Clean Water: February 2009

Pictures from John and Mary's recent trip to Africa

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The Des Moines Register wrote:

"We were going to give everything we had or nothing at all," Hays said.

"...(John) Hays and his wife, Mary, took $40,000 from their savings. They used $10,000 to apply for a patent, which is pending, and spent the rest to build chlorinators and travel to developing nations.

One trip found them in an African leprosy colony, where Hays put an automatic injection chlorine generator into the colony's water tower. A solar panel on the top of the tower juiced the 12-volt battery that sparks the chlorination. Soon, the colony's doctors had clean surgical tools and 5,000 residents had clean water to drink, Hays said..."

Click here to read the entire article.

The Washington Evening Journal

By David Hotle

02/05/2009

What started off as a desire to visit a friend in another country turned into a mission to help the people of Tanzania get clean drinking water for Washington High School seniors Brad Sievers and Casey Negrete.
While the two went to Tanzania last month, the real journey began when the Negrete family hosted Boniface Mkini, an exchange student from Tanzania, last year. Mkini, Sievers, son of Jim and Lynette Sievers, and Negrete, son of Robert and Tammy Negrete, quickly became good friends. As with many friendships, the three started discussing how they could visit Mkini in his home country.
"He was very popular in school," Negrete said. "He was very well-liked around town and in my church."
The answer for the students came when they saw a presentation put on by John Hays, a member of Pure Water For All, which delivers water purifiers to areas of the world without a clean water supply. Hays, the director of the City of Washington Water Department, who had traveled to many countries to deliver filters he invented, said his next visit would be to Africa. Sievers and Negrete thought of visiting their friend and helping others at the same time.
"We thought we could do that and we talked with John," Sievers said. "My dad knows him too and we talked with him. We got two water units to take over there."
The cost of the trip was still an issue. Negrete and Sievers raised money in the Washington community for the trip.
When the day finally arrived to fly out of the Eastern Iowa Airport in Cedar Rapids for the 26-hour journey to Africa, Sievers and Negrete traveled with Hays to Amsterdam, Holland, and then to Kilimanjaro in Kenya, where Hays stayed. Sievers and Negrete traveled on to Cape Town, then to Tanzania. Sievers said Kesara, which is Mkini's hometown, was about 30 minutes southwest of the former capitol Dar Es Salaam.
Shortly after arriving, the two were reunited with Mkini.

For the full story, see the Feb. 5 edition of The Washington Evening Journal