We need to raise a team of people for the 2008 Village Water field trip to Zambia, Southern Africa. New dowsers are welcome to come along as trainees and to gain some solid field experience in placing wells – or to assist in checking the 2008 well digging programme so we can pay the contractors for excavating the wells. More experienced dowsers are also needed to visit the new villages that have requested wells and check their needs, accompanied by our highly experienced African field workers - and to do the dowsing for the new wells, recording the locations with the sat-nav kits that we supply. In fact, it’s not difficult to find water in the Western Province of Zambia, where we are into our fifth year of a water and sanitation programme, because there are sand strata close to the surface with groundwater no more than 4 to 8 metres down. So we economise by going for hand-dug shallow wells.

Zambia is a lovely peaceful country that has greatly benefited from the 2005 Gleneagles G8 summit debt relief agreement. Its teachers and nurses are now receiving salaries, but the farmers remain very poor. That’s why we’re there - bringing much need water to the most remote areas - where often we are the only relief organisation.

Because Village Water is a small charity, all members have to be self-funded and it costs around £1500 per person for the flights and the accommodation. We fly directly from London Heathrow to Lusaka, Zambia. Within the country we have Land Rovers kindly donated by supporters and we travel for many miles each day on sand tracks, where the Land Rovers come into their own. However, you do need to enjoy off-road travel. The African village people are delightful, very cheerful and they love dancing and singing - so we receive a right royal reception wherever we go. Many Village Water visitors come back and say it was a “life-changing” experience.

It is life-changing - putting your life and your values into perspective. It is astonishing – and a great way of using or developing your skills. We find that the social aspects of well location are just as important so you need to be able to chat to the villagers, English is spoken everywhere, learn about their families and their farming methods and chat to the head person and to the women and children, gaining their confidence because the key to the longevity of our work is convincing them that it really is their well – so they look after it.

If you are interested in coming, or wish you could come and want to contribute to the cost of sending British volunteers to do this vital work, then please contact us. We would like to set up a bursary scheme to pay some of the costs - perhaps you can help.

David Dixon, Village Water
enquiries@villagewater.org