NEIGHBORS

Richard and his wife Carla have lived in Dry Creek Valley for the past 19 years with their son Adam, now 18. Both are PhD chemists who own a testing lab in Santa Rosa. They have been in business for 25 years and also raise grapes and animals.
Twenty years ago, Richard hired Armindo, a native of the small, unknown country of Guinea-Bissau in Africa. A long friendship began, as Armindo commuted every day from Sacramento where he shared living space with Domingos, also from Guinea-Bissau.
About three years ago, Richard woke up at 2 a.m. with a “crazy idea.” He had to go to Guinea-Bissau.
“It made no sense,” Richard tells me. “I knew it was a dangerous, unstable government. Every president has been assassinated or exiled. There is rampant disease and twenty percent of children don’t live until age five. The U.S. Department of State doesn’t even want our citizens to go there. But I felt truly compelled, with no idea why.”
So, traveling with Armindo, Richard arrived in this tiny West African country, tucked away below Senegal and The Gambia, north of Guinea, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast. (Lonely Planet describes it as “a country that consistently elicits frowns from heads of states and news reporters.”)
After 60 hours of travel, including 18 hours ferrying south from Senegal, Richard arrived in the capital city of Bissau, population 500,000 – a city without electricity, running water, sewer or garbage collection. A place where a bathroom is no more than a hole in the ground and homes are made of blocks of mud.
The following day, Richard found the central Christian church and attended the service with 300-400 of the locals. The one man who spoke English soon pulled Richard onto the stage. Here, Richard told the congregation that he felt God had called him to come – to listen and learn. “I’ve heard about people being called by God,” he told them, “but I hoped it would never happen to me!”
Richard spent the next three weeks touring the country with the church elders – both men and women. He learned that the church had created orphanages and schools throughout the country. He went to some of the 60 islands off the coast and to six villages in the interior.
“When I got home I felt culture shock,” Richard says. “I was in a daze for a couple of months. I thought about all the things that had upset me––the illness and extreme poverty, the short life expectancy, contaminated drinking water and the fact that everyone had diarrhea always, the ‘tradition’ of female genital mutilation performed by a village elder or witch doctor when a girl is 10 to 12 years old. I saw girls who had escaped and come to the city in canoes, often ending up in prostitution.
“Again I felt compelled and the best place to start seemed to be with the drinking water. So I returned six months later with water testing supplies and traveled around the country alone. Every well I found was highly contaminated with E. coli and a host of other bacteria. I asked myself, ‘What kind of technology can address this?’
“Back at home, I met with a water quality engineer who was also interested in having clean water in Africa. In the stack of information he handed me, I came across a simple filter made of clay, which is used in other countries. It filters out 100 percent of bacteria. I was so excited, but what was next?”
Through contacting Potters for Peace who created the technology, Richard was directed to Potters Without Borders in Canada, who gave him the know how to build a factory. On his next trip to Bissau, he told the excited church congregation, who he knew would be the ones to bring this idea to life. In Healdsburg, Richard started a fund by involving his own Healdsburg Community Church as well as Rotary, Kiwanis, Russian River Chamber Music Society and Dry Creek Valley Association. In April 2015, he held a fundraiser with James Gore as auctioneer, and they raised $20,000, most of what was needed to build a factory.
On Richard’s fourth trip to Bissau, property was located for a factory and money was given to the elders for its purchase. Local students (from West African Vocational Schools or WAVS, headed by an American who Richard had met on a boat ride) were hired to build the factory. And on a recent trip, Richard helped work on the kiln and the factory roof.
Life-saving clay water filters are now being made. Kai, from Potters Without Borders, is instructing local workers in their production. UNICEF is interested in subsidizing them, and Richard is headed toward his goal of having a water filter in every home in the country. In December 2015 he will be returning to Guinea-Bissau for the seventh time.
Although overwhelmed by the hospitality shown, on one trip after a military coup, Richard was stopped at a checkpoint where two soldiers carrying machine guns led him into the jungle to be questioned by a higher-ranked military official. When he finally said, “American missionary,” the man repeated, “Mesinariu Americanu,” and smiled. At that point his passport was returned.
Richard recently met with Guinea-Bissau’s newly elected prime minister – Domingos, Armindo’s former roommate from Sacramento. Domingos gave a press conference and told everyone about the government’s support of the project.
 “Healdsburg Community Church has adopted a sister church and our town is embracing this orphaned country,” Richard tells me. “Our little town of Healdsburg has built a water filter factory in Guinea-Bissau and will be saving lives. It’s a miracle.”
For more information or to donate, contact Richard at [email protected].
Shonnie Brown is a local author and memoirist who is interested in fostering connections between people and their community. Shonnie writes personal and family histories through her business, Sonoma LifeStories, and is also a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or on the web at www.sono
malifestories.com.