Living Hope Newsletter – Autumn 2024
The Cameroon Water Crisis
When we are thirsty, we very simply turn on the faucet and take a drink. To shower, clean, brush our teeth: the same. We reach for the water we need, and we trust it will be there for us.
It’s an expectation that many millions the world over do not have, and an expectation that has become a focal point for the Claretian Missionaries serving in Cameroon, Africa.
Here in Sakdje, in the northern region of the country, there is little safe drinking water. This is the poorest area of Cameroon, where water is at the center of a spectrum of life-threatening problems, from low life expectancy to daily life without the basic sustenance of clean water.
Cameroon is in central Africa, sharing boundaries with Nigeria and a coastline on the Gulf of Guinea, leading to the Atlantic Ocean. A population of nearly 31 million people speak 250 native languages, including the national tongues of English and French.
One of the primary struggles in Cameroon is tied to drought. The rural village of Sakdje is particularly vulnerable, with erratic rainfall and recurring drought disasters that leave millions thirsty, focusing their daily lives on the search for water, and struggling with many afflictions—including food insecurity, illness, and more.
Seeking faith . . . and water
The charge of the Claretian Missionaries is to go wherever the need is greatest, throughout the world. This includes the Sakdje mission, a region covering 16 villages, where the Claretians serve the people with all facets of Catholic parish life, including celebrating Mass and all the Sacraments.
Claretian Fr. Jude Thaddeus Langeh, Superior of the Claretians in Cameroon, first visited Sakdje in 2019, leading to the Claretian assignment there in 2021. “When I visited for the first time, my heart sank at the scarcity of what I saw,” he says, “and more so when I saw the quality of water human beings just like me were drinking in this almost forgotten part of Cameroon.
“The other Claretians who went with me had the same sentiments.”
“When we arrived here, we could see that people were travelling many miles in search of clean water,” says Fr. Théophile Parfait Yene, CMF, Claretian vicar in Cameroon. “The water they found, and drank, was not hygienic and the water holes became so deep during droughts that the children could easily fall into them.”
So while the vibrant and vital Catholic parish life of the villages of Sakdje would serve as the structure of the Claretian mission to bring Christ to the people, so too would that structure serve to help them bring water to the people.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 6) rightly seeks to ensure safe drinking water and sanitation for all. Water, after all, is one of the most important elements in the daily life of society. During Sakdje’s rainy season, which lasts only 3 to 4 months, they can collect rainwater, even though that water is not always safe or available. Rainwater can carry bacteria, leading to disease outbreaks. Then during most of the year, which is the dry season, water is utterly scarce and undrinkable.
Water makes us FREE
The Claretians’ immediate focus on the water problem in Sakdje reveals how expansive the issue truly is. “We use FREE to describe our relationship to water here,” says Fr. Jude. The acronym stands for Fraternity, Refreshment, Emancipation, and Education—all at the heart of what the presence of clean water can do for individuals, families, local communities, and beyond.
Realities of the lack of pure water in Sakdje include:
• Parents: They cannot cook, wash clothes, or bathe their children
• Children: They contract diarrhea and cholera, waterborne diseases that are the leading cause of death for children under 5.
• Women and girls: They must trek up to 10
miles to look for potable water. They risk being attacked on their way.
• Farmers: They suffer failed crops from no
irrigation, and an inability to make a living wage that will feed and shelter their families.
• All: Many diseases result from the consumption of river and lake water.
To address the inescapable reality that there was no clean water available to the people, Fr. Jude embraced his passion for building wells.
“Our motivation is clear,” he says. “In addition to serving in the parish villages, we directed our first project here to the realization of boreholes and overhead water tanks to help relieve the social pain of the people.”
One Village, One Water Well
Ultimately, the Claretians, along with partners, donors, and villagers, hope to provide one clean water well in each village. Meanwhile, the territory the Claretians serve is growing; since 2021, the number of villages they came to support now has expanded to 16.
How many people will the wells benefit? “I do not want to exaggerate here,” says Fr. Jude, “but I cannot count! So many people benefit from the wells: children and adults, Christians and Muslims, believers and nonbelievers, military and lay, and more.”
“I estimate the benefit to 2000 to 3000 inhabitants per village,” he says. The wells are built about a mile from the nearest communities and gathering places of schools, homes, churches, and markets.
The building of the wells is leading precisely to where the Claretians and all who witness the effects of clean water on a community hope it will: development in many other meaningful areas, such as schools. “We have been touched even more by the fact that we went to build wells and ended up building schools,” says Fr. Jude. “The children who were not attending school now need schools!”
“The people have expressed much joy over this, because water means everything for us: Water means freedom. Water means life. Water means fraternity. Water means school. Water means emancipation,” he says.
“Water is everything.”
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