Today is World Water Day. Water is a simple compound made up of hydrogen and oxygen, as we all know. And water, although abundant on our planet, is something I think we all take for granted. Can you imagine having to walk a mile (or more!) every day just to get one bucket of water? No? Haitian families can.
Imagine this: You have a small farm and you need to water your crops. You walk miles and miles to find a well just to purchase one bucket of water. You carry that five gallon bucket all the way back to your farm. You give your thirsty plants that water you walked so far for. But that one bucket doesn’t take care of all of your plants. Now, you have to walk all the way back to that very well and you must choose if you want this bucket to go to your family to drink, cook with, etc. OR if you want to finish watering your plants. After finally choosing you carry it home. Then you’ll have to walk back AGAIN to fulfill the task you didn’t complete before. What if you couldn’t find a well?
You still need water but you don’t have a well within a few miles of your home and farm. So you have two choices. You can wait for the rain which might not come for weeks or even months OR you can dig. What do you dig exactly? You’re digging to try to find some groundwater. You don’t have any tools so you’ll have to use your hands. Then, you’ll dig for hours upon hours to create a hole deep enough to reach water. It’s at least 98 degrees and you keep cutting your hands on rocks in the soil. You don’t give up and keep digging. If you’re lucky, you find water. You are exhausted but happy to have finally found that much needed water. Unfortunately, that water isn’t clean due to trash in the runoff. But it’ll have to do. You need to take care of your farm. But then you realize that you didn’t make the hole big enough to fit your bucket inside. So you have to go back to digging.
This is what Haitian farmers have to go through every day to take care of their crops. Can you imagine if every farmer in Haiti had access to water? That would mean healthy and nutritious food on the table. It means finally being sustainable. The chance to send their kids to school. The ability to not only eat their crop but also sell enough to pay their rent. It means a livelihood. But there is hope. There is a way to help these farmers with their water shortage.
A sustainable way to solve this issue would be to install wells with solar powered pumps into the communities of these very farmers. Thanks to a generous donor, Harvest107 was able to install a well system in the village of Aquin, which you might remember as the community where we partnered with farmers after Hurricane Matthew. Help give water to another farming village in Haiti. A well is only $3000 and every single dollar counts. Give life to a family in Haiti, give water.
– Gracie Pfaff