We all know how important water is. We have to drink it to survive. We cook with it, wash our bodies with it, wash dishes with it, do our laundry with it. Most importantly, we drink it.
What you may not know is how much work many of the people in Kenya go through in order to get water, especially during the dry season. I have 
not yet been in a house that has running water. Even the nicer homes don’t have it. And most do not have a well to retrieve water from near their home. And that leaves only one option, fetching it.
Every day I would see large water containers traveling all over the place. I would see these containers strapped to motorcycles and bicycles in great frequency. I saw bottles loaded on a cart that would then have to be manually pushed to their destination. But what really put me in shock was how many women can be seen walking beside the road while carrying them by hand or on top of their head! And most of them were not fortunate enough to only have to walk a short distance to get water.
I talked to a pair of ladies who were carrying jugs just up the road from where I was staying. “Where are you going to get water?” I asked. One responded, “To the hospital. There is a chance they will give us water. But I’ve heard that they have been turning people away. We will find out when we get there.”
In the USA, we complain when we get in our car and drive to a store and it is not open. These ladies are going to walk a long distance, carrying these bottles, to a hospital that is far away, to see if they can get water. If they get turned away then they will keep walking until they find another place to retrieve water from.
The family I was staying with was fortunate enough to own a car. Very few people in Kenya have one. (How this family got their car is a ‘miracle of God’ story I will share in a later newsletter.) While I was there, I saw them load about 12 large containers in the back of their car and then drive off. They returned about an hour and a half later with water. And it wasn’t free. They had to pay for this water.
One day we were driving into the town of Bungoma. Along the way, my host pointed out a water pump station. I couldn’t believe it. There must have been 
more than a hundred water jugs lined up. The line was as long as a roller coaster ride at Kings Dominion. I asked him, “How much time will it take for someone who is at the back of this line to get water?” He said, “If they arrive at the station at 10:00 am, it most likely won’t be their turn to get water until early the next morning.”
My host has a well on his property. The problem is that the well has dried 
up. There is a simple solution to this problem. You pay to have a well drilled in your yard. So why doesn’t everyone just do that? The cost is $5,000. An additional $5,000 is needed if you desire to install an electric pump in that well so you can feed water into your house to get running water. Next to no one in Kenya has that kind of money to spend, even if it is for such an important resource.
My host is believing to get that $10,000 one day so he can have running water. But for now he has hired a group of three guys to ‘fix’ the existing well. He is going to pay them $100.00. The job will take them four days. So, if my math is right, they will get paid about $33.00 each. Over four days, that comes out to just over $8.00 per day, per person.
So how do you ‘fix’ a dried up well? What are these three guys going to do for their $8.00 a day? This is where it gets quite awful. The guys take turns climbing down inside the well. I looked down the well. It is quite dark. I can’t see the bottom due to the lack of light. Once they reach the bottom, 
they begin digging out the ground with a small hoe-like tool. They are working in very tight quarters with no light.
Once their shift is finished, they must climb back out of the well. It is very difficult to do. They climb maybe a yard or two at a time and then have to rest as they wedge their arms, legs and back against the walls of the well to keep from falling back into it. They have a rope to help them. But there is no pulley. So they are climbing out of this deep well by gripping on the rope with their hands while pushing on the sides of the well with their feet.
I knew that jobs were very scarce in Kenya. Many people in Kenya have asked me to pray for God to help them get a job. Some pray that they can somehow get an education so they can get a job. Or that their children can get an education. Some women have asked me to pray for God to help their husband get a job. But I didn’t realize it was this bad. I talked for quite a while with one of the workers in this well. He is very thankful to have the work. He can really use the money.
So much of what I have seen in Kenya has brought me to tears. Most people in my country of the USA don’t realize how good we have it. We complain about such ridiculously small things. “Oh, I need to go to the mall and buy a new pair of shoes. This pair doesn’t match my outfit.” In contrast, people on this side of the world struggle through life every day just so they can have simple things like water to bathe themselves in and wash their clothes, which they all do by hand.
But they have one thing in Kenya that is much less common in the USA. A smile on their face. And I have never seen people that are more friendly than the people here.
Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, I will absolutely not fail you, and I will absolutely not forsake you.
Hebrews 13:5 REV