Wells in Tanzania
| Water is the source of life, especially in Africa. In August 2006, ten members of Lord of Life Lutheran’s Mission Tanzania: A Spiritual Safari trip to Iringa, Tanzania experienced first-hand the need for clean safe drinking water in its partner villages. Shortly after the team presented its findings to the church, Lord of Life funded three desperately needed wells to be drilled in its companion church villages. Twice a day, women and girls walk two miles to a stream to get water for cooking and cleaning. They carry the buckets home, which weigh approximately 30 pounds, on the top of their heads, often while wearing a baby on their back and with one or two children in tow. Now that there is clean water available, not only have the women found more time to do their many other chores, it is expected there will be a forty percent reduction in illness at these three sites. Over one billion people lack access to safe, clean drinking water, which is one of the leading health challenges in the world today. Four million children die from water-borne diseases. According to UNICEF, diarrhea is spread easily in an environment of poor hygiene and inadequate sanitation and kills two million people every year, most of them children under the age of five. |
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