It isn’t the first time we’ve been called crazy and it certainly won’t be the last. The past three weeks have been nothing short of absolutely mind blowing. Our team of 9 landed in Uganda three weeks ago with four countries slated in a three week span. WE TOTALLY owned it. Outside of being part of a freaking phenomenal organization: Hello, Thirst Project, I can’t accurately describe the joy that I get from hanging out with absolutely resilient and amazing people around the world, hearing their stories, and having the honor of photographing them. I’ve officially decided that the day I am just snapping photos to snap them and forget that there are fabulous people on the other side of my lens that have beautiful stories to tell, please come and take my camera and hit me over the head with it.

So, yeah, anyway, upon arriving a day later to Uganda than the rest of the team (thank you DELTA for the 5 hour delay that made us miss our connection in Amsterdam… NOT), Natalie (my photo partner in crime/buddy/co-adventurer) and I had to hit the ground running. Somehow we’ve become mildly immune to jet lag and got things rolling pretty quickly. We got into our hotel and early the next morning headed out to a village where the Thirst Project put in a hand pump. That’s where I met Zipporah. Among all the craziness she was just standing with her friends in her freaking awesome green dress grinning from ear to ear and had this “I’m super old and also super awesome and couldn’t be happier that I have clean water” look on her face.  As we got to hear more about her life and story, I was overwhelmed by her resilience. She had 12 children that had died as well as her husband. She also told us that this was the first time in her life that she had clean water. FIRST TIME. I water my flowers with water that I could drink and this was the first time in her life that she didn’t have to wake up at the butt crack of dawn and carry absurd amounts of water from the nearest water source. The phrase “water is life” is becoming more and more real to me these days.

Check facebook for more pix.

And, btw, I probably won’t be posting again for a while, we’re posted up in Kuala Lumpur for the time bring working on www.indyrefugee.com (project on Burmese refugees in Malaysia. HOLLA.

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