Have you ever wondered what it’s like when a well gets completed in a village in Africa? We may have drilled more than 500 wells, but this experience never gets old.

From the relieved grins on our drillers faces, the happy smiles of the adults in the community, to the peals of joyous laughter from the children who know they no longer have to walk hours every day for water. In rural communities water charges everything and for this community in Uganda nothing will ever be the same.

We couldn’t do any of this without your donations, so we wanted to share this moment with you and thank you for making our work possible. We hope you enjoy this video as much as we enjoyed filming and putting it together.

Special thanks to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, for not only providing the perfect soundtrack to this video, but also for making it possible.

Drop in the Bucket just hosted its first ever Inter-School Quiz Competition in South Sudan. The event included 8^th grade participants from five primary schools in Nimule South Sudan. The schools submitted four of their top students to compete – two boys and two girls from each.

For the three weeks leading up to the competition, the DROP team had been immersed in preparations, which also included creating the game, using questions from the South Sudan primary school syllabus.

Rotating between individual and group questions, the students had 30 seconds to answer questions in math, English, science and social studies. Two points were given for each correct answer. A moderator from the local radio station led the game. And the competition was fierce!

There was also a raffle, where students from the audience were given the chance to answer a question to win a t-shirt.

Although, the DROP education program’s mission is to provide vulnerable girls with the opportunity to attend secondary school, the overall aim is to promote education within the entire society. And the goal of this exciting quiz-game format was to merge the concept of competition, fun, and learning into one action-packed afternoon.

In the end, the students from Green Valley Primary School took home the cup, along with other prizes. They will return next year to defend their award against the other schools. And if they win two more times, the trophy is forever theirs!

Layik West – the place where people fight.

Layik West in Uganda has many needs! The village lacks basic amenities like a school, a health center, drivable roads or any kind of police presence. But above all, the community’s biggest issue was their lack of clean water. At the time the village was using a protected spring for water. This is where someone builds a small cement structure around a naturally occurring stream or hand dug waterhole. They insert a metal pipe through the cement and use it to collect water. The cement provides some protection but the water is still groundwater and not safe to drink.

Over time the pipes rusted and the water came out slowly. This made collecting water a slow and frustrating experience. The spring became known locally as ‘Wang ali’ which translates as “The place where people quarrel, or fight”.

One man concerned about the water situation was Hon. Ocaya Denis. He decided to run for local office so that he could help the people of Layik West. “We can wait on the roads, but we cannot wait for clean water!” He says emphatically.

“You never get used to seeing a woman collecting water with pigs standing next to her”

 “The spring was also being used by animals. You never get used to seeing a woman collecting water for drinking and cooking while pigs are standing in the same water.” Mr Ocaya said shaking his head. Ocaya decided to become a village leader. He reached out to the local District Water Office who put him in touch with Drop in the Bucket.

“We were also watching people crowding the water pipe and quarreling with each other, as they collected water.” agrees Atoo Jamila, a mother of five.

The root cause of the conflict

Another local leader, Kilama Geofrey agrees. “The majority of issues reported to me were trivial quarrels that happened while collecting water”. This led to tension between community members. “We are happy that Drop in the Bucket has finally solved this problem for us”.

Avoid dirty water sources and only drink water from the new well

Along with drilling the new well, DROP’s staff also helped the community form a water committee they trained in hygiene and sanitation. One woman who received training was Lamaro Miriam who volunteered to be a health leader. Now members of the community come to her when they are feeling unwell. “Mothers bring their children to me with signs of typhoid and bilharzia. Unfortunately, I am not qualified to treat those ailments, but I am able to tell them how to avoid getting sick again” she smiles. The most common advice she gives to tell them to avoid dirty water sources and only drink water from the new well.

“We are very grateful. Many organizations work here in Uganda, but only Drop in the Bucket came and drilled us a borehole” appreciates Lamaro.

The DROP drilling team just returned from five months working in Iganga district in south eastern Uganda. And, as usual, they encountered their fair share of challenges. Complicated underground rock formations made drilling extremely frustrating. Deluges of rain had them ducking for shelter when they desperately wanted to see water flushing up from the ground, not down from the sky.  And a one-month delay at the Mombassa port had them drilling with a dull hammer that bounced off of the rocks, rather than cutting through them.

But the biggest hurdle for everybody was the time away from their families. Our drilling supervisor had a big wedding in the works, our cook received daily calls from her children and by month five, the whole team was extremely homesick.

The main office struggled to bring them comfort through special meals, extra bonuses, and gadgets to ease the work. And despite everything, they pushed through to deliver twenty-five successful wells, some for schools with over 1500 children.

According to the team, those victories within the communities made it all worthwhile. Because in the five months they spent in Iganga, they had made it their second home, learned the local language and tasted the traditional foods of that region. And they made friends. Because when you bring water to people in need, you make lifelong friends. And that joy of serving communities – whether near or far – can help overcome the biggest of challenges.

Help us help more people with clean water! Your donations make our work possible!

Meet Balvina Akullu

Akecha B village was not an easy place to reach. The only road was more of a footpath than an actual road, so the village was fairly isolated. It was in this village that we met a grandmother named Balvina Akullu. Balvina is a proud woman who loves her children and her 10 grandchildren. Her face lights up with a radiant smile when she talks about them.  But Balvina’s life has been far from easy. She has lived in this village her whole life and was here the day the village was attacked by the LRA terror group. Balvina’s husband was killed and her arm was badly injured, she also sustained a head injury. She was in the hospital for two months but was unable to regain full use of her hand, making it difficult to lift heavy objects.

A full container of water weighs approximately 40 lbs, so fetching drinking water became a major problem for this kindly grandmother. “Every day I had to ask for help and soon I had asked everyone in the village. The always brought me water, but the only safe water source was far away, so sometimes my neighbors would bring me clean water but often they would just bring any water they could find.” Balvina often found herself being forced to drink and cook with dirty water that would make her sick.  “It was awful, I felt like I was a burden to everyone from the village. I knew I was asking a lot but I needed the water to survive.”

Drilling a well for Akecha B Village

When Drop in the Bucket came to Akecha B village to look into drilling a well, the buzz around the village was electric but nobody was more overjoyed than Balvina. “The clean water restored my dignity. My neighbors are happy to visit me now and when they come, they always bring me water. The well is close to my home, so now I never have to ask, they just bring it. I now I have all the water I need and it is always clean water.” Balvina wanted to be part of the water committee that manages the well, but unfortunately, she still suffers from memory loss from the attack.

“They remember what life is like without a well and they do not want to go back.”

Nyeko Soloman is responsible for the security of the new well. He shakes he head when he thinks back to the old water source that the village used. “It was a long walk to get to the nearest well, so we dug a hole where we knew there was a natural spring. This water was used by the community, but also by livestock, so it was very contaminated. This new well has changed our whole village”. Nyeko takes his job seriously, he is proud of the fact that the well is always swept clean and that people line up their containers neatly and always keep them clean. He smiles when he points out how gentle everyone is when using the hand pump. “They remember what life is like without a well and they do not want to go back.”