Africa Post 2: Pumping Water for Widows

Pumping water for Widows

For the two weeks our work team from HCJB Global was in Burkina Faso working at the ACTS center for orphans and widows, one constant was the water well. There was hardly a time that I looked to the center of the compound when women and children were not pumping the handle up and down for water. As a “rich” American who simply turns the tap to get as much clean drinking water as I want, I was amazed to think about how much effort this took.

When our family lived in the rainforest we spent countless hours boiling water over the campfire to purify it for drinking, and we didn’t take that water for granted. But water in the rainforest was plentiful and relatively nearby. There we could easily just use water from the creek or river to wash clothes, dishes and our bodies. In Burkina Faso, the only water available most times, for everything, was what they took home in those containers. Plus, for me the memory of those hot hours fanning the fire to boil water are clouded by six years back at the faucet handle. Gathering precious water in Burkina Faso was different somehow.

Every once in a while I would take a break from whatever else I was doing and pump the well handle for whoever happened to be there. I counted around 130 repetitions to fill the common size of water container which I guessed to be about five and a half or six gallons—I’m sure it was the metric equivalent—probably 20 liters. It might be more difficult in the dry season.

Most of the time the women would arrive with multiple containers to fill on a donkey cart they pushed by hand or via bicycles with racks or trailers. Good setups, but a ton of manual labor, nonetheless--especially on the rough, potholed roads. After pumping water for two or three containers I would begin to feel the burn in my shoulders and triceps. The sweat would trickle down my face and drip off my nose and chin (It was most of the time anyway in the high humidity, but pumping water in the sun was always enough to drench me afresh). I counted nine containers on one women’s cart. That is about 1170 pumps on that handle by a woman a third my size or a teen who was even smaller.

The well was a valued asset at the ACTS center there in the village and women from miles around seemed to come there for water. What is really exciting is to think about the metaphor that Jesus used with the woman at the well.—living water.

Jesus says in John 4: 13-14, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

I’ve always loved the mix of practical and spiritual that works together so well with community development projects like water wells. You meet a physical need for the people and it gives you a connection to the spiritual life.

I’m not so naïve to think that someone would find salvation because of a few measly pumps on a well handle. But it sure was fun watching the puzzled looks and the sideways smiles that always came when this big, sweaty American man walked over and stole the pumping duties from a bewildered woman or a giggling teen.

Let us all drink living water.