By coincidence two authors have recently published books about their experiences in and near Amesbury’s Sister Village of Esabalu.
The Long Road Home is by the Reverend Dan Schmeltzer. Dan and his wife Patty have been working for more than 20 years to help street orphans in Western Kenya. A work of fiction, the book tells the story of a street orphan, Timo, with a natural talent for drawing. After his father dies in a robbery, Timo and his Mom move to the Luanda town where Timo enrolls in Ebusakami Primary School in Esabalu. (Ebusakami School is one of the schools in Amesbury for Africa’s school uniform program!) When Timo’s Mom remarries, his new stepfather refuses to pay Timo’s school fees. Timo runs away and becomes a street boy in the city of Kisumu.
The Long Road Home is the story of Timo’s redemption through the Capstone Ministry and Capstone’s Pastor Isaiah. Although the book is fiction, the situation described is real and the locale is accurately rendered. The book is a fascinating read for those of us who have been to Western Kenya. I learned a lot about the cultural, social, tribal and gender issues in our Sister Village by reading this book.
Incidentally, the cover painting and charcoal illustrations of The Long Road Home are by Maxwell Abwamba – a former street orphan who is an excellent freelance artist. He works for Vibrant Villages – an American NGO in Esabalu. He also has a natural talent for drawing and is a freelance artist!
John Dracup, PhD, is an engineer who has taught water resource engineering and hydrology at University of California, Berkeley and University of California, Los Angeles for more than 50 years. His new book is Clean Water for Developing Countries. It is simply the greatest book that I have seen on how to plan and mobilize resources for clean water in places like Esabalu. If you want to provide clean water for a village, be it in Kenya, South America or elsewhere, this is the book to read first! It’s a concise how-to manual full of advice for getting a water system off the ground plus examples of successful projects from around the world and lists of resources of people and organizations who can help.
After our 2011 trip to Esabalu, Jack Christian, a plumber from Salisbury and Mark Bean, a physician from Amesbury joined John and his wife Kathy on a Rotary International project to design a clean water system for Remba Island in the middle of Lake Victoria. Professor Dracup describes it in the intro to his new book:
“In her book The Moment of Lift, Melinda Gates describes the moment of lift as the one that occurs when the plane has rolled down the runway and begins to rise into the sky. My personal moment of lift occurred on Remba Island. On the first day of the system’s operation, hundreds of people rushed to the kiosks and filled their 20 liter jerrycans.” John reports that to this day the system continues to perform efficiently providing clean water and improved health to the people of Remba Island. Jack and I are thrilled to have contributed to John’s “lift” moment.
Both books are available for purchase at Amazon.com (Just click):
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Road-Home-Daniel-Schmelzer-ebook/dp/B07VPT49XL/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1583166181&sr=1-6
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=John+Dracup&i=digital-text&ref=nb_sb_noss_2