Tools and Blankets
Well, Well, Well!

Photo: Marie Varley/CWS

Each day in the village of Maziyaya, in Malawi, Zcharia and her children used to have to trek downhill to the river and then back uphill three times - miles each day - just to get water. And the water wasn't clean.

Today, Zcharia and her neighbors have safe, clean water right outside their doors. Their village is one of hundreds in Malawi where Church World Service has helped to drill bore hole wells - deep wells that reach down to the aquifer where the water is clean.

In Maziyaya, the women will always remember November 4, 1997. That day, after drilling down 33 meters (108 feet), they found a cool, clean underground stream. Zcharia heads up a group of ten people chosen to be responsible for maintaining the pump and managing the well.

Women are always a majority on these committees - "an appropriate imbalance," according to Ms. Chisono Gunda, of the Christian Service Committee, Church World Service's partner in Malawi. "You see," explains Chisono, "because women are most affected by the hardship of distant water sources, they're most likely to get behind the project at the outset."

Each bore hole and pump costs about $6,000. Shallow wells would be less expensive, but the water is often impure - and unreliable, especially in times of drought.

Each year, 50,000 more Malawians gain access to clean water thanks to the well-digging and well-rehabilitation activities of the Christian Service Committee, supported in part by Church World Service.

Malawi

• about the size of Pennsylvania, Malawi is one of the smallest countries in southern Africa.
  
• 9 out of 10 of Malawian's 11 million people live in rural areas, where most women and children get up at 4 a.m. and walk about two miles to get water for their families.
  
• 60 percent of the people in rural Malawi lack access to safe drinking water.

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