The community of Grand Rue has enjoyed having a fresh water well for more than a year now. At one time, it was the only working well in the area. People would walk sometimes a mile or more with wheelbarrows or buckets to fill. On an average day, some 500-600 people come to collect water.
“Before the pump was here, I would have to use water from the river or go to other places,” said a young man named Wisly. “To drink the water, I would have to fill up a bucket and get an aqua tab and drop it in the bucket… It’d filter it, but even then it still wouldn’t be up to par—[now] this water’s been so good we don’t even use aqua tabs anymore.”
“When I first heard about it [the well], I felt like I was saved,”
The water in the nearby river is so contaminated that it can give people typhoid, skin infections and diarrhea. Even bathing or washing clothes in this water puts people at risk.
Everything changed when the well was built through a partnership with Bright Hope and the local church. The well has become a symbol of hope in a once-forgotten and dangerous community.
“When I first heard about it [the well], I felt like I was saved,” Wisly said. “When it actually came, I began to think of ways of how to take the money that we would use to buy water and what would I be able to do with it now on a daily basis.”
Another man from the community named Voltaire added, “The water that we used to use was the water that gives death, and now we have this water which is giving us life.”
“The water that we used to use was the water that gives death, and now we have this water which is giving us life.”
“I’m so proud,” he said. “Even when I’m going to come and sweep here, I put on some nice clothes.”
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