Our mission program in Africa concentrates on the Singida region of Tanzania. This area is especially susceptible to famine, disease and starvation due to chronic drought.
During the dry season,water sources become scarce, and dammed up water reservoirs become very shallow and dirty. As a result, many children die from dysentery or other preventable diseases every year.
On June 10, 2009, several of the participants from the trip went on a "water walk" in order to get a feel for what the women of Sagara go through every day in order to provide water for their families. They walk about 4 miles to the village of Itaja to collect water and then 4 miles home, before starting the business of their day. It was truly a life changing experience and which was documented in the short film below.
We were appalled by the water quality and the hardships that these village women faced everyday and solidified our commitment to raising money for a local well.
Our efforts were redoubled when, on the morning of December 29, 2009 before 7:00 a.m., the dam holding the water reservoir in the village of Itaja, in the Singida region of Tanzania, burst- sending thousands of gallons of water, mud and silt into the water collection area and across the countryside. Many shambas (farms) were ruined, but miraculously, no one was killed, even though many people were collecting water at that time.
Village leaders were notified by people sending the message, 'The dam has broken and the water is coming!' The huge amount of water flowed all the way through the ruined reservoir almost four miles away in the village of Sagara and many miles on northward. This reservoir served the water needs of at least 10,000 people and over 6,000 livestock animals. We currently have raised about the half the necessary funds to provide clean water to this area, and hope to raise the rest by summer 2010.
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In 2009, members of the Kentucky Baptist Convention partnered with us and our local mission partner, Bega kwa Bega on our Africa project. An inter-denominational team of 29 worked with the local church in the town of Singida to build a worship and community center. The building, funded primarily by the Kentucky Baptist Convention and local Kentucky Missionary Associations, is used as a sanctuary and worship facility by the local church in Singida, as well as a Bible school for discipling new pastors and new church leaders for the more rural evangelized areas of the region. It is our goal to also use this facility as a community training center to teach appropriate technologies such as solar cooking, drought resistant farming techniques, healthier cooking methods/kitchen gardening for family nutrition and possibly begin a cottage industry.
