My old blocked blog - Marc's Spot - How you can access it!

Hi Friends.

Due to a major technical situation, I cannot any longer edit or add to the blog I started back in 2009, which is why I started the new one--The G Factor.  If you want to see those older articles, (and believe me, there's some juicy gems), you can.  Here is the link:

http://marcthespot.blogspot.com/

Enjoy.

Marc

Water to wash with.

Here in West Africa, the health authorities are pushing pretty hard to make sure people are washing their hands.  With the recent health issues, the Red Cross has even sent hand-washing buckets to every family in our village along with soap.

One problem.  There's only one pump in our village giving clean water.  That's one deep well for about 1000 people.  (Even our own solar pump has stopped working
this last month and we're finding that our well isn't deep enough for dry season!)

We remember hauling water from that village pump.  It's quite a walk to haul a 10 or 20 liter jug on your head or shoulder up to our house.  If I don't get our pump fixed soon, it looks like we'll be doing that same again.

People need to get water from that pump to drink and cook with.  Frankly that pump can't give enough water for people to use constantly for washing things.  The chief of the village came up with a plan to limit pump traffic.  He made a rule against using the pump water to wash your laundry or even for washing yourself.

So, now we have like a thousand people with hand-washing stations at their homes, but they won't likely be able to get water at the village well for washing.

This is just one village and at least this village has a well.  I've been in lots of villages where there is no deep well--only a few shallow ones that dry up in dry season.

So, here my villager friends are with a bunch of nice plastic buckets with faucets on them.  They probably even have a bunch of bleach and soap.  But are they able to get water enough to fill their buckets?  I doubt it.

We people in the US take running water and sewer systems for granted.  Imagine what you would need to do if these things were suddenly taken away from you.  Just getting water you'd be satisfied with for washing might be a big task that would use up much of your daily energy, let alone getting water safe enough to drink.

A church in Missouri is currently working on raising funds to help us get some updated well-drilling equipment as well as several pumps for these villages that really need more access to clean water.  We have a special project fund to help fund pumps for these villages.

If you are interested in contributing to our Village Wells and Sanitation fund, you may send a donation made out to Pioneer Bible Translators (make sure to write village wells on the memo line) to:

PBT-Gebhard
P.O. Box 10184
Terre Haute, IN 47801

Thank you for helping our neighbors fill their buckets with something to drink or wash up with.

Marc