Most people in the Westlock area will spend their Christmas holidays gathered around their Christmas trees with their loved ones — sharing gifts, kind words, and a lavish meal.
Throughout the day, there will be innumerable times that somebody heads to the kitchen to grab a glass of water, heads into the bathroom to wash up before a meal, or runs a sink full of water to do the cleanup after dinner.
Few, if any, will give a second thought to where that water came from or how incredibly lucky we are to be able to simply turn the tap on and off to have clean, potable water right in our homes.
For area resident David Nelson, every drop is precious because he’s seen first-hand what life can be like without it.
Nelson will spend a portion of his Christmas holidays working with a ministry team in Kenya to bring clean water to some of the poorest people in the world in the middle of a harsh desert — but he doesn’t feel like he’ll be missing time with his family because after four years of intense shared experiences, his Kenyan friends have become like another family.
He goes as part of the Nehemiah Construction Ministries team, a group founded by Nelson’s friend Dave McElhinney, which provides services to the Turkana people in northwestern Kenya, nears the borders of Uganda and South Sudan.
This will be Nelson’s sixth trip in the four years he has been involved with the group, but he is reluctant to take any credit for his efforts.
“It’s a weird feeling, because I don’t ever get the sense that it’s about me,” he said. “It’s just a God thing.”
The Canadian-based team members help to support the majority of the team who are Kenyan. The Kenyan team members do much of the day-to-day maintenance of the wells they’ve drilled, while the Canadians do more of the big-fix projects and help to get the wells drilled initially.
Nelson had little experience with drilling prior to getting involved in this project, but as a lifelong farmer has spent a lot of time around heavy machinery. McElhinney is a heavy-duty mechanic. Other team members are welders or work other trades.
“Everybody there has a unique skill set, but they all come together,” Nelson said.
He sees his involvement with the group as a higher calling, but said the experience of being in that country and working with the Turkana has changed his life in a way that is indescribable.
“It’s a whole different world. We work in villages where people sleep in stick huts; they sleep on the dirt,” he said. “They eat basically once every two days; that’s regular.”
And that of course isn’t the worst of it. Access to fresh water is so limited that some people will spend the greater part of their day walking to and from some very dubious water sources.
“I’ve watched women walk 25 km one way for five gallons of water,” he said. “And I’m sure you wouldn’t wash in it, let alone drink it.”
He knows first-hand, as well, what is means to these people to have access to the water the ministry helps them to secure.
On his first trip, Nelson said the people were downright disdainful of the group, throwing rocks and stick if they tried to take a picture.
“When we pumped water out of the ground from that first well, they made up songs to honour us,” he said, emphasizing again that he takes no credit for his actions because it is a higher calling.
The group raises money in Canada to build the wells, which cost about $15,000 including all the labour for the Kenyan workers. Each well provides water for anywhere up to 2,000 people. Twenty-one wells have been drilled so far.
Nehemiah Construction Ministries also runs a sewing school for the girls in the area, who are often treated poorly and sold as wives, to give them more independence.
Nelson said one of the local pastors there also disciples second and third sons, who are also undervalued in that society. The boys are taught about the gospel, then given three or four goats to shepherd. In that way, the message the ministry promotes gets spread further.
The role of the Canadian end of this operation, Nehemiah Construction Ministires, is to raise the money required to keep these programs going. Anyone can get involved and no donations are too small.
For more information about the group and its projects, visit nehemiahconstruction.ca or phone Nelson at 780-349-4703.
