Baths & Laundry: WASH Changes Lives

(blog post submitted by Jennifer Searls)
It was a wet spring break here in the Willamette Valley and I have two boys, 10 & 6, who spent some of their vacation time developing their skills as mud-engineers. These projects always remind me how much I appreciate my washing machine and the clean water flowing from our tub faucet.

As I watched the rain fill our backyard puddles last week, I found myself thinking about the mothers I met when I traveled to Zambia with WaterAfrica in 2010.  Our Spring Break puddles are a delightful environment for mud-play. Their puddles are their drinking water.

Spring break is over and we return to school routines at our house this week. As a mother in this elementary school stage of life, I am particularly drawn to this story WaterAfrica recently received from World Vision Zambia:

Evelyn Hamphande is 11 years old and lives with her mother, father and six brothers and sisters in Susumambo village located in Hamaaundu ADP. 


Evelyn loves going to school and enjoys Math and English. She plans to be a nurse when she grows up because she wants to help people that are sick and in need of care in her village.


 Evelyn’s school is close to her home and she quickly takes a bath before getting ready for school. 


“Life was not always this easy, because the stream closest to our house was quite far and dangerous for kids like me to draw water from.”

The water point she describes is a rugged 10 foot-wide hole in the ground, 19 feet deep!!

Evelyn’s mother Enia picks up the story, “It was risky to draw water from that hole because apart from the water being dirty and contaminated, there was also a danger of falling into the hole so I was afraid to send the children to draw water and would do it myself, but would end up very tired at the end of the day.”

The good news is that World Vision drilled a well in their community last November. See this story.

Enia continues, “Since then, life has really improved. My children and I are clean, and I’m able to do the laundry more frequently because all I need to do is draw water, wash the clothes, rinse them and then hang them out to dry in the sun. It is equally easy for me to carry out other activities like wash the dishes, and we also have a garden which we water when it’s not raining.” 




Her husband Benny chips in: “We are so grateful to World Vision for making life easier for us. We no longer fall sick from taking bad water. I know that my children are now more encouraged to go to school and I look forward to them completing their education and getting good jobs one day.”