Zimbabwe Partnership Trust (ZPT) is a small Christian charity that has been working with partners in Zimbabwe and the UK to help communities and churches across Zimbabwe since 2011. It also organises preacher’s workshops to assist pastors develop preaching and teaching skills.
One of its most rewarding projects is enabling rural communities to obtain a supply of clean water for drinking, washing, and the irrigation of crops, via the drilling of boreholes.
ZPT heard of a remote community where children were having to walk ten kilometres to the Tokwe river and get water before school so that pupils could drink and cook; some have been literally eaten by crocodiles while doing so. ZPT’s trustees therefore decided to fund the drilling of a borehole for the school, Mandiva Primary School in Masvingo province. It enrols 600 children, mainly from poor local villages. Some of the 20 teachers have been leaving because of the acute water shortage.
The borehole had to be drilled 80m down to find an adequate water supply, which is lifted to the surface pipe network by a solar-powered submersible electric pump. To save costs the local community got involved to dig the trench to connect the second borehole to the school.
Gideon Chishamba, of ZPT ministry partner Fountain of Hope Foundation, said after a previous borehole installation in Makamure: ‘One of the most remarkable consequences of putting in the borehole is that local people have turned from ancestral worship to a life of trusting God alone. They used to rely on witch-doctors and rainmakers, but now this project is opening ways for us to speak the word of God to them. The community now believes in the power of God and even their chiefs – who are supposed to be the custodians of their culture – are now turning to God and shunning their own traditional way of doing things.’
