With help from our University of Iringa student, Kim, and our St. Paul Partners translator, Andrew, Team Kising’a was off and ready for the village and the adventure of a lifetime. Team Kising’a also consisted of Lisa, Alex, Ben, Mitch, and Ce. The journey started off with a tour of the village, as well as a lesson in bucket balancing. After our failed attempts at carrying water on our heads, we explored the two possible sites for our water system—the Dispensary and the Primary School. Our evening ended with an intense soccer match with the children of the village.
The next morning, we ventured to the source that provides water to the entire village. This venture was a lesson in mountain climbing, as we had to hike up and down 250 ft of brush. Fortunately, only one of our members (Ben, aka our advisor) took a short slide on his behind on this glorious journey.
Following the climb, the team met with the village’s water committee to discuss future expansions on the current source. We reached an agreement to work with the village on this expansion, and are looking forward to continuing this relationship.
Once again, the team bonded with the village children after a long day of hard work by playing soccer and teaching them American humor (aka fart jokes provided once again by our advisor).
Our final day in the village started off with a beautiful church service. The service was filled with beautiful voices and warm welcomes from the entire community. The team had such a wonderful time in the village, and we were all very reluctant to make the trip back to Iringa. We left the village with a desire to design a (well) working water system in order to give back to a community that gave so much to us. As a small thank you/parting gift, we left our mark by distributing CSE sunglasses to the children that meant so much to us.
