Author: Balbir Mathur

By 1990, even though Trees for Life was gaining some traction, we were still very fragile. We were staffed by several volunteers and a few paid staff who were behind in collecting their minimum salaries but continued to work by exhausting their personal savings. In the middle of it all, an opportunity appeared that propelled us further toward our mission.   

It was part of our fundamental belief that, to solve the problems of the world, all segments of society must be involved. Otherwise, we would be singing to the choir. Our effort was to find common ground between various ideas, groups, and people. We were for something, not against anything. We tried to involve as many segments of society as possible. 

One such effort was to create environmental awareness among young children. For this, we designed a tree-planting kit. It contained seeds, instructions on how to plant them, and information on how children could help other children in developing countries to fight malnutrition by planting a fruit tree. The kit included a pint-sized empty milk carton for children to use as the container to start a tree sapling from seed. 

We offered this kit to elementary school teachers in conjunction with Earth Day. A one- column-inch announcement was published in a one-time pamphlet that highlighted planned Earth Day activities nationwide. We expected a few dozen orders, at best. It was something to be ignored on our back burner. I left to help plant trees in India for six weeks. 

Upon my return, I was shocked to learn we had received more than 60,000 orders! More orders were arriving daily, until the number of kit orders reached almost 100,000.

We did not have the staff, funds, or the capabilities to handle such a flood. This item was no longer on the backburner. It was now boiling over, needing immediate attention.

A retired businessman who was volunteering his services as the Trees for Life business manager saw no problem at all. “Just ignore all those orders as if they weren’t received. Throw them in the trash can. No one will know,” he advised.

The rest of us disagreed.

After an intense discussion we concluded that if we broke this trust with others, then it would have also broken us. We would not have been able to trust ourselves. Crises such as these are what allowed us to grow. 

“Bunk. Fuzzy thinking,” our friend maintained.  

There were still six months left before Earth Day, and we made a commitment to somehow meet the challenge. We did not know how.

The cost of the milk carton was the biggest item on the budget, which totaled $66,500. We decided to tackle that first. Our local milk producer introduced us to their supplier, a major manufacturer of paper cartons, and soon I was on a flight to their headquarters. My objective was to get a donation of those cartons, and their objective was to sell us the cartons. It turned out to be a hard-bargaining session that was not going anywhere. I asked to see the boss. 

“He’s out of town,” the man told me. He opened the door and started walking me out of the building. We passed his boss’s office. The door was barely cracked open. I could see the boss talking to someone. He saw me.

“Hey, hey, hold on!” he said, and waved us in.

“How did your meeting go?” he asked the person who was seeing me out. After a short conversation, he said, “Let’s make a deal.” He assured me we could count on them to donate the cartons.

After that, the company’s public relations vice president asked me to meet him in New York. I took the next flight. He said the donation was worth a large amount, and we would have to do several things, including letting them manage our public relations. They wanted Trees for Life to make fundamental changes in our message to suit their needs.

“Work with us and you will have no money problems,” he said. It was obvious they were trying to buy me.

Back home, I wrote a polite letter informing him that we would need to do things our own way. 

Soon after, a new person in the company was named to be our point person. 

“I am taking charge of this thing to help you,” he said. He asked me to give him a final “date of no return” when the cartons had to be shipped.

On that date, he called to tell me the company would not give us the cartons. Using abusive language, he said, “You are doing this to yourself.” He had  hoped I would give in to their demands. But I was not about to.

I hung up. The paper company had played dirty with us. But I did not have the luxury of sweating over that. I had to act NOW. For us, the 100,000 orders for tree kits were not ordinary requests. They were commitments from little children to plant a tree. That was sacred. For us, it would have been criminal to let these children down.

Immediately, I contacted another major carton supplier by phone and got through to their general manager. He told me that to get a donation, I would have to go through their committee and it could take months, with no certainty. The bottom line: we were going to have to pay for the cartons. For them to even initiate the action, we had to send them $20,000 up front. That was done within the hour, cleaning out every penny in the till. 

“There will be no paychecks next month,” our volunteer business manager warned. “Let it be known that I am signing this check under protest.” 

Treva was displeased, to say the least. Her voice betrayed the fear caused by a good many missed paychecks over an extended period.

The business manager was as much displeased with my apparent nonchalance as he was with the act of parting with our last penny. “You are a mad man. You are all a bunch of crazy people here,” he said.

I was the only person in the office that afternoon when the phone rang. It was a woman’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Our family met yesterday to discuss our charity budget and we are sending you a check,” she said.

“May I ask you how much?” I put all my courage in my throat.

“Twenty thousand dollars,” she answered, acting surprised, as if I should have known.

 Treva wiped tears from her eyes when she heard the news.

“It’s a miracle. It’s a miracle,” our business manager kept repeating, loudly for anyone to hear, as if he were dancing a jig.

I was experiencing, yet again, that someone, somewhere, somehow was telling me, “Don’t worry. You are being taken care of.”

That evening I went for a long walk. One cannot describe the energy, the high, caused by the mystery of the Spirit, but one can experience it. I pledged to thank the Spirit 20,000 times, by count, starting that moment.

When some of our supporters heard what the first carton supplier had done, they worked to help us to raise the rest of the money. The mayor of Wichita called on others to donate. Another friend sent us $3,000.

But it was the advice of a public relations executive with a national restaurant chain that tipped the scales. I had never met this man before he came to my office. I had just written a letter to a donor, who had given us $1,000 in the past, explaining our predicament. In that letter I suggested, “If you are inclined to donate, this may be the time.” The letter was on my desk ready to mail. The public relations person picked up the letter as he passed my desk and started to read it. Then he took out his expensive fountain pen from his jacket, crossed out the word ‘may’ and substituted ‘is’. The revised letter read: “If you are inclined to donate, this is the time.” The donor responded with a gift of $40,000, making up most of the difference of what was needed.

The movement to plant moringa trees spread in the decade after Trees for Life published its moringa book, taking root in more and more places. It is estimated during that time that more than 200 million trees were planted. It is certain the number is in the millions. 

One story is illustrative of what took place: 

A well-known politician from Latin America visited me in my office. His party had lost the last election in his country, and he had busied himself with social work. He came to ask me to help his country.

When I made a trip there a few years later, he hosted a private lunch for some of the country’s most prominent people. During my talk, I told them about the magical moringa tree.

I had no idea that those who were enjoying elegant fare under my friend’s gazebo made up the shadow government. Within days of my talk, they formed a new government and declared the moringa their national tree.

About a year later, they sought my advice on their plan for the government to plant a very large number of moringa trees. Immediately, I left to meet with the Minister in charge. He was eager to hear what I had to say. I told him much work needed to be done before such a planting could take place. I requested a meeting with some of their core decision-makers on the subject. The Deputy Minister of Agriculture convened a meeting with 28 of their top scientists from various disciplines—horticulturists, academicians, and planners.

Their plan called for immediately planting 2.2 million acres of moringa trees on marginal lands in an effort to fight malnutrition. We spent a couple of days in long meetings. They came to realize they did not know which moringa variety was best suited for their agro-climatic conditions. And since their people were unaware of moringa or its uses, there was no existing demand for the product. 

Finally, the group concluded it did not have the necessary conditions to undertake such a massive planting. This came as a disappointment to the Minister in charge, because he was a man of action and was ready to go.

The government’s desire to plant a huge number of trees was no substitute for a mass movement created by people’s awareness.

“Moringa is not a silver bullet,” I told them. “Go slow. Make sure it is done the right way.”

Fidel Castro, in the last decade of his life, dedicated himself to promoting moringa. He appeared regularly on television exhorting people on the benefits of the moringa tree. 

When we shared the moringa booklet with world leaders in 2005, we knew there was high quality protein in moringa leaves, but we didn’t have the research to show exactly how much protein. In 2015, Trees for Life provided the seed money to start a genetic bank organized by Dr. Mark Olson, a British scientist settled in Mexico. Collaborating with Dr. Jed Fahey of Johns Hopkins University, they were able to analyze a collection of 13 moringa species from around the world. They demonstrated that moringa leaves across the board contain 25%-30% protein, an astounding figure, putting moringa on par with eggs and meat.

The moringa revolution is beyond imagination. In less than a decade, a hundred lifetimes of work took place. It is an example of what all my mentors were trying to teach me: As individuals, we feel we are helpless, caught in circumstances and political systems, when, in fact, we have immense power within us waiting to be unleashed.

Our next stop was New Delhi, where we went to call on Dr. Gopalan, President of the Nutrition Foundation of India. Dr. Gopalan was an eminent scientist of worldwide repute, and the first person to have suggested scientific research on moringa leaves. We asked him if it was true that moringa contained protein.

“Certainly,” he said, “and in large quantities.”

Within hours, we were pouring through the literature. To our surprise, there was indeed evidence that the moringa leaves contain a large amount of protein of the highest quality. How could we have missed it? The information existed, but our eyes had not been opened to it. We were focused on vitamin A.

We started wondering what else we were blind to. We took a fresh look at moringa leaves, this time with no preconceived notions. Now moringa was no longer a means to our objective, it was the objective of our study.

What we found changed our perspective. Moringa leaves were not merely a preventative for blindness. They could help fight malnutrition on a global scale. 

We researched moringa for almost three years. Based on that information, we decided to create an authoritative book to be shared with the masses. 

Our research with the villagers had shown that for moringa to become a movement, it would need validation not only from international research, but also from local scientists. For that, local research was needed, which would require funding. It was important that the information percolate from the top down and not vice versa.   

Since heads of states are very busy people, our challenge was to convince them in less than 10 minutes that the book about moringa was worthy of being passed down the chain of command for further investigation. A second section of the book would need to provide backup information and data for their scientists. Creating such a piece turned out to be a tough assignment.

We knew we needed to create a piece of  “candy” . . .  a book that would evoke in people the desire to have it, not just a book filled with facts that spoke only to a person’s intellect. The facts about moringa had been available in libraries for many, many years, but they had never caught on with the masses. Our “candy” had to build a dream showing that the health of the readers’ families could improve because a very important source of nutrition grew right at their doorsteps.  

Our very capable team went through draft after draft. It was my job to be the bad guy who said, “No, the dream is still not there.” We had already spent four years and the book was not ready. Then a woman with just the expertise we needed joined Trees for Life as a volunteer for a year. She had quit her high-paying job with an advertising agency in New York, where she had designed and created annual reports for large pharmaceutical corporations. 

Like a skilled potter, she used facts as clay to create a beautiful piece of art. She was like a tigress. No one could get in her way. When someone suggested we use only one page to tell about the protein content of moringa, since we were short of space, she insisted the fact was important enough for two full pages. Those pages were filled with a large photograph of a girl playing soccer, symbolizing that protein builds our body. There were to be no compromises.  

The result was a beautifully illustrated 32-page book with a minimal amount of text, printed on the best available paper. I said “Yes” to this version of the book, which was both poetry and a dance.

A paper company donated the paper, and we secured another grant to help with the cost of printing 15,000 copies.

In 2005, we launched a campaign to distribute this book into all the right hands. The response was immediate and long lasting.

The book became the fulcrum for a worldwide movement to plant moringa trees. It was the pivot point that allowed the news about moringa to spread far and wide with very little effort. 

One of the first signs of the book’s impact came when I took a copy with me to India. I delivered it to a man who had long been disgusted with me for not providing information about moringa in writing.

“If moringa is so good, give me something in my hands in black and white,” he had told me.

After he read the book for just a few minutes, he pressed it close to his heart, as a child might hold on to a piece of candy.

“You cannot take it away from me. This exceeds my expectations,” he said.

There was a similar reaction when I gave the book to a former foreign minister in Nicaragua. He held the book to his chest in exactly the same way.

“You will have to kill me to get this book back,” he said.

A priest in Africa asked us to send him 10 books, which we did. He told us that when the books arrived, the customs agents wanted to levy a duty for imported books. 

“I went to them, opened the package and showed them the books,” he said. “I told them what the book was about. When that happened, they all said, ‘Please get more copies and distribute them around the country. But please, just give us one book.’”

We started receiving more and more reports like his. People from all over were asking us to send them another 10 books, another 15 books. We were spending hundreds of dollars a month just to ship them. One donor suggested we should start charging, but we knew that spreading the news of moringa was far more important than money. 

Even today, many of the manufacturers of moringa products use our literature and graphics. We did not want any credit ascribed to us, and we made sure people knew it. At the end of the book there was a statement: 

“This publication is totally, utterly, completely, absolutely and without a doubt copyright free. Share it freely with people who can make a difference.”

And they have.

The time had come to find a champion for moringa. We envisioned it would be someone very well known, well respected, and influential with the masses. Such a person could herald moringa for its Vitamin A content and its ability to prevent blindness, and everyone would listen.

We set our sights on Sai Baba, the Indian saint who was reputed to have 80 million followers around the world. He was most famous for manifesting sandalwood ash from his bare hands as a communion for his devotees. We knew Sai Baba could communicate with the masses through their hearts, rather than their minds. His message would reach far beyond those 80 million, to all the people whose lives they touched.

David Kimble, Trees for Life Executive Director, and I packed our bags and left for Puttaparthi, India. Our sole mission was to meet with Sai Baba and appeal to him to speak out for moringa. We didn’t have an appointment, but we decided that once we got there, we would find a way to see him.

We had done our homework. We had prepared a package the size of a matchbox that contained five moringa seeds and a small pamphlet explaining moringa’s benefits and how to plant and care for the trees. We were ready to tell Sai Baba that Trees for Life would finance the production of these boxes if he would be willing to give them out to his followers as his prasad—a holy gift to all those who flocked to him by the thousands to receive his darshan.

We flew to Bangalore then took a taxi to Sai Baba’s ashram in Puttaparthi and arrived late at night. Once we got there, we were told a room was available, but they had no sheets or towels; we were supposed to have brought our own. We slept on bare beds and rose early the next morning to attend Sai Baba’s darshan at 6:30 a.m. We were about five minutes late and, as we ran toward the tent, Sai Baba came out by himself. He looked at us and I bowed to him with folded hands. It was a brief, first personal glimpse, and then he went back inside where a crowd of about 10,000 people were gathered.

Before entering the tent, everyone took off their shoes. David and I put our shoes in a line with all the others. When we came out afterward, David’s shoes were right where he left them. My shoes were nowhere to be found. We both laughed.

There was another darshan in the afternoon. This time I wore simple canvas tennis shoes. David and I had a plan to foil any shoe thieves. We each put one of our shoes on one side of the entrance. The other shoe we put about 500 shoes away. We thought, who would want to steal just one shoe?

When we came out of the tent, David’s one shoe was there, but mine was missing. We checked the other side, 500 shoes away. David’s second shoe was there, but mine was gone. Once again, we laughed. What had happened was beyond our comprehension. 

The next day, we attended our third darshan. By then, I was wearing cheap flip flops. Guess what? When we came out to collect our shoes, David’s were in place and my flip flops had disappeared.

I was getting the message: come with total humility, not as a person trying to sell his idea to Sai Baba.

We were told that Sai Baba saw only a few people by appointment, and he selected who he wanted to see. Visitors could not approach him to get an appointment. One person advised us to share our message with Sai Baba’s personal physician. If he approved of the idea, he would share it with Sai Baba and perhaps he might invite us to see him. 

Getting an appointment with the doctor was another problem. He was head of Sai Baba’s new, state-of-the-art, multi-million-dollar heart hospital, and we were told he was a very busy man. The only possibility was to catch him at home, because he faithfully went home for lunch. We knocked on his door, unannounced, promptly at 1 p.m.

The doctor answered the door. He gave us a half-hearted greeting. It was obvious he was not expecting to be interrupted during his lunch hour.

“How can I help you?” he asked.

We apologized for the interruption.

“We would like to communicate the importance of moringa leaves to Sai Baba,” I said. “We were told to talk to you first and then, if you approved, you might relay the message to Baba.”

 “Come in! Come in! Come in!” he said hurriedly. Both David and I noticed the doctor’s face had turned ashen.

We had spent lots of money to get there, and I knew we had only one chance to sell our idea and the time was short. I went straight to the point. The doctor listened without any interruptions. I ended up speaking for almost 20 minutes.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” he asked, when I was finished talking.

“No,” I said.

“Now let me share something with you,” he said. “This morning, at the darshan, I was backstage. After Baba gave the darshan, he came backstage and started talking to me about moringa leaves. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I didn’t know what moringa was. Baba said, ‘These people believe the main contribution of moringa leaves is vitamin A. They are not aware of the protein content in moringa leaves and its quality.’ 

“He told me his grandmother used to feed him moringa leaves when he was growing up. He said he has a moringa tree growing outside his window, and he eats the leaves every day.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, the doctor continued, “Baba repeated the message seven or eight times. I was just standing there, wondering why he was telling me this and what it had to do with me.”

“When you stood at my door and said you had come to talk to me about moringa leaves, I thought I was seeing a ghost,” the doctor finished.

We realized Baba had sent his answer through the doctor: Check the protein content.

Before we left the next day, we attended another darshan. At that event, Sai Baba walked through the crowd of thousands, manifested hard candies and threw them to the people. David and I were sitting in a row through which he happened to pass. When Sai Baba passed me, he kicked me gently with his feet, and dropped three candies in my lap. 

“Oh, my gosh, how fortunate you are!” the man sitting next to me said. “He gave you three candies.”

“Here, one is for you,” I said, bowing to him while handing him a candy.

“No, no, no,” he said. “They were meant for you.”

In that moment I was fully aware that I had everything that I needed and Sai Baba was affirming my call to be a channel to share with others. I insisted that the man take the candy, and he accepted.

Bird Village was already a phenomenon. It was known as a holy spot, where people would come from miles away and be healed. Stories of healings started to spread as we were conducting our moringa field test. 

We were not impressed by these stories. Our goal was to see how people could empower each other by sharing the benefits of moringa. Our goal was not to impress people with what outsiders like us could do. 

For our first step, we met with the people to talk about moringa. Some of the groups were small, some large. They were men, women, young people, teachers, students, farmers, businessmen, and social workers. The greater the variety of people, the better it was. We called them focus groups and recorded and discussed most of what we learned each day. We must have met with 200 such groups. 

We used flip charts, posters, leaflets, and even a specially designed comic book. We had taken care that the information was scientifically correct.

We explained that a very important medicinal tonic was available to them right at their doorstep. They did not have to spend their precious resources to improve the health of their families, especially the women and children. 

We told them it was important that they articulate the message themselves and determine how it might travel through their own network, without the interference of outsiders and without resources expended on advertisements in the newspaper, or on radio and television. Outside interference was to be avoided, if possible, because outsiders had an agenda of their own. 

This went beyond moringa. Our question was: How can economically deprived people solve their own problems?

No one from our Wichita group spoke the language except me, so I was the main person the villagers could talk to. One of the village leaders found this process to be so important that he went to all the villages around that area and arranged meetings at 8 o’clock at night, which was the best time for the villagers because they had finished all their daily chores, including meals, and there were no other distractions. Most of the time our team traveled to the villages on the Training Center’s tractor, the only tractor for miles around.

We were surprised how cogent the villagers’ inputs were. Though they were quite poor and mostly uneducated, they were capable of precisely articulating their messages, as long as they were not being lectured to and knew the questions were sincere. For example, in one focus group a man spoke: 

“People from the outside who come to our villages think we are all alike,” he said. He added that when outsiders get advice from one of the villagers, they think that person represents all of the villagers, as if they were a homogenous unit. 

“In fact, there are many differences among us,” he said. “There are circles within circles within circles.” 

That group articulated five major groups or markets to consider: children, youth, women, men, and grandparents. For the moringa campaign to succeed, there would have to be five different messages, one to target each group, created with a common theme. For it to have impact, messages to each market would have to go out simultaneously, not one at a time.

Another group explained to us the changing dynamics of their society. For thousands of years, information had come top down, from the elders to the children. Now, because the grandparents and parents were uneducated and had no way of knowing what was going on in the world, they relied on their children to pass the information up to them. 

Armed with such advice, we designed the booklets and posters for students, explaining the nutritional benefits in terms of vitamins, minerals, and protein and how they affect our bodies. An artist familiar with their culture designed a comic book, explaining these facts in an interesting way for the children. 

We went to the schools and played games, sang songs and danced to draw them in. For example, if there was a fact that used the number 6 ½, I jumped once, and the children shouted, “One!” I performed the same routine, through the number six.

“How do I jump for the half?” I asked.

“Jump on one leg!” someone suggested.

I acted dumb and asked the unsuspecting principal to show me how to jump on one leg, evoking laughter from the audience. Sometimes, when I went into a village, children shouted, “Mathur has arrived! Mathur has arrived!”

I asked the kids in those schools to share with two other people whatever information or knowledge they got that day, if they believed the information was important. I used the drill, raising two fingers high. “How many people are you going to share this information with?” They shouted, “Two!”

“When will you do that?” I asked as I pointed down to the earth. “Now!” they responded.

In many of these meetings, I told the children they should share the information about moringa with their parents. I playfully planted an idea among them.

 “Tell your mom if she does not cook moringa leaves for you, you will not eat.” Children understood the mischievous intent behind it and gladly joined in. We heard from many mothers.

Similarly, the youth came up with the idea that they would join hands by taking inventory of moringa trees in their villages. Upon completion, they would plant the necessary number of moringa trees and take care of them, usually 20 to 50 trees. After that, they would receive a typewriter for their youth club. They became very active participants. We provided paint and brushes to these young people. They painted a slogan about moringa leaves on roadside brick fences, a popular advertising medium in rural India. The slogan was: “Moringa leaves fight 300 diseases.”

This was a simple, but powerful, message that had emerged when I was meeting with a group of about 30 women. I told them the Indian Ayurvedic system of medicine tells us that moringa leaves fight 300 diseases. Upon hearing this, one woman got quite angry.

“If these leaves have such potential, why isn’t our government broadcasting this message to each and every household?” she asked. Most of the other women joined her. At that moment, I knew what our slogan would be. I felt I had my hand on their pulse. 

The villagers seemed to have plenty of hidden talent to write, create, and produce effective plays about the benefits of moringa leaves. Each play used original songs with great rhythm and drama. These plays started after dinner and continued till late at night. All the men, women, and children sat on the ground spellbound. 

School children recruited their parents to join them in parades through the villages. The kids held banners and chanted, “Moringa leaves fight 300 diseases!”

Cooking classes were held for the women by home-cooking experts. The women loved the idea of learning a newer way of cooking in the companionship of other women. It was a new idea for these women, who had learned traditional cooking from their parents. 

Because of moringa’s unusually high nutritional value, our moringa slogan, intended for mothers and grandmothers, was “Mother’s Best Friend.” 

To the men, the message emphasized that with better nutrition provided by moringa leaves, the family would be healthier and save on paying money for the doctor. In addition, moringa leaves could be sold in the market to earn money, and the leaves made excellent fodder for their cattle, increasing milk production.

A year after completing our marketing tests, we retained an independent group to investigate if our message had taken root and if the people were applying that information in their lives. A team of a dozen people conducted surveys for two weeks. After thorough research, they found that 84 percent of the people knew the message and could repeat the slogan. But most importantly, the people reported they were incorporating moringa leaves two or three times a week in their meals.

With very little money spent and following the instincts and advice of the local people, the campaign to bring moringa out of the dark in those 20 villages proved to be highly successful. We also learned that the message had already started to seep into other nearby villages. For example, a school teacher at another village shared the knowledge in her village, a few miles away. The method was working. 

Now our task was to share with a larger audience the information about moringa’s potential to prevent blindness.

A few weeks after I met the barefoot messenger in Bird Village, one of my associates and I flew to Hyderabad in south India to meet with a group of scientists at the Nutrition Foundation of India. As we entered the building, I saw a large cloth banner reading:

“Moringa leaves contain ten times more beta carotene than carrots.”

This information hit me as if someone had slammed a two-by-four squarely between my eyes. I was stunned. I knew that beta carotene was the precursor of vitamin A, and that diets deficient in vitamin A were the cause of millions of children around the world going blind each year. I did not know that moringa leaves contained such great amounts of beta carotene. They could save millions of innocent young children from the clutches of blindness.

My friend who had traveled with me could not understand why I was standing there with dazed eyes in front of this banner. He pulled me by my arm and reminded me that people were waiting for us inside. We had rushed through the maddening traffic of Hyderabad to get there, and now I was wasting valuable time right in front of our destination.

I stood there in disbelief. The barefoot messenger who had traveled to Bird Village was right. It can’t be, I thought. Not only was he right about moringa, he was also right about the information reaching the scientists. How could he have known?

As a result, the meeting with the scientists took a different turn than originally planned. I was no longer interested in other fruit trees. I pelted them with questions about the moringa tree. Were the moringa leaves digestible after cooking? Was the beta carotene digestible? Was vitamin A lost in cooking? What were the side effects? On and on my questions went.

My partner was disgusted with me for having changed the agenda of the meeting without notice. It was as if we had been floating together on a river and, all of a sudden, an undercurrent had caught hold of me.

After that, information about moringa started to pour in from all sources. There was ample information about the vitamin A in moringa, but it was locked in the Ivory Towers. It had not trickled down to the grassroots.

Trees for Life decided to do a social marketing test to see how this message could be delivered to the masses, where it was needed. As we were strategizing, a grant from Opportunities for Micro-Nutrient Interventions (OMNI) Research fell into our lap. Amazingly, the grant opportunity was specifically for testing social communications for micronutrients, which was OMNI’s focus. The timing of the coincidence was uncanny.

With the support of the grant, five of us from Wichita went to Orissa in 1995-1996 to conduct a five-month test campaign in 20 isolated villages, with Bird Village and the Learning Center as our base.

A barefoot man showed up while I was at Bird Village in Orissa. Upon learning that a group of people were helping villagers plant fruit trees, he had come to share an important message with their leader. The message: “The leaves of the moringa tree prevent 300 diseases.”

He was a Vaidya, the practitioner of India’s ancient medicinal arts, and he lived in a remote hinterland more than 100 miles away from Bird Village. It had taken him four days to travel by foot and bus. He was neatly dressed in white, native clothes, with a gray handlebar mustache. He carried no luggage and wore no shoes. He said he was 80 years old, but he looked much younger. 

I treated him with due respect, as I did all of the visitors to the villagers, but I did not believe his preposterous claim about the moringa tree.

“If this tree is so good, why hasn’t it been recognized in the Western medicinal literature?” I asked him.

“It shall happen,” he said gently, but with great confidence.

That is what is wrong with India, I thought to myself. Here is a poor man living in the poorest part of India, which has been frozen in time for millennia. He has never seen other parts of India, nor does he know anything about Western medicine. Yet he dares to predict what Western medicine will do. It is this arrogant weight of the dead past that has kept India in darkness.

The man stayed with us that night at the camp and talked freely, with great dignity and authority, yet never repeated the message he gave me upon his arrival. That night, he washed his clothes and hung them up to dry. They were his only possessions. Realizing that this trip was sacrificial for him, I offered to cover his travel expenses, but he did not want any part of that. 

The next day, I saw him leave. He did not look back as he strode on that dusty path. It seemed to make no difference to him that I did not give credence to the message he had delivered. It was as if he had been waiting to deliver the message and now his job was done.

I felt that since his message was not important, he was not important. I did not think it necessary to get his name or the name of his village. I saw him fade back into the ancient past from whence he had emerged.

I had awakened in the middle of the night and was lying in bed when I saw two figures. It took a brief moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark. Not wanting to draw their attention, I lay there motionless. Quietly, they walked straight toward me and stopped next to my bed.

Since I was lying on my side, I had a clear view. There were two boys; in front was a boy perhaps eight years old, the other boy was taller, perhaps in his late teens. I thought his looks were deceptive because he seemed older than he looked. 

They each had on only a pair of white cotton shorts, which were soiled with dirt. From their dark, bare bodies, I could make out that they were from rural India. Both boys were blind. They were each holding one end of a bamboo stick. Having grown up in India, I had often seen the “blind leading the blind” this way.

Without any formalities, the older one spoke: “You have to help us.”

His face and eyes were focused on me. I understood exactly what he meant. They were not seeking personal help. They wanted me to help the blind.

“I cannot help.” The words rushed out of me. I sounded abrupt and tactless, even to me. 

The younger boy looked back at his companion, as if he had been told to expect a different answer. The older boy just stood there, silently looking at me as if he had expected that answer. 

“I am not trying to get out of helping you, but I don’t know what to do,” I explained. The two boys just stood there without saying a word.

“I have no means by which to help you,” I continued to explain. 

“When you make up your mind, you will find a way,” said the older boy. There was an expression of irritation and disappointment on his face, as if he expected me to know that much.

At that moment, I realized we were not talking in words but communicating thoughts to each other. 

“I will,” I said. I will.

Immediately, I regretted my statement. A realization swept over me that I had just bought an extra load of work I did not need. I could not tell whether I had made that promise to console these two visitors or to experience a new adventure. But whatever the reason, it was going to be a heavy burden and a long road. 

I looked at the older boy. His eyelids had closed over his blind eyes. A thought crossed my mind: They are allowing me to change my mind, if I want to. The two boys just stood there. I could feel their deep silence. 

Use your reason, I heard a part of me argue. You do not have to take the load. You can still say no.

I refused to agree with that idea. For whatever reason, I had made a commitment and was going to keep it, irrespective of the cost. There was no going back. 

Again, I looked at the older boy and this time I saw a glow coming through his peaceful face. Then both of them started to melt into the dark. They were made of mist—tiny white particles that started to slowly dissipate in front of my eyes—as if blowing away, even without a breeze. 

I turned over and saw Treva in deep sleep. After a moment, I reached out and touched her gently, making sure not to wake her. I needed to find my bearings, in more ways than one. 

Lying there, I was very confident of what I had experienced, but unsure of what had happened. Was it a dream, or a vision? My eyes were wide open, and the two boys could not have been more real. Someone, something, had stood next to me. I had seen them coming from a distance, but my bed was hardly six feet from the wall. Was I really in my bed, or was I someplace else when I experienced this? It was a peculiar mixture of certainty and uncertainty. I could not go back to sleep, but I was unwilling or incapable of getting out of bed. My mind was racing a hundred miles an hour. Something was repeating itself, like a broken record. I could not decipher what it was, but it was heavy and grating. I started to fall into a dark vacuum, and when I woke up again, it was late morning. 

Treva had long since left for the office, leaving my chai and toast on the kitchen counter.            

“I love you, Sweetheart!” I shouted at the top of my lungs to fill the empty house.

Quite often after this experience, without notice, the image of those two blind boys would pop up in my mind.

“I will. I will,” I would assure them each time. It was my way of telling them that my mind was made up, but I still had not found the way. But I knew better. This was my excuse to hide my inertia.

I knew the two blind boys were from India. I decided to find ways to help the blind in India. I talked to anyone who knew something about blindness. A friend told me about a library in Kansas City wanting to get rid of some Braille books. Immediately, I acquired the entire set of 150 books and shipped them to the Red Cross in New Delhi. A friend in Chicago learned of my interest in the blind and donated a Braille machine. I hand carried it to India as my private luggage and Pan Am Airways allowed me to take the extra bag without charge. I investigated the price of a computer that could print Braille books. It was $25,000 at that time, and I was determined to get it funded. 

I was learning something every day, talking to people and doing whatever I could. I was walking on an unknown trail, without knowing where it went.

At Bird Village, there was a local saying about mythological people whose feet face backward—even as they are facing you, they lead you in the opposite direction. This sounds horrible, but the saying was reserved for people whom they connected with and trusted to take them out of their miseries. The villagers believed that the very step of such a person unraveled their problems. Behind my back, they started to use that phrase for me. That became the myth of me and I saw the danger signs. People would not remember the formula for power or the essence of development. They would just remember the man.

For that reason, I felt it was necessary to leave Bird Village. Activities were at the peak and much was happening. It was a way to bring home to the people that positive changes were happening because of their efforts, because of the power within them individually and collectively, not because of Trees for Life. They had learned what they needed to do and they were doing it without direction from me. The flame had ignited the candle and should now leave.

I discussed the idea with our Trees for Life staff in Wichita. There was a great uproar. The entire group met without me and decided I needed to reconsider my decision. We had invested so much time, effort, and money that it would be foolish to change course now. After that, they met with me. I explained to them we were setting a pace not just for the Bird Village project. We were setting an example for the process of development. We had to demonstrate that people could do things by themselves rather than being dependent on others. And, for us, if we were to serve people, we had to be caring, but not emotionally attached. We, as a group, had to learn and practice that. 

The team in Bird Village reacted as though they were being abandoned at the height of their glory and fame. They asked me what they had done wrong and what they could do to keep us there. I assured them of our love and caring for them. I was leaving not because they were lacking anything, but because they were doing very well. It was time for them to fly solo, to use the lessons they had learned. It was time for them to be the leaders of their communities and spread the idea that they could lift themselves up.

Practically everyone predicted a collapse. 

Over the years, things worked out very well. The state government realized we had made that 40 acres of land highly productive and took over the management of the area. As a result, the tree nursery was expanded and started to provide between 300,000 and 400,000 saplings annually. The area that had looked like a moonscape was now full of greenery. The lake was taken over by the fisheries department. The village developed a fish hatchery there and other villages dug their own lakes and produced fish for their meals and to sell. Schools and colleges were built, some specifically for women. Tens of thousands of water wells were dug where there previously were none. The income of the farmers increased many-fold. People who had been living in grass and mud huts were now living in brick houses. 

We did not do all of that. The people did it themselves. And they knew it.

Bird Village, where the Learning Center was located, was one of the remotest of remote villages. The living conditions were such that it seemed Jesus might have walked there only yesterday. 

This is where I must dig in to learn what I need to learn, I thought. It was the perfect lab for me to figure out how to help the poor, something I couldn’t do while sitting in America.

I called a friend in Allahabad and requested him to acquire one of the large tents used to house the spiritual pilgrims at the Kumbh Mela. His grandson delivered the tent. 

I stayed at the village for five months. A team of five people from Wichita and several local volunteers joined me. After that, I was there sometimes twice in a month for the next three or four years.

It was not easy camping. In the beginning, we had to travel eight miles to use the phone, which cost $3 a minute in cash to call the United States. We could rack up a huge bill in a very short time. There were no credit cards. Quite often, it could take several attempts and hours to connect. It was a frustrating experience for our families. Later, a line was provided at our campsite, but we could only make or receive calls through a private telephone contractor. We had a large laptop, but there was no Internet.

We decided not to have a car at our disposal for two reasons: First, we wanted to experience life as the people there lived it—and they did not have cars. Second, it was important that the people understood we were not superior to them, so we used public transportation—open jeeps, surplus from World War II. The fare was only a few cents because 12 or more passengers would squeeze in and hang by the doors as those jeeps plied slowly, but daringly, over the deep potholes. 

A few curiosity seekers started to drop in. They included a doctor from a village that was five miles away. He asked if he could be of any help. I suggested he come and examine patients on Tuesday evenings for a couple of hours. A small clinic was established at the campsite.

The news started to spread, and the crowds multiplied. People would arrive the night before and camp out. In the mornings, there might be 100 people sleeping on the ground, so we had to construct an outhouse. A medical assistant was hired to help the doctor. A dozen young people from nearby towns volunteered to take blood pressure, give shots, keep records, and help patients in other ways. Instead of a few hours, the doctor had to be there all day long, working late into the evenings. Soon the doctor reported that his practice was going down because even his regular patients were coming to the campsite, rather than to his office. They believed the campsite was holy ground and that healing took place there, irrespective of the doctor. The doctor did not seem unhappy about this because he also believed it to be true and may have been one of the instigators of the story.

Word spread that I was a saint who had arrived from America, along with my followers. It started when water gushed from the spot where I had stood and challenged the villagers to dig the first well. They believed water appeared because I had been standing on that spot. Stories began circulating of healing and miracles. Some even said, “God has arrived. If he touches you, you will be healed.” I worried that when these rumors were not sustained by facts, eventually there would be letdown and disappointment. At every step, I tried to squelch the rumors, which proved impossible. Local friends advised me that where medicine was not available, faith played an important role, and I should not try to crush that.

The camp was full of activity. It was run like an ashram, with many dedicated people working hard and living simply. At 5 a.m. every day, I went on a brisk five-mile walk. Sometimes, my associates joined me. At 7 a.m., we ate breakfast under the tent. People started to arrive at that time. Lunch was at 1 p.m. and many people joined us. The meal was kept very simple: Indian flat bread (chapati), lentils, one vegetable dish, a piece of lemon, and salt on the side. Dinner was at 7 p.m.—rice, lentils, and one vegetable, mostly for people living at the camp. 

The operation of the camp was made possible because a businessman from a town about 50 miles away took charge of the finances and the management. Very efficiently, he staffed the camp, hired cars when needed, and visited the camp on a regular basis. He sent his personal cook to cook for us. The cook was unflappable, no matter how many extra people showed up for a meal at the last minute. Somehow, magically, he would have the necessary food. He worked day and night, and single-handedly made sure the kitchen was well-managed. Because of him, our team didn’t have to worry about these details.

My main job was to meet the people and to direct the action. I was like the captain on a ship. The ship was being run by many people, who would not let me do anything. I was presiding and not pitching tents, managing the crowds, serving food, or any of those things, because the team and volunteers refused to let me. They took those jobs away from me out of affection. 

A good part of my days was spent visiting other villages. It was easy for people to figure out which road I would be coming back on. They would stand for hours on the roadside to stop me when our car passed, asking me to visit their village. They would not let me go by. 

“You have to come to our village,” they said.

“I have nothing to offer you,” I would answer. “Just come to Bird Village.”

“We are not asking you for anything,” they insisted. “Just you stepping into our village would be ample.”

It was the same story in village after village. 

Most of the time, I had to take a raincheck, which I made sure to keep. I would walk to some of the villages close by, and bike or go by rented car to the most distant villages. 

I realized that if the villagers were going to move into the modern era, they needed to change their perception of time. In that centuries-old culture, where the movement of people and goods was practically non-existent, appointments were made by season. For example, they would say, “I will see you next summer.” I made punctuality the starting point for changing this perception. It was like the needle through which the injection is given.

I insisted that if they wanted to see me, they had to be exactly on time. They had to learn to respect time, and they had to pay attention not just to the month, week, and the day, but also to the minutes. In the beginning, they found it very hard, but when they realized I would not meet after the scheduled time, people started being prompt. Once, we organized a conference of practitioners of native medicine. People came from as far away as 150 miles. Instead of being hours late, as was the tradition, everyone was there 30 minutes early. They requested that the meeting start earlier than scheduled because all of the participants were there. The needle hurt, but the injection was working.

I made another point about the magic of perception. I told them honestly that I did not have anything to give them. I would turn my pockets inside out to make the point. I told them they had all the ingredients to succeed. I was there to provide a slight twist in perception that would do the magic. I would use the example of a candle, which had all it needed to create light except for the spark of fire from an outside source. I was there to help provide that little spark so they could light themselves and provide the light for others. People related to that example and listened raptly.

Several volunteers from the U.S. and Europe visited while I was there. Volunteers came by the dozens from towns near and far. These volunteers brought information to the people on water harvesting, mulching, beekeeping, medicinal plants, and fuel-efficient stoves.

One biochemist on our team told us he had learned about a process through which the land could be regenerated by introducing microbes into the soil. At almost the same time, a journalist in California wrote an article in SPAN magazine about Trees for Life. This excellent magazine, published by the American Embassy in India, was read by the chairman of a large agrochemical company who sought me out and came to meet me. He told me that his company’s scientists had identified and isolated the bacteria culture that is in the guts of cows when they give birth. It is this primordial bacterium that enables cows to eat common grass and, within 24 hours, convert it into nutritious milk. This bacterium is what makes cow dung good for the land and highly valued by Indian farmers.

I made a trip to the industrial complex of this agrochemical company in Bombay where they

extracted this bacterium. Impressed, several other members of the team also visited the company. The agrochemical company was willing to share with us the bacteria culture that could spark life back into the land. They had simplified the process so it could be done by any farmer for use on his fields. 

The process required digging a slurry pit to which was added the bacteria culture, water, a certain quantity of starches, such as sugar cane or sweet potatoes, and plenty of cow dung. Within a few days, the bacteria multiplied billions of times, and the life-giving slurry was ready to spray on any organic material, such as grass clippings, leaves, or food leftovers. After two or three days, the organic material needed to be turned over, and after a week it turned into high-quality fertilizer. When spread on fields, it increased a farmer’s harvest many-fold. 

We were only able to create this organic fertilizer at the Learning Center on a limited scale because villagers need to use cow dung for fuel, so there was not enough to put into the slurry. We shared the slurry-making process with farmers in the surrounding area. Some were able to create the fertilizer and significantly improved their crop yields.

With the guidance of an enlightened forest officer, all native medicinal trees from that area were identified and planted to safeguard the stock (germplasm) for posterity. It was the only such garden in the state of Orissa. And adjacent to the big lake, a tree nursery was established with the potential of producing hundreds of thousands of saplings. The seed of change started to sprout. A huge amount of collaboration started to take place and things began to improve. People just woke up.

From this experiment I learned several lessons and saw many others reinforced. We experienced repeatedly that empowerment does not come from goods and giveaways. Empowerment is the result of changes in perception. In one village, a young man argued with me that his village needed a television set to view a popular television series. I told him that I would invest the same amount of money as the cost of a television set to spur development in his village, so that each villager could one day have their own television set. Six years later I visited the same village. I was told by the village head that their income had increased 15-fold in that short span of time. The village was awash in television sets, including one for the young man.

I also saw again and again proof that everything is interconnected. When one thing is done and done well, that leads to another development and another and another. When one person showed up, others followed. That interconnectedness manifested itself in mysterious ways.

At the conference of practitioners of native medicine, the group of 100 or more people agreed there was a need for a tractor if they were to make the improvements we had talked about. There was no tractor in the area. I told the group that when we identify our problems and focus on them as one body, something miraculous takes place. After the meeting, everyone joined hands and formed a large, wide circle. In their native language they sang, “We shall overcome.” People sang at the top of their voices. There was pathos, a plea, and power in their voices. At the end, a shudder went through the circle. Everyone felt it—something had changed.

They all just looked at me. No one wanted to break the circle. Within five minutes, I was told I had received a call from New Delhi with a request for me to call back. The phone was a 15-minute walk away, so I ran. The call was from the president of a tractor company. He said they were donating a tractor to us. The company was 700 miles away. 

“How are we going to get the tractor?” I asked, assuming it would take six months.

“Someone will leave tomorrow to drive it to your place,” he answered.

In five days, we had the tractor.