A remote village in Tanzania struggles to survive
As you can see on the Home page, where we have posted the latest video from Father Placid, the children look happy and healthy playing outside their new school. Digging deeper wells and adding irrigation to the fields has improved life in Luhombero by leaps and bounds. They no longer fear famine when the rains are few and far between.
If you live in North America, it is hard to comprehend the level of difficulty people face in Luhombero, to do the simplest of things; like boiling water for dinner. Wells with potable water are quite a distance away, and women and children spend a significant portion of their day collecting water and walking it home or carrying it on a bike.
Some families take 10 minutes to 15 minutes to each a well. These wells were made by the government but there are not enough of them to service the population. Sometimes it is difficult to fix such wells because the machines used to drill them are very primitive. They cannot dig very deep into the earth. They normally make such wells alongside the basin where the depth to get water is not so deep.
The two wells in the parish, if they are renovated, can help to serve the nearby families. They need the pumping machines to be repaired. To fix them would require approximately $300-to-400 USD per well. There are machines which can make bore holes to have water but they cost up to $3,000 USD to order.
Some local people can make simple bore holes. It is the matter of negotiation. It can be $500 USD up to $1,500 USD, depending on the depth they dig, for these low-tech wells. So fixing our two parish wells is the most logical approach to help the people with the water shortage.
The “waiting room” for medical attention in Luhombero is under the shade of a tree. Below, you see women and children gathered, awaiting their turns at the small clinic.
Schools in Canada and the US are free. Schools in Kenya are not. Most families have to pay to send their children to school, and make huge financial sacrifices in order to do so. Lots of bright children must drop out of school because their family cannot afford the school fees.
