/basics/
 

TraumaTravels Too

Georgette* is jumpy and on the verge of tears even before she starts recounting her long and harrowing story of loss and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), her desperate flight to South Africa, and the struggles and setbacks she has endured since arriving in Johannesburg a year ago.

When rebel soldiers surrounded her village in South Kivu Province in eastern DRC, the men, including her husband, were rounded up and locked in a room that was then set alight. Georgette and the other women were taken to the rebel stronghold in the mountains, where they were raped and enslaved for a month before some of them escaped into the forest and ran for their lives.

With the help of a priest and some nuns, the women made it to Lubumbashi, a town near the Zambian border. Truck drivers took Georgette the rest of the way to South Africa, where she believed she would have the best chance of starting a new life.

She does not know what happened to her four children, who were being cared for by their grandmother in a neighbouring village when she was abducted. “I’m not well when I’m thinking of them,” she told IRIN. “I’m always crying.”

Psychosocial needs forgotten

Migration, especially when it is forced, is always stressful and very often traumatic. Reaching a place of relative safety does not mean the trauma of having survived rape, torture or the loss of loved ones is over. Studies have found that migrants are far more likely to suffer from chronic anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) than non-migrants.

Yet the psychosocial needs of migrants and refugees are usually overlooked as governments and NGOs focus on meeting their more obvious need for food, shelter and documentation.

Dr Manuel Carballo, director of the Geneva-based International Centre for Migration Health and Development (ICMHD), argues that neglecting migrants’ mental and emotional wellbeing is a serious oversight that can not only hamper their chances of surviving and thriving in a new country, but is also likely to make them more dependent on host governments for longer. 

Carballo’s organization works with local authorities to assess the psychosocial needs of refugees in their communities and trains staff to be more sensitive to those needs. “We need to professionalize the whole process of trauma counselling, because [refugees] can very quickly fall through the cracks and be forgotten, and you see this all the time,” he told IRIN.

Convincing governments and donors to fund such programmes was “a difficult one to sell” he admitted, especially in the current economic climate. “But there can only be so many people suffering in camps and shelters before it starts to become contagious to the larger society. Ultimately, there needs to be a sharing of collective pain.”

Setbacks to recovery

Georgette is able to share some of her pain during weekly counselling sessions at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation’s (CSVR) Trauma Clinic in Johannesburg.

The Clinic will treat about 150 torture survivors in 2012 through its Refugee Project, but funding is uncertain from one year to the next and the need is great, said Marivic Garcia, a senior trauma professional at CSVR. Besides dealing with past events, many of the refugees suffer new traumas in South Africa that can set back their recovery.

Although they are spared the indignity and psychological consequences of confinement in refugee camps, their existence in urban areas is often extremely precarious. Obtaining asylum seeker documents can be a major source of stress, while many struggle to find work and live in abject poverty. They are also targets for crime and xenophobia.

“Since I left Kinshasa, I never had peace of mind,” said Celeste*, a refugee who was driven from her flat in Cape Town in 2008 during a wave of attacks on foreigners that swept the country. “There’s no war here, but the way people talk to you and look at you, you don’t feel like a human being.”

Celeste and her family decided to move to Johannesburg after the attacks, but the stress of starting over strained her marriage to breaking point. Nine months ago her husband walked out and never returned, and without his small income as a security guard she could not afford to pay the rent. She and her son ended up on the streets, while her daughter stayed with a neighbour.

Celeste and Georgette have both found temporary refuge at the Bienvenu Shelter in Johannesburg, which accommodates about 20 refugee women and 20 children, and provides food and crèche facilities for up to three months while newly arrived or needy refugee women get on their feet and look for work. Many of the women stay longer, admitted Adilia de Sousa, the Shelter’s director.

“They feel they’re drowning in a pool where no one reaches a hand to pull them out,” she said. “Quite a few can’t hold down a job with their mental health issues, but the bigger problem is employers not wanting to hire asylum seekers.”

Georgette initially stayed 10 months at the shelter before obtaining a small loan from Jesuit Refugee Services to start a business selling shoes in the city centre and moving into a rented room. But the high cost of rent forced her to share the room with several other people and one night one of her room-mates tried to rape her.

Her screams summoned neighbours and the man was arrested, but he was soon released and started harassing her, forcing her to return to the shelter and abandon her business. “I was feeling better until this happened. Now I feel it’s better to die, because I don’t feel safe to go out,” she said. “If the shelter wasn’t here, maybe I would have already died.”

Sources of support

Georgette is receiving treatment for PTSD at the Trauma Clinic but also draws strength from a prayer group run by fellow Congolese. For many traumatised refugees who never access the limited mental health services available from NGOs and the public health sector, churches and prayer groups may provide their only source of support.  

“When their identity is gone, a common thing is for people to turn to their religion,” said Garcia. “It helps them find meaning in what has happened to them. It often evolves from, ‘Why did God allow this?’ to ‘God wanted me to live for a reason’.”

Carballo of ICMHD believes that giving refugees more assistance to find work or start businesses would go a long way towards not only restoring their sense of purpose and self-esteem, but relieving the burden on host communities.

He cautioned however that recovery from trauma can be fragile. “The fact they’re smiling or working does not mean they’re fine. There’s a whole background just under the surface that’s very easily brought out again.”

Just watching news reports from the DRC is enough to trigger painful memories for Celeste. Prayer and counselling help, she said, “but there’s still pain”.

*Names have been changed 

Source:  irinnews.org

Brendan - Living Life Not Existing! - Part 2.

It’s been nearly 3 months since Brendan arrived in India.  The initial shock he experienced when he arrived in Delhi has now gone.

Brendan told me, “India is just totally crazy on so many levels. It’s hard to describe or show through pictures - you can only relate to it if you have been here. The trip has taken me through so many emotions it’s been like life itself:  I’ve experienced sadness and happiness; I’ve been tired and frustrated. One minute you hate certain aspects of India and then, a few hours later, you love it so much!!!  Where else in the world can you find cows and pigs sat on the railway platforms?”

So far, Brendan has travelled from Varanasi to Darjeeling, at the foot of the Himalayas.  To get there Brendan took a 16-hour sleeper train followed by a 3-hour jeep drive up the steep mountains.  Brendan recalled, “It was a pretty scary drive, there were sharp bends and huge drops with nothing to stop you toppling off the edge! However, it didn’t seem to slow the driver down”.

When Brendan’s party arrived in Darjeeling, it was very cold, which was a welcome break from the 45-degree heat, so they changed t-shirts for hoodies. The heat they had experienced in Varanasi made them appreciate the cooler temperatures in Darjeeling.  

Last year, Brendan took part in the John O’Groats to Lands End and London Marathon double.  He said, “I love the mind set I have developed since completing the marathon.  I’ve learned that you have to experience the bad to appreciate the good, so having it so hot has made me appreciate cooler temperatures.  I even appreciated the rain yesterday, which we had for the first time in months, because I knew it would make me appreciate the sun more.

Brendan told me that during his first visit to Africa, his primary emotion was guilt because of the poverty he experienced whilst there.  He said, “Appreciation is the key word of this trip, it’s very similar to the feeling I have when I am in Africa. It’s not like my first visit when I felt guilty.  This time round, being here has given me a great appreciation of life.  I have met so many incredible people here, in particular, at the guesthouse at Bandhavgarh, the lads there had travelled 40 km to look for work and had left their families behind.  They worked 15 hour days, they didn’t have days off, they cooked, cleaned and looked after the guesthouse.  They slept on the floor and had no belongings apart from a small bag packed with a few items”.

The people Brendan are referring to earn 3,000 rupees a month, (£36 a month), for working 15 hours a day everyday.  They still smile when serving food and are just happy that they have work.  One of the men told Brendan, “I have met so many foreigners here and I love gardening and looking after the plants". He was just 20 years old.

Brendan learned a lot from his conversation with this young man.  He told me,  “At first I was sad as he explained that he came here when he was 15. I watched how hard he worked and it made me sad - but during that one conversation I learnt so much about myself.  I learned that in the west we are so lucky to have such a privileged way of life.  The main reason is because we have choices and opportunities.  Most people struggle in the UK like I have in the past, but it’s through bad choices and then we moan when we don’t have any money.  People living in the Western world spend far too much on rubbish.  I am guilty of that myself!  We don’t appreciate how well off we are.  Seeing poverty daily makes me appreciate every small thing from water out of a tap, to being able to make the choice to go to work, study or see the world.  The struggle here is on a completely different scale, it’s so far removed from the world we live in that it’s hard for us to even relate to it.  It’s as though we live in a bubble, a consumerism bubble led by greed, celebrity and competition with each other. The desire to have the best of everything is so strong in the west that we forget about the important things in life”.

Having observed the incredible community spirit in so many villages, Brendan’s whole approach to life has changed.  He has been welcomed into villages with open arms, been given seats on trains, had full conversations with whole train carriages full of people, which usually starts off with them asking where he is from and then he is asked if he likes cricket and then sits and listens while his fellow passengers list the whole England team!  Stares always turn into conversation, which then leads to him feeling totally welcomed into their culture and lives.

Brendan told me with a grin, “I have never smiled so much or said hello so often as I have since I started this amazing adventure”.

With 3 months to go Brendan’s incredible trip continues, so check back next week to learn more about Brendan’s experiences.  Subscribe to our blog to make sure you don't miss any of our posts about Brendan.