Was it the water?
Art & Mapuka Mehaffey – Congo
There is a mud block house in the village with its windows boarded and front door bolted tight. The home was abandoned by a family wanting to leave behind a painful memory. This is the memory of a young girl’s death.
Art & Mapuka Mehaffey – Congo
There is a mud block house in the village with its windows boarded and front door bolted tight. The home was abandoned by a family wanting to leave behind a painful memory. This is the memory of a young girl’s death.
In front of the small house is a well with no lid to protect it. Was it the water that killed their daughter?
The mother, Justine, 33, says that the family thought their daughter had malaria. That’s what the local nurses told them. But the daughter didn’t respond to medicine.
Justine never left her daughter’s side throughout the last hours of the girl’s life. Justine says, ‘I just started to cry. I don’t know how it happened. Maybe it was the dirty water. I don’t know.’
The family now believes it was typhoid that killed their daughter.
Others who reviewed this case and worked with this family know the fear is well-founded. They also believe typhoid, a dirty water disease, killed the daughter. They know alsothat children all over the Congo risk contracting the killer disease and others like it, every day.
‘It’s my big concern in life,’ says a water and sanitation expert. ‘When I see children playing in dirty water, I am very unhappy. It’s a warehouse of microbes. All the main diseases come from water–cholera, malaria, verminosis, typhoid and diarrhea. Since everybody needs water, if the water is contaminated, the whole population can be contaminated. It can be a disaster.’
His mission is to stop water-borne disease and death. He has already drilled one borehole, but that is just a beginning. He needs more finances to drill more boreholes.
Justine and her family hope that their daughter did not die in vain. When asked how they would like her remembered, Justine says, ‘She was a kind, young girl who helped me with the other children. She liked school. She liked mathematics especially. She wanted to become a doctor.'”
In Christian service,
The Mehaffey family – Art, Madeleine, Marie, Michael, and Vanessa
Art & Mapuka Mehaffey are missionaries with the Disciples of Christ in the Congo. Art serves in Kinshasa, and provides theological, educational, health and logistical support services. Mapuka serves in Brazzaville, and provides community education for the Disciples of Christ in Brazzaville, Congo.