"L'eau est bon!" Water is good!

Three young girls, headed home from the water tap.

We've spent the past six days working in Diender, a small village on the road between Gossas and Fatick in the CREATE! southern project zone.

As of tonight, the villagers of Diender have abundant water thanks to the solar powered water pump installed by CREATE!, a 5,000 liter storage tank, and a gravity fed network of twelve one thousand liter reservoirs that we helped them to build for their community garden.

Diender solar array and well.

Gravity fed water network with in ground basins in the community garden.  

In the coming weeks much of the water being pumped in Diender will be used for growing food in the garden, but for today, it was a nonstop celebration of the simple fact that everyone in the village--including the animals--can for the first time have as much water as they want, whenever they want it.

Notice the water flowing from the tap, as the solar powered pump hums away.

This donkey cart came back twice.

Throughout the afternoon we watched as a steady stream of people brought colorful containers--some of them brand new--and took home basin after basin of water.  But one of the best moments was when a young man downed a whole bucket of water, lay back on the sand, and said, "L'eau est bon!'  "Water is good!"

It is, indeed.