A Basic Human Right — Clean Water

Taylor Sorice (AS ’20) has worked with the Thirst Project for 5 years helping to build fresh-water wells in areas that don’t have access to clean water. From June 22nd to the 24th, Taylor, along with 14 other members of the Thirst Project, visited communities in Swaziland, Africa. We celebrated the creation of 6 wells that the organization had funded, and in that time, taught games to school children, helped pump well water for community members, and learned about the vast differences between our culture and theirs. On the 25th and 26th, we started and finished building a well for a school in the Manzini region of Swaziland by laying pipe, moving and mixing concrete/boulders, and digging trenches.

Taylor had this report from the field: “This experience has completely changed the way that I view the world, and the ability to acquire happiness. Children as young as six years old were alongside me moving thirty pound rocks, because to them, participating in civic engagement meant gaining access to a basic human right- clean water. These people had little to no material possessions, and yet they were some of the happiest people I have met in my life. In subsequent experiences, I want to chase that feeling, because for a week and a half, I was halfway across the world, in a place that I hadn’t heard of years before, and yet I had never felt more at home.”