People in Mozambique would laugh at such a dilemma. If water were money, I’d be Jeff Bezos. We’d all be. Meanwhile much of the world is struggling to get by on the salary of an Uber driver with an expired license.
A recent New York Times article about Fine Water gave me quite a chuckle. But it might not be a laughing matter to the 700,000,000 people worldwide who don’t have access to clean water.
According to the article, Fine Water is a new, and expensive, way to get those all-important liquid hydrogen and oxygen molecules into your bloodstream. The Fine Water scene is flowing with water tasting contests, designer water bars, home water cellars, food and water pairings, and water sommelier courses. Some examples of Fine Water include melted snow that has been filtered through Peruvian volcanic rock, deep sea water collected off the coast of South Korea, and H2O gathered in nets from a Tasmanian pine forest. I’m guessing the water I drank from the backyard hose in the hot Michigan summers isn’t winning any awards.
Nor would the muddy, bug-infested water that many Mozambicans spend hours collecting for their daily drinking, bathing, and cooking. The ministry I help lead, Life for Mozambique (LFM), is trying to change this. It’s our dream to see 500 clean water wells built across Mozambique.
LFM is headquartered in the city of Beira, the second largest city in Mozambique with about 650,000 residents. U.S. cities of similar populations are Seattle, Denver, and Memphis. At first, driving out of Beira into the country isn’t much different than driving through rural America. Paved streets become dusty and bumpy dirt roads. Suburban neighborhoods give way to fields, marshlands, and forests. Suddenly it feels like you’ve landed in the middle of nowhere. But it’s not nowhere. It’s somewhere for many, many Mozambicans. Because hidden from view and dotted throughout this rural countryside are communities filled with thousands of people.
Head east on I-70 from Denver and the grasslands and the prairies quickly takeover. I once drove across Nebraska. It too felt like the middle of nowhere. Use your maps app to zoom in on eastern Colorado and it’s shocking how few tiny black dots there are. But those dots are there. It’s a somewhere to many Americans. For example, a hundred miles from Denver, there’s Limon, Colorado, a black dot town of three-square miles and 1,800 people. They have a La Quinta, a bowling alley, and an IHOP. There’s a golf course and Municipal Airport too.
Zoom in on the area outside of Beira and there are few black dots as well. But here’s where the similarities stop and the differences take over. While the American Great Plains are peppered with single-family farms and ranches, rural Mozambique is filled with secluded villages and communities each populated with hundreds or even thousands of families.
I don’t have stats to verify this but there might actually be more people living in rural villages outside of Beira than in the 500 miles along I-70 between Denver and Topeka.
Another difference is that entering one of these villages is like going back in time or visiting the set of Gilligan’s Island. People live in straw and grass thatched huts, cook on fires outside the front door, and walk for hours to collect water. Limon, Colorado might be rural, but I don’t think there are any residents without running water. Every room in the La Quinta has a hot shower and you can easily request a glass of water with your flapjacks at the IHOP.
What’s amazing is that the Mozambican Covenant Church, which is supported by Life for Mozambique, has established churches in over 570 rural communities and villages. And each of them needs a clean water well.
Communities like Ceramica, which is home to over 850 families that use unreliable, impure hand-dug wells while hoping for a good rainy season to top them off. Or the village of Tica that has over 2,000 families. There, women and children walk for miles to collect dirty lake water. A similar plight is felt by the 1,000 families in a village called Lemego. Same goes for the 900 families in Nhangau. The list goes on and on.
There’s one community that can now be crossed off of the list. It’s a big community, not far from Beira, called Nhangulo. Over 3,800 families have been given a gift. The women are no longer walking 10 hours to collect water or contending with venomous snakes while traversing through the jungle. Because in April of this year Nhangulo received a deep, professionally dug, clean water well. Thirst is being quenched. Water is flowing where it was once scarce.
Later this year the community of Marromeu will be receiving a well. Two wells a year is a great start, but it’s not rapidly moving the needle toward the goal of 500. It’s a scary dream, but dreams don’t work unless I do. So, I’ll keep working. And praying. The Nhangulo well was funded by a single generous donor. The Marromeu well was primarily financed by a couple at a partner church. They sold off some stocks and, instead of birthday gifts, requested money for the well from friends and family. The Ceramica well will be funded by year’s end, helped by a $2,500 gift from a couple in northern California. They saw a mention of Life for Mozambique’s water well projects in a prayer calendar and inquired how to financially help out.
In August I’m going to Mozambique. I’ll be able to visit Nhangulo and we’ll inaugurate its well with prayers, food, and a ceremony. Then we’ll be heading to Ceramica. What a priceless joy to meet the people who will soon receive a well.
Each well costs about $10K to install. Multiply that by 500 and we need to raise quite a sum. Water from a deep, professionally dug well is clean and pure enough to drink without any additional treatment. It doesn’t have to be boiled or filtered through Peruvian volcanic rock. How amazing that something so vital is directly underground. It just needs to be brought to the surface.
I doubt it will win an award at next year’s Fine Water competition, but to the people of Mozambique, it will be the best thing they’ve ever tasted.
