With Thanksgiving just over and the season of giving underway in this bounteous land, most of us don’t have to worry about where our next glass of water comes from. But in Kigutu, Burundi, water for the family has to be collected every day from Lake Tanganika or other streams and brought home over a five-mile walk in large old gasoline cans. That work falls on young, school-aged girls in the family and often puts them in a vulnerable and unsafe area, on their own when they should be in school with their brothers.

Water is the bedrock of any healthy community, and now Brunswick Coastal Rotary is raising funds for a community water project that will give them a central water tower and multiple sources of clean drinking water. In this major project, we are helping a nonprofit called Village Health Works as the hospital there sees many cases a day of waterborne illness infecting their residents.

Cathryn Christiansen, a Brunswick native and family doctor, lives there and is the clinical director of Village Health Works. She knows all too well the diseases brought by unsafe drinking water. She is married to Deogratis Niyizonkiza, the founder of Village Health Works, whose life and escape from Burundi’s eight-year war were so well documented in Tracy Kidder’s book, “Strength in What Remains.” One out of every three residents suffers malnutrition and it is now officially classified as the poorest country in the world.

So Brunswick Coastal Rotary hopes to involve other local Rotary clubs in the U.S. and Africa to help Village Health Works. Dr. Susan Black, of Harpswell, has visited there several times and has become a believer in Deo’s dream of the health center as the focus of wellness for the community, which also houses a school, adult and community education, and many co-ops, such as sewing, bread making, and fishing, to help the villagers gain skills.

Susan was a family doctor in Lowell, Massachusetts, before heading to South

Africa for five years to work with mothers and children with

HIV/Aids as medical director at Nkosi’s Haven. She has lived in Harpswell since 1990 and has now settled there permanently. She met Cathryn in Africa and has believed in her dream for the people of Burundi since 2009.

She has been a Rotarian for

27 years.

Her work in Burundi fits in nicely with Brunswick Coastal’s long tradition of community involvement, whether here — supporting MidCoast Hunger and the Tedford Shelter — or raising funds for a variety of projects in South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland, Chechnya, and India. Partnering with many Rotary clubs around the world and supported by the Rotary Foundation, Brunswick has provided goods and services worth nearly $2 million.

You can donate to our cause at Brunswick Coastal Rotary, PO Box 911, Brunswick, ME, 04011. And of course, you’re welcome to join us at our 6 p.m. meeting every Wednesday at the Fairground Cafe, Topsham Fair Mall, Topsham. We’re always looking for new members.

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