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RSSWaters That Fail
by The Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton
8/25/2005
Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail. -- Jeremiah 15:18
School is starting! For our kids, that means new shoes and clothes, exciting purchases of clean paper and new pens, rulers, virginal erasers. The kids drape themselves over the living room furniture and talk about which teachers they will have this fall, who will be in their classes, what they will wear on the first day. We listen to their excitement from the kitchen, and feel a bit of it ourselves: We, too, are ready for a change.
There is a primary school in the village of Choka in Tanzania, and the parents of the village are like us -- committed to an education for their children. Like us they are prayerful regarding their kids: She will have the education I did not receive, she will have an easier life than I have, she will have more choices than I had.
But the excitement of the start of school in Choka has always been mixed with frustration: the children miss too many days of school. They fall ill with dysentery and other communicable diseases that come from poor sanitation. And sanitation has been poor in Choka -- the water source is two kilometers away. The women and girls of Choka have had to walk that distance and carry the heavy jugs of water back home: no school that day. You don't waste water you've carried that far on your head, and careful handwashing has often felt like a waste of water.
But this year will be different.. There's an immense new rainwater storage tank in Choka, built by the Anglican Diocese of Kondoa in partnership with Episcopal Relief and Development. It's right next to the school. All you have to do is turn the faucet.
It won't be hard to get your kids into the bathtub the night before the first day of school: they'll be too excited to resist. And their little counterparts in Tanzania have reason to be excited, too: going to school will be a more dependable part of their lives this year. They won't be sick as much.
And the girls won't be carrying water for miles and miles each week. They'll be in class.
Want to see the children of Choka in their school uniforms? They are standing by the new water tank.
