Wine to Water

Former bartender-turned-water hero Doc Hendley is someone to emulate. His book Wine to Water is subtitled: A Bartender’s Quest to Bring Clean Water to the World, and in the opening chapter we see just how dangerous that quest was via a riveting account of fleeing from armed Janjaweed tribesmen in Darfur. Hendley was transporting the means to make water safe, to repair wells, to improve lives, and the Janjaweed would do just about anything to prevent any of that. They dumped rotting corpses into water sources, and shot up giant water-storage bladders. Their goals were genocidal. Despite some criticism of Hendley’s prose, I found the read inspirational. His was a simple idea, that one person’s dream could change the world. And this regular Joe managed to do just that. He went from raising funds hosting wine-tasting fundraisers in North Carolina to risking his life on the other side of the world and eventually creating a worldwide organization—Wine to Water—committed to the simple idea of giving people safe water to drink. Maybe his example will inspire more people with good ideas.