We've been hard at work to provide the village people with access to clean drinking water. Here is an update on our work!
In the western villages near Dhangarhi, the September 2008 floods caused severe damage. Khalladahe Siwir is located on a fertile river plain and is home to 400 families. At Khalladahe, the water was four feet deep as floods washed through the village, taking food, livestock, and many possessions away and leaving behind poisoned food and drink. Many homes had traces of mud on their walls, three to four feet high when Marian visited in October 2008. Many people were sick.
The village of Khalladahe needed a lot of help, so many resources were used to construct a brick building on a stone foundation. The building is high enough to protect many people during floods. A water treatment system has been installed next to it with a water tower that provides a gravity feed to the system. An electric pump raises water from a shallow well to the water tank on the tower.
In June of 2009, our team of ten joined our key guy on the ground in that village for the installation and dedication of a community building and flood shelter at Khalladahe. The building was full as we dedicated it, prayed for the sick (including a boy who had been gored by a bull, literally spilling his guts), then cut lots of ribbons to inaugurate the water system. The people reveled in the filtered and treated water. Over the next few and months, it took some effort to regulate the chlorine in the system. Sometimes it was excessive, and people reacted poorly to the levels of chlorine in the water until a happy medium was found.
In October of 2009, we had the pleasure of returning to Khalladahe with Emilie, Steve, and Zach on our team.
Large areas of the southwest of Nepal had been badly flooded. Khalladahe (which means “lowland”), which is just a few feet above the river, would again be a candidate for disaster. But that did not happen. There were no floods in Khalladahe in 2009! When we visited, we again prayed for the sick.
And where was the boy who had been gored by a bull back in June? Happy and healthy, albeit sporting a large scar on his stomach.
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