How Drinking Water Came to My Village

It started with German tourists. They were in my souq town for a festival (the one I’ll be going to soon, inshallah!), and heard that there was a huge flood on the nearby river. They came to River Village to take a look, and were shocked at the terrible quality of the water, which was the only water that people had to drink. It turned out that these weren’t just any German tourists; they were members of an NGO that focused on potable water in third world regions. They said to the villagers, “We can’t work with individuals or with the local government. If you can put together an association, give us a call and we’ll bring potable water to your village.” The association came together quickly, and the Germans put their famed engineering skills to work.

Before long, my little village had two water chateaux (aka water purification towers) and plumbing bringing the purified water to the center of town. That was used as a communal well briefly, but since then, plumbing has been run to each of the 80-some-odd homes in the village, so that everyone in town can turn a knob in their home and have potable water gush out. :) The water consumption is metered, but over half of the households can’t afford to pay their water bills, so the association quietly takes care of it. (They didn’t specify how, and I didn’t ask.) Everyone in my little duwar has clean, safe water to drink, right in their own homes. It may not sound like much, but it’s huge to my host family and to everyone else in town. Much of the sky-high Moroccan infant mortality rate is blamed on bad water. Some say that every child is his (or her) parent’s whole world…which means that if bringing potable water to my village saves even one life, it has saved the world.

OK, now I feel cheesy. But I’m still awfully grateful that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens decided that they could do something for a small village 1,000 miles away in the mountains of Morocco.