PROJECT OVERVIEW

Water to Drink... Water to GROW!
What Were We Thinking? The nationals wanted a self-sustaining Bible school that would model life in rural Africa where everyone grows their own food! So our mission helped them build one in 1990 at a site called Kiburara. Later we discovered that the school was built in a drought zone where the rains fail at least every other year!

In spite of our mistakes, the national leadership doggedly and faithfully persevered in running the school and training pastors.. Sometimes students and teachers suffered hunger when one of the two rainy seasons per year failed. Eventually hunger takes its toll on the health of those who work hard. These last few years have been worse than normal. Last year teachers and students alike lost all their crops for the year.

What Do We Do Now?
There are only 2 choices facing us. The first is to move the school to water. The second is to move water to the school! After much discussion and prayer with our national leaders, we decided to try to move water to the school. So we contacted EMI, a Christian engineering mission, to do a feasibility study and they found that it was possible to move water to the school! Hence, the Bible School Irrigation Project was born!

Is It Really Possible?

Moving water to the school is no small task. The closest water is a river, 8/10 of a kilometer away and 120 feet lower than the lowest point on school property! The school does not have the means to pay for the fuel necessary to drive pumps that would move 60,000 liters a day to keep 20 acres alive during a drought. Is it economically possible to move all that water for growing crops and for drinking so that a school which struggles financially will not face a burden that will sink them? This was the challenge given to EMI: to design a system that would last over the next 20 years, be economical to maintain, withstand the forces of nature, and not consume unrenewable resources! In one short sentence... the answer was YES!

We invite you to explore this website and find out what is going on with this project.