A Samaritan’s Purse project in West Africa is providing fresh water where it is in short supply, showing people God’s love and provision.
Women in small villages in Niger are learning the skill of pottery and water filtration, providing clean water to households.
But her days have changed. Now, thanks to a recent Samaritan’s Purse project that teaches principles from God’s Word while providing practical help, she can simply pour untreated water through a household filter and the clean water begins to flow.
Contaminated Water Sources Breed Disease
Water is women’s work in Rachida’s village, Yeji Koira, a subsistence community in Niger’s Tillabéry region. Sometimes the girls would help her. They’d walk past the well—contaminated and bare in the dry season—down to the pond her people had settled around generations before.
Contaminated water sources breed life-threatening diseases.
This was their sole source of water in the dry season—the same watering hole for livestock, wildlife, bathing, and washing. Everything, from every home, drained into it. Typhoid and other life-threatening waterborne illnesses thrived there.
They would cook with this water. They would drink it—untreated.
“We have two wells in our community, but we’ve experienced flooding over the past several years, which has made them unusable,” Rachida said. “We have had a lot of sickness in our community.”
Typhoid and dysentery regularly took lives, that is if the sick villagers—often children—couldn’t make it to a clinic.
Clean Water for Every Household
Samaritan’s Purse invited Rachida to be one of the women to learn and to teach a new skill—making biosand filters. These filters are constructed from the sand, clay, and other materials found around their home. A bio-active layer, combined with the fine filtering material, neutralizes dangerous pathogens along with the sediment.
Locally made biosand filter systems, in handmade pottery housings, bring clean water and restored health to households.
Even better, the biosand filters can be constructed for use in the homes and schools of the region. We also taught the village how to protect ground water, which will keep the village wells clean of dangerous human waste.
Rachida has become one of our trainers to her own people.
“Through this project, we’ve had training sessions on hygiene promotion, training on the construction of clay-based filter bodies for water filtration, and the training on soap creation,” she said.
The skills she has acquired through the program have protected her family and village, while also giving her a skill she can use to make income for her family.
“I’ve built my own filter body, which I now use for my family’s drinking water. I feel useful for my community. Our group of potters have sold the clay filter bodies to other families.”
The clay pots that she’s learned to create are beautifully crafted. She has sold several of them to families, while also teaching them how to turn them into household filters. These creations, along with the hygiene practices—including handwashing and the use of latrines—have saved the people of Yeji Koira the grief caused by severe illnesses.
Water in Abundance and the Peace of God
The program has reminded them of God’s love and provision for them.
“Before Samaritan’s Purse intervened in our community, we were full of sickness,” she said. “We thank God for choosing our village as one of Samaritan’s Purse’s intervention villages. Now, our families no longer consume untreated well or lake water.”
In providing a greater abundance of water, and truth from God’s Word taught during the trainings, Yeji Koira is marked by greater peace.
“The Samaritan’s Purse project has allowed us to understand love of neighbor, and living together in harmony,” she said. “We now know that it is thanks to God’s love that this program has helped our community.”
