This Catholic parish is helping to bring fresh water to a poor Nigerian village

Dedham, Massachusetts, Apr 6, 2022 / 05:02 am (CNA).

When a parishioner at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Dedham, Massachusetts, asked Sister Josephine Ngama what the people in her Nigerian village needed most, she didn’t hesitate for a second.

“They need water.” 

These words inspired the parishioner, Lewis Uttaro, to initiate the I Thirst project, which, a year later, already has made a positive difference in the lives of poor children in a small village in southern Nigeria.

The scripture verse that inspires the campaign is from the Gospel of Matthew: “I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40).

Ngama, 58, a religious sister with the Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus, is a licensed physician in Nigeria. She spends much of her time worshipping at St. Mary’s while she’s in the United States working to become a licensed physician in America. Her goal is to go back to Nigeria and serve her people with her new training.

In the meantime, she and Uttaro, a member of the church’s St. Vincent de Paul Society, which assists people with their material needs, have set a goal of raising $180,000 to fund the construction of six wells in the village of Ozuomme, some 8,000 miles from Dedham.

Ngama describes the wells as “boreholes,” which are holes drilled deep into the ground that can then pipe water to the surface.

Uttaro, 70, has recruited a small group of young adults from the parish to help him start raising money for the ambitious project.

“I realized it was time to get off the sidelines and that God was calling me to rekindle the Vincentian spirit in my own life, using my gifts to further the kingdom,” Vinny Derosa, one of the volunteers, told CNA.

“I’m so glad to be part of this group and more so of the impacts it has made on the children and families” in Ngama’s village, said George Matta, who also joined the effort.

The Vincent de Paul Society is using a crowdfunding platform, GoFundMe, to raise the funds for the campaign, which garnered about $30,000 in six months to pay for the first well. You can read more about the project and make a donation here.

A perilous journey

On a daily basis, six or seven young girls, some as young as 9 years-old, along with two or more adults, make the 10-mile round-trip to retrieve water from the fresh water stream nearest to Ozuomme, which is a village within the town of Urualla.

Sometimes, they must make multiple trips a day, Ngama says.

Young girls in Ozuomme are often the ones retrieving the household water because the village has no running water and it’s the girls who are expected to do the household chores and take care of the homes, Ngama said.

The journey often begins at 4 a.m. before the sun rises. That’s because during Nigeria’s dry season, when the heat consistently reaches 100 degrees, it would be dangerous to get caught in the intense African sun while being a far walk from home. The children also need to finish the trip before school starts at 8 a.m.

“Fear” is the memory that Ngama has of her own experiences fetching water as a young girl in Ozuomme.

The route’s steep slopes often pose a danger to the young children carrying the multiple-gallon water jugs on their heads back to their families, she recalled. One time, Ngama badly injured her wrist while slipping as she made her way down one of the slopes.

Reaching the stream is just half the battle. Filling their jugs with water often requires the children to wade into the deeper sections of the stream, which has a strong current. Ngama says that many children have drowned this way.

Added to these dangers is a very real threat of being kidnapped.

“We were always afraid of kidnappers because the trip was so lonely,” Ngama said. Nigeria is no stranger to kidnappings, especially in the Catholic community, where reports of bishops, priests, and religious sisters being attacked or taken hostage often circulate in the media.

The terrorist group Boko Haram is the most feared in the country, Ngama said, pointing to a 2014 kidnapping of more than 200 school girls that made national and international headlines.

By the time children arrive back at the village, they’re exhausted. 

Ngama said that most of the children who must undertake this journey on a regular basis wind up dropping out of school because it’s such an arduous job.

Ngama never dropped out of school because she said her parents were extremely supportive and wanted her to get an education. Her parents did everything they could, including excusing her from going to the stream some days after school so she could finish her schoolwork, Ngama recalled.

Tangible results

The first of six boreholes has already been built in Ngama’s village thanks to the I Thirst campaign. Six are needed in total to serve each of the six Christian communities within Ozuomme.

Ngama told CNA the villagers in Ozuomme were elated about the borehole, “especially as it was built during the dry season when the scarcity of water is being felt more.”

The volunteers helping to raise funds say they’re excited to see the tangible results of their efforts. “I am motivated to see what God will do through us as we work together for Him and the poor,” Derosa, one of the volunteers, said.

“Having successfully built our first well and seeing the pictures of the children using it has given us the motivation and thirst to go out and build more,” Matta said. “We are excited to launch another fundraising campaign and continue to do God’s work one well at a time.”

Uttaro said he “could not be happier to be chosen by Our Lord along with all the others to be a part of this beautiful ministry.”

“This project was born out of love for the poor and the suffering,” Ngama said. “To God be the glory!”