Our Work

Water for Africa

The village of Dorleyla straddles a red earth road that runs inland through rural Liberia, in West Africa. The community is well-kept – tidy mud-walled, thatch-roofed homes clustered on the rise of a hill. In each house – tucked in the corner of a cool, dark room, or on a covered porch – sits a Samaritan’s Purse BioSand Water Filter.

In the home she shares with her family of eight, Nyamah Dorley proudly shows off her water filter, lifting its sheet metal lid off the top to show the interior. Each day Dorley and her children carry water to the filter, pour it through, and instantly collect safe, cool drinking water.

“My family had stomach problems before getting this filter,” explains Dorley. “Since we had the filter we have not had running stomach (diarrhoea), and my children are happy and can play.”

Dorley, like other women in the village, collects her water from a pump at the center of the community. But each year during the dry season, the pump water dries up, forcing the women to draw their water from a nearby slow-moving and muddy creek. Samaritan’s Purse has installed over 300 BioSand Water Filters throughout the area – enabling families to quickly transform the muddy creek water into safe drinking water, and teaching the villagers the importance of basic hygiene, such as hand washing. Samaritan’s Purse also built the community’s first latrines – including a walled bathing area.

Before Samaritan’s Purse began providing BioSand Water Filters to Dorleyla, many of the villagers experienced stomach ailments and other illnesses – including diarrhea, dysentery, and cholera – due to contaminated drinking water. Often, seriously ill people would have to make the trek to the nearest clinic, many kilometres away. Too weak to walk, they would be trundled in a wheel barrow, or forced to flag down the rare vehicle passing through. Two village children died of water-related illnesses, as their family desperately tried to reach the clinic on foot.

Health and Happiness

Yassah Kpato shares her home in Dorleyla with six people, including her children. Kpato’s BioSand Water Filter sits in the corner beside her bed. She stands beside it, describing the difference the filter has made for her family.

“My family lives happily – no sickness, everyone’s stomach is fine, since we started using the filter,” says Kpato.

She says there are many benefits to filtering her water, including how the cement, sand, and rock filter cools the water during the filtering process. People have taken to nicknaming the filters “water coolers.”

“Water from the creek does not taste good, and the filter water makes the creek water taste good and look clean – and it makes it cold!”

Kpato says the community recognizes the impact that drinking safe, filtered water has on their health, and now even those who work on distant farms or fields in the bush carry filtered water to drink as they work.

“We use water more now – for cooking, washing the dishes and clothes, and drinking the water all the time,” she says. “I need to say thanks to Samaritan’s Purse – there is no sickness since (we received filters), and the whole village is happy without sickness.”

“Since Samaritan’s Purse came to Dorleyla, there is happiness.”

Impact of Clean Water and Sanitation

Bob O. David, the Samaritan’s Purse water technician for the region, explains the social and economic impacts on a community when people are forced to use and drink contaminated water.

“If I drink contaminated water, and I get sick, I can’t work. If I can’t work, I have no income, and I can’t eat. All of these things are intertwined. That’s why clean water is so important,” says David.

The chief of Dorleyla, Musa Dorely, lives along the main road bisecting the village, in the community’s only cement house, with his wife, children, and extended family.

Musa Dorley’s two filters provide water to the 20 people living in his home, and Musa’s delight in his village receiving BioSand Water Filters is apparent.

“After Samaritan’s Purse brought filters here, there is no sickness, and everybody is fine,” he says, grinning broadly. “The filter gives good drinking water – it gives nobody a hard time . . .

 “Now, I can’t remember the last time we took someone to the hospital because of running stomach. Now, when I go to work (in our fields), I don’t have to worry about the health of my family.”

The latrines built by Samaritan’s Purse have also become a village focal point. The entire community uses the brightly painted blue-and-white buildings, which sit on the edge of the rain forest.

“Now we don’t have to go into the bush,” says Musa Dorley’s wife, Hawa, cradling her young son on her hip. “We can go in the latrine – and people hear about our latrine, and they come from all around to use it.”

Ways You Can Help
Pray Please pray that God would continue to work through Samaritan’s Purse in Liberia, as we help provide people with safe water, and teach them about the hope found in Jesus Christ.		Give Help Turn on the Tap to clean water in places like Liberia. Donate Here.