ExclusiveBringing Clean Water to Africa’s Forgotten Villages | Kurt Dahlin

By accident that I discovered that this is really a global crisis of massive concern. So in 2007 Waterwells for Africa was founded as a water charity in Malawi, Africa. And we celebrated our 500th water well. People were healthy, no cholera, no waterborne disease. It was very moving for me because it's so much work and energy and funding and begging for people. Each one of these is a miracle as far as I'm concerned. People measure wealth on different levels. And some people measure wealth by how much money you store up or how much money you got in the bank. But I feel like there's a true wealth. There's a spiritual wealth and that's giving back and helping other people. Kurt, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here today. We want to talk to you about the projects you do. You've started some amazing projects in Africa. You're trying to help people have drinking water and water. Can you tell us about your projects? The water project actually was a surprise discovery. I was a manufacturing engineer with McDonnell Douglas Helicopters. And I decided I wanted to do something more with my life than just make a batch of helicopters. So I got a job with a humanitarian agency. And part of it was just to see what we could do to improve the quality of life in the world. So we had an orphanage in Mexico that we were helping develop. We had a hospice that we started there and a nursery and a school. And then Guatemala, we helped build a college there. And I spent a lot of time back and forth in India, in South India, with an organization that had an orphanage for girls to teach them life skills. And then they started a school and a college. I was involved there for a long time. And then in 1991, I got an invitation to go to South Africa out in the trans guy. In those days, it was the apartheid regime that was in control. So they marginalized people and intentionally segregated people in these little republics. And so we went out to the trans guy and found wonderful African people, warm-hearted, who had been intentionally cut off from development. And so I worked with them over a course of four different years. And then in 1994, there was a civil war in Rwanda, if you remember. And a lot of attention was going to Africa. And there was a lot of interest in helping Africa. So a friend of mine who is a Hollywood stuntman, Eddie Braun, came to me and said he had a little group of people that really wanted to help do something in Africa. So I said, okay, let me look into it. And through research, I found you couldn't get into Rwanda. You couldn't get a visa. There was a lot of humanitarian aid going there that was getting black marketed, stolen. And so I met with Eddie and Charlie Sheen. And then John Stamos and Carrie Elways was a part of this little hub that wanted to do, continues to do something. So I said, okay, let me look around. But back in the 1900s, the beginning of the Internet, and phones are still attached to the wall. And if you wanted to send a letter, you had to write it with your hand, lick it, put a stamp on it and send it. There's no Googling. Yeah, you couldn't just, you know, chat GPT, you know, find, you know, borehole company. So I found something called the Global Suffering Index. And on the Global Suffering Index, it charted, measured where the major sources of suffering were in the world and poverty. And at the top, of course, there's Rwanda, Mozambique, Malawi and other African countries. And I go, what's a Malawi? You know, what is this place? Maui? No. So in doing research on Malawi, I found out that it sits in Mozambique like a little hummingbird. And Mozambique had been in civil war for 15 years. And people come across into the border into southern Malawi and their refugee camps down there. Even though the war was waning, it was still, you know, a humanitarian crisis. So I said, well, let's let's go down there. Let's go check it out. So I got a group of guys, a photographer. We're going to take some film and come back and show it at the House of Blues for Charlie Sheen. And in traveling there, meeting leadership, going down to the southern part in September, which was just 30 years ago. Actually, I just celebrated 30 years from my first trip. At that particular time of year, it's really hot. So it's like going into December, the end of the summertime, hot, miserable. And then I found women carrying huge buckets of water from no visible water point to no visible village. I'm going, what's this all about? So it was by accident that I discovered that this is really a global crisis of massive concern. So I came back and I thought, let's see if we can do something about it. Took me a year of researching water and water development companies and drilling and fundraising and developing leadership network there in the country. So in May 1996, I went back. We put in our first water well. We saw the joy that it brought and the happiness to people. And I go, you know, let's let's do another one. So let's go back to you. You decided to go there and you said, let's go check it out. What does check it out mean? Like, did you have to get visas? Did you did the government help you or did you? No, no, we we went on our own. And there were some contacts we had in country that took us down to meet people, to get in touch on the ground level of what we thought was the need. We thought the need was going to be down in the southern area where the refugee camps were. But what we found was even a greater need that was bigger than that. And that was the water problem, water crisis. People are struggling every day. Now, what was it like for you? Because you're American and you're going in this African country. And did it feel dangerous? Because it comes to mind, you probably you could be a target for. Could be, could be. What was it like for you? So, as I said, I made four trips to South Africa under the apartheid regime. So there are places I couldn't go there and there's places I shouldn't go. Why you couldn't go there? Just because of the violence and just because of the racism set up in South Africa. So when I came to Malawi, I found a country that was very family oriented and the people are warm hearted. It's called the warm heart of Africa. So when you go there, you find just very, very humble people. And I find that poverty is a level playing field for everyone. And so they're genuinely hospitable people. And so we've gone over 30 years into very remote, very hard to reach places where end of the pavement, end of the dirt, end of the bike path, footpath. And people are welcoming, happy to see you. I never feel threatened. I never feel worried about anything. I don't think I've ever had anything stolen there. This is the kind of people we're really happy to help and the people that really benefit from the water that we're able to make accessible for them. So when you got there, how long did it take you to figure out that this is different? Malawi is a different country than your other experiences in South Africa. How long did it take? Or was there a specific time you realized that the warmth in these people is different? You know, I found the Xhosa people in South Africa to be very warm and hospitable, too. And even under the apartheid regime over there, they're very welcoming. And that was very refreshing for me, especially as an outsider coming in. So you saw that people were different from the government. Yeah. The people, this is what I love about people. People are different than governments. And whatever happens in governments doesn't always impact people at where they live at a life level. But in South Africa, because of the situation, all the men were in the city working in the mines and sending money back to the villages. And so you had a lot of women doing all the work in the villages with a bunch of toothless old men. So you didn't have a full family structure. But when I went to Malawi, I found a full family structure there in the villages. The husbands and fathers and mothers and kids trying really hard to, you know, advance their life with the most difficult situations that they face. And primarily due to the lack of water. But men doing their work, women doing their work, kids trying to go to school and live life. So I found a much more wholesome family structure in Malawi than I did when I was in South Africa. And when you were there the first trip, how did you figure out that water is the most important thing for them? Was there a moment that you realized if water's problem is solved? Well, in meeting with people down there and getting pictures for, you know, we were supposed to come back and do... With ideas, right? We were supposed to come back with, hey, here's a need. We want to meet this need. We were going to work with, you know, some people to promote that. But like I say, it was somewhat inadvertent or accidental that we discovered the need for water. And just visiting there and seeing it firsthand going this is a crisis. This is before anything else. This is the primary top priority here in this country. Do you remember the moment or the time that you figured that out? Like that you saw something? Well, I would say just being down there and just going and being shocked. So there's a woman with a baby on the back, bucket of water on her head. Never seen anything like that in my life. I wouldn't even imagine that that existed. But when I saw it, then it impresses you as a person. And it's like these are...this is... Where were they going? Were they carrying the water from the... That's what I'm saying. There was no visible water point. So I'm going, where's she coming from? And where's she going? And then come to find out this is a regular part of life for them. That they have to go as far as they need to go to find any water point and to bring it back. They'll get up at 2 o'clock in the morning. They'll sit there all night. They'll walk great distances. Or if they get to a contaminated swamp or water point, they'll wait in line there for their turn. Women will get into fights over their place in line because they're up early, walking great distances. So, yeah, it's a terrible, terrible... How long do they have to walk? What's the distances usually? Well, there's no usual distance because it depends on where you are. But they'll walk as far as they have to walk and go as long as they need to go to do it. So there's some places where there's surface water that's more accessible. They might be to a seasonal creek. They'll dig a little hole in the ground and they'll crawl down in there and scoop water out plate by plate. There's other places that are drier that they'll have to go further distances to find water. And it's really a tremendous hardship. So you can't just say, well, it's eight hours here and an hour there. They do whatever they have to do to get even one bucket of water per day. They'll hike to high mountains. They'll fight with hyenas and monkeys and snakes. And, you know, return with one bucket of water that's really contaminated and just a source of huge health problems for them. And there is no infrastructure, right? There's no... In the city there's infrastructure, but as soon as you get outside the cities, there's no infrastructure or very limited. And where we go, there's no electricity, no roads, no water. Yeah, it's people living pretty much like they have for the last hundred years. Is it like villages or is it like smaller towns? No, there'll be little scruffy towns. And, you know, it's coming up a little bit, but it's easy to get outside of town, outside of infrastructure, out beyond electricity and beyond, you know, municipal water districts quite easily. So 80% of the people in Malawi live in rural areas, which are affected in this way. Rain-fed agriculture is very difficult for them. And water collection is a primary responsibility for girls and women. So this is one of the reasons why young girls don't go to school and can't go to school. Child education is a huge problem in Malawi. They have the highest dropout rate in all of southern Africa, which means 16 nations. It's kids just can't go to school because they don't have water. So in the course of doing this for 30 years now, what we've discovered is wherever we put in a borehole, which is access to clean water in a village, it frees kids up, especially girls, to be able to go to school regularly. So we're really happy about that. So tell us, so then what happened next? So you came back and you met with the rich Hollywood actors and then... Yeah, that all fell apart. Yeah, something happened to all this big thing we were going to do. But because we had gone, and I'm, you know, working for an agency that's seeking to help people, I said, this is an area we really want to focus in on, and I believe that water is really going to be the first step out of poverty for a lot of people. So I came back, and over the course of maybe the next 10 years, maybe we put in 20. It was much more difficult in those days to fundraise. It was much more difficult to organize internationally and get money there and accountability structures. And, you know, there wasn't social media. So if I wanted to go and fundraise, I'd have to go do a personal presentation and, you know, put Xerox copies on an overhead or something. Yeah, it's a lot different nowadays, like, for instance, what we're doing right here. And then over the course of doing this, I said, let's incorporate it as a standalone public benefit nonprofit. So apart from whatever else I was doing, let's do this. So in 2007, we did that, and the purpose was to be dedicated all to water development and water projects. So in 2007, Water Wells for Africa was founded as a water charity in Malawi, Africa. So since then, now, just this last year, which was our 30-year anniversary, went back and celebrated our 500th water well. Wow. 500. We're halfway to 1,000. We want to do 1,000. That's our new goal right now. Can you tell us about the first one? Yeah. How that went, and did you learn something in the process? Well, the good part about it is you learn every single year, even this last year. Every time we go, we learn more about the benefits of water. So I knew nothing first time. They were supposed to have had it drilled by the time we got there. So you already told them you hired people to do it? Yeah, we had it all organized. We had everything worked. We were coming in May 1996 after a year and a half of research, getting people, getting organized, finding drillers, fundraising. They were supposed to have it finished, but they had a piece broken on their equipment. But they were supposed to get it in. It was imported from the part that they needed was imported from the Netherlands. And then it got stuck in customs in South Africa. But we'd already bought tickets. We were already on our way there. We're going to go anyway. So we go all the way over to fly to Europe. Then we had to fly to Johannesburg and fly up to Malawi. There's no direct flights. So we get to Blantyre, which is a major city in the south. And we go visit the water drillers that we contracted with. And while we were there looking to equipment, meeting everybody, the piece that they were waiting for came in. So I go, hey, we're here. Do our project. Because everything's on hold for them. So they go, OK, we'll be there on Tuesday. So we went on Monday and met some village chiefs and people and were pretty excited about it. And they roll in on Tuesday in the afternoon and get set up. It's somewhat of a portable drilling equipment that they bring. And all the people in the village were really excited, helping move pipes and do things. And they got right to drilling, which I was pretty shocked about since it was later on in the day. I thought, you know, maybe they'll wait for tomorrow. But they didn't. They got right to drilling right away. And then they use compressed air. So they'll have like a hammer bed and they'll drill it in the ground and push the rocks out and everything. It was pretty exciting. And then they got a hole in their compressed tube that they had there. And they go, oh, that's a bummer. Got all the way out here and now you got a hole in your hose, your compressed hose. But they took a bicycle tire and wrapped it around it. And fixed it. And they fixed it. And then they had another problem with some part that they had to go weld. And I'm going, where are you going to find a welder out here in like the middle of nowhere? But they drove off and they'd gone for a couple hours and they came back and they had the piece. I go, I don't know how they did that. But it was pretty amazing. But it took us three days to find water there because they had to drill through this granite rock portion underground. And they said, don't worry, don't worry. We're going to get through this and we're going to find water. So they did and it was our first one, May 1996. We're pretty happy about it. So after you guys started using the well, you guys were still there, right? Yeah, we were there when they hit water. And then what you do is you put in casing, of course, and then a gravel pack around it. And then you have to clean it out. And they force air down there and it just flushes it all out. So that was as far as we got on that one. But we were able to drop a cup all the way down, pour it out and drink it. So we had our first drink. And then because I've been going now for 30 years, that one was finished after we had left. And we started putting in boreholes in different areas. And I realized that I've actually never been back to that one to see it finished. So it wasn't until 16 years later that I actually went back to that borehole to celebrate the very first one. Still working, people were healthy, no cholera, no waterborne disease. Yeah, it was very moving for me because it's so much work and energy and funding and begging for people and international business and coordinating to make one of these happen. Each one of these is a miracle as far as I'm concerned. And the fact that that was working for 16 years, it was just like, that's what I want. So people were still using it? Still using it. That's what I want. And what was it like for that community when you talked to them? It's life changing, absolutely. So every water well, when we first went, it was like, okay, this is drinking water. But over the years of learning and talking to people, visiting thousands of villages and thousands of people and putting in hundreds and hundreds of water wells, physically touching them, visiting them, seeing them, experiencing the joy that water brings, I collect stories every year of the benefits of it. And so the stories grow and grow and grow every year. So it's just the health benefit is number one, just the elimination of waterborne disease. So the first time I realized that years and years ago, I was with a translator and with a group in a village, and I go, how's the cholera been here? Because cholera is a continual annual problem in Malawi. Waterborne disease, typhoid, cholera, dysentery, diarrhea, major global killers in the world. And I said, I asked the translator, you know, ask him, how has cholera been since the boreholes have been put in? And they go, we haven't had any. I go, I'm thinking maybe there's going to be a 20% reduction or maybe 10% reduction. Compared to the surface water that we're using. Compared to the surface water or river water, wherever they're getting it, it's contaminated. So then I said, ask him again, because they said 100%. They go, no, it's 100%. I go, well, it's waterborne disease. So you've just eliminated waterborne sickness by putting it in a borehole. So it's a staggering move up in terms of their health. And then, of course, the boreholes close to a village. We can make it, you know, given hydrogeological survey and best case of water scenario. But it's accessible and it's accessible all the time. So sometimes in the rainy season when there's flooding, they can't get across the river to get water. People will be swept away. Young kids can't go to school. But when you've got a borehole right here in a village, they can access it even during the rainy season and dry season. It's safe. Kids can go. Women can go multiple times a day. And what they found is that their health is so immensely improved. They're sick all the time from waterborne illness. And what happens is we found out that they didn't even realize that it was a waterborne sickness. They just thought they're sick all the time. And as a result of all the sickness, they're going to clinics, which are far away. There's medicine costs. There's transportation costs. It's a huge loss of time and life. This kid's sick one week. They take them. They take another one the next week. Two and three times a month, they're going to these clinics, completely eliminated. I go, do you go to clinics anymore? They go, oh, we only go for malaria now. I said, do the doctors miss you? They go, yeah, where have you been? They tell them, we have a borehole in the village now. So I go, well, what do you do with all your spare time? So the women go, we sleep in. We don't have to get up at 2 o'clock in the morning, walk great distances, fight with other women. I go, you women used to fight? Yeah, we'd fight almost every day for our place in line, for how many buckets you can have in line. I go, how about now? We don't fight anymore. There's peace in the village. And the women say, we get up at 2 o'clock, walk a great distance, struggle to get water. Sometimes fight with wild animals, come back. And our husbands beat us because we're gone for so long. They suspect us of extramarital affairs. And I go, how about now? No, no, there's harmony in the family. I go, how many of your kids go to school now? 100% of our kids go to school. What was it before the borehole? 40%. How about girls? All of our girls go to school. And if they don't go to school, we know they're goofing off. Oh, OK. So water is so much more than just for drinking. And the health benefits are just in the first step. And then there's the family dynamics, which has improved. We had one lady tell me that the husband and wife used to quarrel all the time. She'd be gone long. He'd beat her, but now he doesn't beat her anymore. Now she says, we don't even quarrel anymore because there's water here. And I go, wow, I need water at my house. Now, Kurt, you mentioned that you left your manufacturing job to do something bigger that has an impact. Why did you do that? Or how did you learn to do that? Well, people measure wealth on different levels. And some people measure wealth by how much money you store up or how much money you got in the bank. But I feel like there's a true wealth. There's a spiritual wealth, and that's giving back and helping other people. And so part of the reason for leaving that was to see what we could do to just make life better for people who are in great need. So like I said, we started out in Mexico, Guatemala, India, Africa, a number of different places just doing this stuff. And how did you learn to measure wealth in different ways, in more spiritual ways? Well, being raised in Venice, California, back in the Dogtown days and in the late 60s and 70s, when I graduated from high school, I would have considered myself an atheist. And we got heavily into drugs and alcohol. I grew marijuana in my backyard in Venice. Pushed drugs, sold things. But I come to find out that that was a very empty lifestyle. Pleasure-seeking, hedonism. You know, I would surf. We would travel into Costa Rica, surf there, all through Mexico, very into the water and nature and meditation. It was just like none of this seems like it's meeting my need, my spiritual need. And it was only through long travels and meeting people and trying a number of different spiritual venues, so to speak, that I found Jesus, so to speak. You know, I found Christ in my life. And that was a changing point for me. And so I went about my life, you know. I went back to school and got a college degree. And I went to work at McDonnell Lucas Helicopters and was gainfully employed and had a great career in front of me. But I just felt like there's more we can do and there's a different way to measure success in life and purpose in life than just, you know, materialism and living, you know, the American dream. Now, you mentioned that these wells, each one of them is a miracle. I believe so. And can you tell us what it takes to create one for you? So, because we are extremely volunteer-oriented, like I said, and we're largely grassroots, in Malawi, because I've been going for 30 years now, the people that work together with me are kids that I've known from high school. That were there. That they saw you putting the work. And I've known them for 25 years. And we've grown up going back every year, coming out with us as translators, coming out with us just to hang out, you know, just being a part of seeing and meeting, going, doing stuff, good things. So, over the course of these years, they've grown up. We sent some of them to college. We got them a driver's license. We have vehicles. They have families. They have kids. They're going to school. So, you know, it's a holistic approach over there as well. And those guys are really amazing. And because they've come out of the village and they understand the need for water, they're very passionate about it. So, it's more than just a job for them. It's still a very sacrificial level of giving, even for them, because of how far we have to go and what we have to do to make it happen. So, over the course of years, as this has slowly grown, grown, grown to the point we are now, we've all come along. We've all learned. We've all come along together. And, you know, I go every year, so I know their families, know their kids. And, you know, it's a great relationship we have, mutual friendship that we've developed over decades of time. So, what we're doing originally was putting boreholes or water wells in areas that great need, which is everywhere. Throw a dart on the map. Put one there. You know what I'm saying? It's not hard to find. There's no end to it. There's no end. We have water everywhere here. Every house, every hotel, every garage, every gas station, every fountain. There's no lack of water here. That's not the way over there. So, there's no infrastructure there or not enough that reaches out to where we're going. So, we're that infrastructure. And this is why we use the hand pumps. Where we work, we want to match the technology with the capacity of the village people to repair it. So, you can't put in big solar panels and big pipes and things like that because they don't have the ability to maintain it. So, where we specialize in being the first water they've ever had, we're using the AfroDev hand pump, which has a successful supply chain in-country. And it's simple enough that we train them on how to repair it, take it apart, put it back together again, where to buy the parts, and that sort of thing. So, one of our specialties, our protocols, is sustainability. We're very keen on making sure that these people will accept the responsibility to be trained to maintain it, but also that we insist upon this as a part of our system. So, after 30 years, I visited a borehole just this last year that we put in 20 years ago. I visited water wells we put in 25 years ago. And they're still running? Still running. Third generation water committee. And who maintains them? Is it people from the village or is there a specific… No, I'll tell you how. This is it. Ready? So, Malawian people are very resourceful and we develop a water committee in each village. So, our guys, who have been doing this now for a long time, were strategically targeting certain areas so that we can… So, it used to be that we'd put in a borehole here and all these five villages would use this one. Because of lack of money, whatever it is, we're going to put it in to help as many people as possible. So, some of those wells we use 2,000 people. But now, as funding comes in and we get better at it, we're going to put one here and we're going to put them all over here. So, this whole village can use that one and it doesn't deplete the aquifer here and it's less distance, less travel. And so, we're trying to strategically develop certain areas. So, in doing that, these guys are out there. They just did an assessment. So, at this time of year, when we're beginning for a new year of 2025, they will go and assess villages. Because we want to make sure there's an actual need there. There's not another borehole over there or someplace. They're lining them up so you can tell your donors I put in five boreholes, but it's right here. Yeah, they're not creating value. Yeah, that's not what we're doing. So, okay, they just sent me back a 10 village assessment. Okay, so they've gone out. They met with the village chiefs. They met with leadership. They got a commitment for a 10-member water committee that will be trained to repair it, which they're more than happy to do. We've never found anywhere where they said, no, we don't want to do that. So, this committee used to be five women and five men. So, this is the very first time that women were elected to a leadership position in a village. So, they're elected. Yeah, they're elected to this position by the village. So, women are very proud and honored for the first time in human history to be an elected leader in their own village. And women are the primary water harvesters, so why shouldn't they be on the committee? You know what I'm saying? So, over the past couple of years, we said we now want six women and four men on the village water committee because we want to honor them, we want to empower them, and because they're really the ones that are most invested in water collection. So, this committee now will be trained. There's a week-long training that we fund as a part of our program. So, it's not just put in a borehole and be done. We go out, we assess, we determine an actual need, we see how many people it's going to meet. Okay, we might need two here. We might need three in this entire area because there's 200 families over there, there's 300 families here. There's okay, so all right. And then we'll get a commitment for the water committee development team, and they'll come back with this list and pictures and need and locations and GPS. Send it to me. I review it with our board. We'll approve that, and then we will wire funding for 50%. So, we put a down payment on this first 10, which I just did yesterday. Just sent a wire off for 10 for this brand-new year. So, once that arrives, they will mobilize. They will get a hydrogeological survey engineer to go out there with some electronics and determine the best-case scenario for finding water, water discovery, equipment, and then they'll mobilize the drilling company, which comes from Blantyre, and it's hours and hours and days and days of driving, but they're all local guys. They're all indigenous Malawian drillers and drill team who speak the language, who understand village life, who are willing to go anywhere we ask them to go. And in many cases, the local village people build a road or cut down trees or move rocks. They move heaven and earth to make it so the truck can get there. They participate in bringing bricks and bringing gravel and sand and helping whatever the drillers need. So, it's a real community effort, a real neighborhood affair for this drilling project. And it's a big thing. It's the first development they've ever had. Sometimes it's the first trucks or cars kids have ever seen. And so, it's a real special event for everybody, and everybody waits and watches and sits and helps. And when they find water, they go crazy. It's just so much fun. And how much is it per well? How much does it cost? It costs around $9,000. And you want to put 500 more? Yeah. I will put in 500 more. And is there enough demand for that, or you think the demand is a lot more than 500? Oh, no. The demand is endless. And who owns them? The village will own them? Well, what we do is we stress the fact that you don't own this. Not an individual? The community owns this. So, this may be on your property, but it doesn't belong to you. So, a part of our system in place is to make sure that everybody understands that this is a gift to the community and that anybody can use it. So, sometimes we're close to the Mozambique border. Sometimes we're close to a situation where you're in a different district and people are coming by. We make sure they understand that if your neighbors from Mozambique come here, they can use this water. If your neighbors from that village or this other surrounding area come here, they can use this water because it's a gift to you and to everybody here in this place. Did you ever face any conflicts that people wouldn't want to allow others to use it? We know that there are conflicts in water points. Like I say, just even in a water point with the ladies, they'll fight over water. And there are certain places where people have maybe an open water pit and they will charge people to use it. Or there are situations where because water is so scarce and you're from this village, and this water point is in this village, that they will prohibit you from using it or let you use it last. So, because of that, we make sure that in our training with the village water community, and in the village in particular, that, hey, this has been gifted to you, and this is from donors who love you from America and other places, and we want to make sure that everybody is able to access this free. Kurt, are you getting any feedback from the people that are using these wells? Absolutely. Every year we go. Every year we visit as many new water wells as possible. I ask at every place, what are the benefits of water? There's the health benefits, there's the education benefits, there's the family benefits, there's the economic lift. People have free time and money now to buy livestock and fertilizer. Women start businesses. They've started community banks. And I went to one village and the women said, we've started micro-businesses. I go, did you just use the word micro-business? They go, yeah, we're going to the next village, getting tomatoes, we're getting charcoal, we're selling here. I'm making mats, I'm making biscuits, we're selling them. I'm going, it's like you can't even imagine the difference that water makes in the life of an entire village. Families are happier, health is better, kids are going to school. And then in 2020, we couldn't go. It was one year we couldn't go because of the COVID. So I sent my guys to the Department of Education and I said, what do you need to help schools reopen after COVID? So they came back with a list of 600 schools with no water. So I go, okay, let's start targeting schools with boreholes, water wells. So I think at the end of 2020, we put in 10 and then 2021, we were able to go visit and we put in another 20. We're up to like 65 schools now that we've put in water wells specifically for those schools. And what we're finding is a huge turnaround in child attendance, academic performance, graduation rate, performance rates, health. Every category of child education has been improved simply by putting a water well in a school. So when we went back to one of the first schools where we placed one, we had a big party, a big celebration. And a couple of young girls came up and they read a little poem that they had written. And I brought it with me here today just to read it for you. So you can just get a window into what water meant to those young girls. Excellent. Let me read it for you. All right. So this is from Nanyanje School in Mangochi. Thanks to water wells for Africa. On empty belly, I used to wake up early with a determined spirit. We used to fight for our goals. In those thirsty afternoons with no water in our bottles, we tried hard to survive. Yes, we strode to win. But our days were dark. Our bodies were only waterless. Our education burning at the stake. Water wells for Africa came as a dream. Filled our lives to the brim. The water we cried for is here. May you hear our thanks. Thanks to water wells for Africa. Viva water wells for Africa. Nanyanje. Whoa yeah. That's what they say. Whoa yeah. So we don't know what it does. But the dreams, the hopes, the future is brighter. Just because we are able to work together to do all the hard work necessary to make this miracle of a water well happen. Kurt Dahling with water wells for Africa. It was great to have you on California Insider. Keep up the great work. You know, I'm so glad to be here. We're so glad to be able to tell you about what we're doing at California Insider. Thank you so much for having me.