#02 Mchenga

Mchenga's village was slightly smaller than others we had previously visited. However, very soon we realized, when talking about water, numbers don't matter that much... It's all about the people.

When coming into the village, our first thought was that it seemed very similar to others we had visited in terms of conditions: isolated, poor hygiene, lack of sanitation. Overall, a pretty horrible living situation.

We wanted to really know how pressing was their need for water so we decided to accompany the women and girls to their usual fetching walk.

The journey was very long in fact, we struggled to get there: walking over a kilometer and with a steep slope to reach a small brook. Very quickly we realized it would take them several hours a day to get water and even so, the conditions of this were awful. The water was muddy, and they would share it with animals who drank, pee, and pooped in that same pond.

The color of the water was brown in the best case. Not drinkable or even possible to cook or bath with. But the worst part is that after fetching for it, they had to go back to their humble homes loaded up with huge buckets of dirty water on their heads.

Once we saw this situation, we were crucially decided to build a water well in this location.

We are happy to say, now the 78 people living in Mchenga are able to drink clean water thanks to the construction of our well.

The color of the water was brown in the best case.