Our Founder’s Story…
I gambled when I decided to take my daughter to my village, Mbelewa-Nkwen, in the North West Region of Cameroon.
It was a 24-hour trip from Chicago through France to get to Douala airport, our final destination. On arrival, Ma, my daughter, wanted to use the bathroom on the plane but we were promptly ushered off by flight attendants. I assured her that she could use one of the bathrooms in the airport. At the terminal, the one and only bathroom was littered with flies-alive and dead, discarded crumpled newspapers, cobwebs, a dead mouse and a snake-skin. The airport experience instantaneously gave me a flashback of my upbringing in poverty with no potable water. Although it was just the beginning of our trip, it reminded me of why I had been so adamant about leaving my community. I wanted the opportunity to broaden my horizons, acquire new skill sets, network with like-minded individuals, and eventually have the capacity to give back to my community.
Once departing the airport, we managed the 12-hour trip on a bus meant for 14 passengers but loaded with twice that number. The human cargo was also accompanied by luggage, barrels of water, goats and chickens picked up along the road. We finally arrived at the Bamenda bus stop and started in the final leg to Mbelewa which would soon present yet another challenge. As we drove the final two miles, I thought it wise to share with my daughter a personal anecdote of growing up with no water. Our house caught fire when I was 14 and my older brother, Jake, was 21. All of us were in school when we received the jarring news. He promptly borrowed a truck, loaded it with multiple drums of water and started driving home with the hope of salvaging our home. On the way home, he was involved in a traumatic accident that eventually led to the amputation of his legs. As I recounted this story, my daughter was in visible shock and could only muster that she was sorry I had experienced this calamitous childhood experience.
My recollections of my childhood home burning and the airport bathroom incident had similar underlying themes. There were no equipped water-laden fire trucks to stop our house from burning just as there was no water in the filthy airport toilet. This highlighted not just an unfortunate circumstantial occurrence, but rather, a systemic dearth of basic infrastructure.
Several weeks into our trip, once in Bamenda, there was still no running water. Ma was dehydrated, it was hot and humid and there were no remaining water bottles. At the top of every hour my daughter would announce “I am thirsty.” Eventually, I had to walk 10 miles to buy water and pay a truck driver to bring it back with us. During this endeavor, I remembered my grandmother doing this when I was young. I was 14 when my mother died, right after Jake’s accident, so, overnight I became responsible for my siblings and undertook a similar water-fetching routine. In the present-day, somehow, the water situation has gone from “fry-pan to fire,” West African Pidgin for “bad to worse.” Several people I knew in adolescence, including my family, still travel miles to fetch water. The quest for water is most dire in the dry season and further highlights the meager attention to this ongoing plight.
Overall, I have had countless unique experiences since childhood that have highlighted the shortcomings of an underfunded and poorly resourced community. Many of my contemporaries are in the process of retiring, but I know that there is still much work to be done. My immediate goal with this NGO is to assist in building a sustainable long term water program for all households in the Mbelewa community.