How Skiing Impacts the World Through Sport & Human Connection By Christian Bright
Opportunity comes to everyone. Sometimes, we act, and sometimes, we don’t. There are opportunities that we are glad we missed, and there are opportunities that we regret we didn’t take. However, the key is always to be alert and recognize opportunities for what they are.
Ski instructing was an opportunity that I took. It has been one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life. However, as I worked and continue to do so at Steamboat Ski Resort, another opportunity was presented, and I almost didn’t take it, but I did. That ‘yes’ was transformative, and it is the best yes I’ve said yes to since becoming a ski instructor.
That yes was agreeing to join a local non-profit, Generation U, in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. It was a decision that opened new doors and changed my perspective. During my first weeks as an instructor, I met the founders, Joel Cobb, Snowsports school supervisor, and Nich Cornwell, ski instructor.
Weeks pass, and Nich tells me about Generation U, a non-profit that brings water to Uganda’s most vulnerable people. I tell Nich I am a former journalist, and several months later, I begin writing for Generation U.
I started writing blog posts, following the story of the Generation U athlete program—high school athletes using sports to connect with people and raise money for water wells—and the organization as a whole.
I’ve been to Uganda twice in under six months, in February and again in June. It was my first time leaving the country in February, and I went to a third-world country. Video, pictures, and marketing schemes you see on TV do not do it justice because it’s not reality.
When we arrived in Uganda, we slept and took a seven-hour van ride to Baduma village. Traffic was something I had never experienced. There were few lights in the cities or lane dividers, but everyone knew the right of way and the hierarchy of vehicles, who moved for whom.
Then we enter a Baduma. We drive down a dirt road, likely the only one. Bumpy is an understatement; you bottom out frequently. There are no street signs or directions to villages, but we are greeted with massive celebrations. We sing and dance—I mean dance—and celebrate a village having a clean water source.
We are born with clean, running water from a faucet that will run all day if we choose to. Imagine not having indoor plumbing, water, or electricity—we can’t imagine it. We’ve not had it.
The first village I went to, I was overwhelmed. I had not experienced a crowd sprinting to our vans waiting to hug, dance, and celebrate getting a water well.
Afterward, I followed a man around my age, 25, to where they get the “good water,” a concrete irrigation pit where water flows from the rice field operations. We were not allowed to get that water but were guests, so it happened anyway. The water source was maybe a half mile away from the celebration. We carried empty jerry cans – a canister for water- to the water source, and I peered into one before we filled it. It was black inside, with germs, dirt, and diseases.
A young boy came to get more on a single-speed bike with no shoes on, no air in the tires, and bent pedals. He loaded three jerry cans weighing 50 lbs each onto the bike. I pushed the bike for a bit on the dirt path with potholes seemingly every foot.
The young boy and the man are beside me for support because you cannot spill a drop; every drop is critical. Something that hit my heart heavily while pushing this bike, physically struggling, was the water I was pushing was already contaminated, and I was effectively pushing disease and sickness to people in that village, but the other water source was worse. If they drink the water, they get sick and die; if they don’t, they die of dehydration; choose your evil. The young boy eventually had me stop. I took too long to return it to the village, and he rode off easily.
Preface: I was on a backpacking trail crew in Routt and Medicine-Bow national forests that summer. I was in shape, but it still was one of the hardest physical things I’d ever done. People in Uganda do it every single day, multiple times per day, and it’s often women and kids who fetch water.
After the celebrations, I went to some of the villager’s huts made of mud and straw. They are better kept than most Americans’ homes. I also had a child take me to where they collect water for their family. It was a mud hole where animals bathe, filled with moss, murky brown, with all sorts of insects swarming in it. These families will drink, cook, and wash with this water.
This is the reality. Many people walk miles to a hole in the ground that is contaminated with insects, algae, dirt, feces, and bacteria and drink and bathe from it. Kids use any container they have to fill it with water, whether it’s a jerry can black from backer tiers to used oil jugs or engine coolant jugs.
Another reality is Uganda’s attempt to help with clean water. They installed chlorine dispensers next to water sources to clean the water. It does help if you know the amount to put in so that it is not harmful to ingest. However, on the dispensers, there is no stop valve; the people who fetch water can put as much chlorine in their water containers as they see fit. There were no instructions or education on the dispenser to tell people how much to put in.
Because of a lack of information, Ugandan hygiene and sanitation practices are not as prevalent as in the United States. In the United States, we are taught from a young age not to put our fingers in our mouths, cover our cough and sneezes, wash our hands before we eat, and how germs spread.
Villagers may not know these things, but sometimes, they learn what a germ is and how it spreads. They learn not to defecate near water sources or where they eat, to take their shoes off before going to their homes, and how to make soap from coal or ash. These are all practices that Generation U teaches in the bush, and we’re seeing declines in typhoid and malaria in these communities that learn hygiene and implement it into their lives.
I was fortunate to help build a pit latrine for the Baduma village with a man named Fred. The latrine provided the village with a place to use the bathroom in one central location, helping to keep feces out of water and food sources.
I recently went again and was able to do similar projects, such as building a pit latrine and helping pour the concrete casing for a well. In June, we bought sugar and offered it as a gift to villagers—sugar is relatively expensive and is only used on special occasions. This immersed us more in the bush and allowed us to meet more people in the community to tell them about the well in the ground and that it was for everyone to use.
As we were doing that, each family we visited welcomed strangers into their homes like they had seen us before. A family, in return for the sugar, gifted us a chicken, which is an essential animal in the bush, demonstrating the appreciation and kindness of the Ugandan people.
In the United States, many people don’t know their neighbors, let alone invite strangers into their homes to learn about each other.
In the villages, it truly is about community. Although we think they are struggling or in need, they have community, something the United States needs to improve. Everyone says hello. If you see someone walking by, you acknowledge that person and engage in conversation. They greet you with smiles and a willingness to get to know each other.
Since my trips to Uganda, I’ve made three good friends: Issac, Isa, and Cha Cha. All three are around my age and were translators while we were in Uganda. Issac and Isa are both at university, and Cha Cha is a businessman. I have developed relationships with these men, and we talk weekly, proving that you can make friends with a language, time, and region barrier.
If I had not said a simple yes to ski instructing at Steamboat Resort, where this all began, and a simple yes to going to Africa, my view of the world and the importance of water, hygiene, and human connection would be misconstrued and surface-level.
To get involved or make a donation https://gen-u.org/
