MY CLEAN WATER STORY 
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IT'S AS PRECIOUS AS GOLD...
WHEN YOU LIVE WHERE IT'S NOT EASY TO ACCESS IT.

Next to oxygen is perhaps money, then water.
While air is free, oxygen (high-quality air) is not!!
 
Thank God I’m Privileged too!
 Yeah - I’m particularly thankful we have high-pressured clean water...
running inside my suburban home in La Marque Texas.
It’s not coming from this “bush pump” as it’s often called in Africa, and some call it "Afridev" hand pump, sort of like the popular Indian Mark II pump because they are used in many shallow wells in developing countries where villagers, mostly girls are happy to walk 1-2 miles to fetch clean drinking water for their families.
Growing up in Nigeria as a child, my parents liked in Enugu with some pipe borne water in certain parts of the Coal City. You either have limited plumbing in your compound with 1 or 2 fetching points or at a public corner where two streets intersect - usually within a street block or less than half a mile's walk. However, during the civil war between in Nigeria with Biafra (then secessionist) we fled to my parental home village of Orlu in Imo State where I experienced firsthand the drudgery of water fetching about 2-4 times daily as part of rural life for women and children. We typical woke up early about 5 am to walk about 2-3 miles to the nearest river valley to fetch unsafe water home for domestic uses. As children we dreaded big snakes, and other unfriendly encounters on the route. So, we tend to band together to help each other out.
This experience has helped me value clean water in life and to hate it when clean water is being wasted or used excessively for nothing significant.
After moving to the USA for my higher education and returning to Nigeria for 12 years, I also experience water scarcity again in the Aba, Abia State. We had no running water in our apartment. My children had to walk past a major road to go fetch water about 1.5 mile away from the house. Sometimes we bought water from a water tanker that passes along and sells water at unpredictable days. One day my first-born son was hit by a big truck as he crossed the major road with some speeding traffic and nothing like speed bumps or zebra crossing. He nearly got killed that day but had some minor injury. I then vowed not to send my children out to go fetch water and decided to buy a bigger storage tank for water in our compound and a jet pump to push it upstairs where we lived into another plastic drum or container, so we don't have to make so many trips up and down the stairs for water. So, more lessons learned and more value for water. 
 
So besides my primary residence in La Marque, Texas - I placed this replica of the Afridev pump next to my water service entrance outside my backyard gate as a reminder for me to pray always for the nearly 925 m people globally that still lack access to clean water.
At Relief Network Ministries and other NGOs like Living Water International, the campaign to intervene with clean water and hygiene to mitigate the disease burdens which now includes COVID-19 continues.
 
Our work focuses mostly on the less privileged bottom poor living on less than $1 a day.
As a college professor at the Federal University of Technology Owerri, I had no running water in my home when I relocated to Aba, Nigeria during my sabbatical leave in 1990. About a year later a truck nearly killed my first son who went to fetch water about half a mile across the street. He got knocked off the road as he almost finished crossing a busy highway with his precious water wasted.
I immediately invested in a 1000-gallon tank and resolved not to send my kids to fetch water but started buying bulk water from water tankers.
 
Today I ask you to join the campaign for “Clean Water” to help the bottom millions by making only a $30 monthly contribution to help make water crisis history, or becoming a birthday gift Donor member and partner online - click here to activate: YOUR MEMBERSHIP TO WATER CRISIS RELIEF CLUB - by donating your birthday gifts, or being minimum $30 monthly donor to keep clean water flowing for the bottom billion. 
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By Dr. A. Sunny Okorie
(President/Co-Founder)