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The shallow well program of Marion Medical Mission
Who wouldn’t get excited about a project where as little as $300 gives safe drinking water to as many as 400 people for life! Since it began in 1990, Marion Medical Mission has provided clean water for more than 700,000 people in rural villages in Malawi. In recent years the project has extended into neighboring Tanzania and Zambia as well. The government of Malawi has noted that this program has provided more safe drinking water for Malawians than all the other NGO’s (nongovernmental organizations) combined!
It is difficult to calculate fully the incredible impact of the shallow well project on the lives of people. One in three children dies before the age of five in Malawi, often from water-borne disease—but not in shallow well villages where the water is safe to drink. Bore holes put in place by some NGO’s are unusable if the pump breaks—but the shallow wells come with a maintenance program where local men have been taught to do inspections and make repairs. Unlike wells that are given at no cost, shallow wells are a self-help community project. The villagers prepare the stone and make the bricks to line the well, they dig the well, and they agree to donate a bag of maize (corn, the staple food) each year to the project. Marion Medical does what the villagers cannot do for themselves: purchase the pipe, pump, and concrete ($300).
The digging season is in October and November at the end of the dry season when the water table is at its lowest. The original team from Marion Medical, that brought the supplies and supervised the digging, was from the U.S.; today most of the people working on the project are Malawians. However, Tom Logan, one of the founders of the project, comes every year from his Illinois home. Jim McGill, a PCUSA co-worker at Embangweni Hospital in Malawi coordinates the project. (Jim is an engineer; his wife, Jodi, is a nurse at the hospital.) The hospital now has a pump manufacturing wing.
The maintenance program is at the heart of the success of this project. Each village has a maintenance man who lives in the neighborhood. He has been trained and receives a hat and a wrench upon “graduation.” His job is to inspect the well regularly, and when he does, the village owes him an egg or a few vegetables. If the pump breaks down, he must fix it right away, and the village pays him a chicken or something of comparable value. Once a month the maintenance men gather at Embangweni Hospital and give reports on their work. Any delinquent villages get a visit from the director of the project to remind them of how much better their lives are now with a safe source of water, and of the importance of taking care of their maintenance man. The maintenance men are faithful to attend the monthly meetings. A full meal is included, using the maize donations from the villages.
The rough terrain on the roads to remote villages is hard on vehicles. Gifts from the Liberty Corner Presbyterian Church are deisgnated to purchase trucks for the project. With each vehicle, they can complete about 100 wells in a digging season. (Marion Medical exceeded its goal of 500 wells in 2003.) The rest of the year, the truck is available for use as an ambulance by Embangweni Hospital. Although our congregation earmarks money for trucks, a number of LCPC members purchase wells themselves to be given as alternative Christmas gifts. A photo of each new well, with the villagers trying it out for the first time, is sent to the donor in December.
At the end of the 2003 digging season, Tom wrote, “The villages get clean safe drinking water and our donors and our volunteers get the satisfaction of being a part of providing it. Yet, the wells represent something even more significant. They represent what can happen when the people of God come together and work hand in hand as His people using their differences to support one another—to lift each other up. This is the way it should be. This is the way God intended it to be.”
Tom and Jocelyn Logan visited Liberty Corner in 2002.
You can learn more by checking the Marion Medical video out of the LCPC library, or by visiting the Marion Medical website.
Statistics: Malawi
Total Area: 36,300 sq. mi. (slightly smaller than Pennsylvania)
Population: 10,548,250
Languages: English, Chichewa (official), other languages are important regionally
GDP per capita: $900
Literacy: 59% (male 73%, female, 43%)
Religions: Protestant, Roman Catholic, Muslim
Life Expectancy: 37 years
(Statistical information is from the PCUSA 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study)
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