The young warriors are out bridge fixing. The rains have eaten away at the already narrow bridge near the mission. The bridge consists of a corrugated iron culvert covered with dirt and stones. The rains have worn away the passage so there is just enough solid ground for a car to pass. This makes it a scary drive across the deep rain water dug gully. The young warriors are adding earth and rock to widen the roadway across. Some of the secondary students home for vacation are also taking part in the project.

There are many places where the road passes over these water courses and they have become narrow and dangerous to pass. Fortunately, our young Olbalbal warriors have willingly take on the job of making our road safe.

Water is a huge problem at Loongoku, one of the Maasai centers that I hold a prayer service and teaching each week. There is no water for miles around. The people there hire a land rover to bring a tank of water. It costs them the equivalent of some hundreds of dollars to bring the precious stuff and and they raise that sum by paying the equivalent of 25 cents American for each buck of water that they use. I’ve never seen people who were so careful about their use of water.

Here at the area of Olbalbal called Meshili, we are very lucky to have a pipe bringing water from a spring high on Ngorongoro mountain. There is a water point here on the mission where lots of people come to draw water every day. Once in a while, elephants break the pipe requiring some patching up, but generally there is always water at the tap in our front yard. This in in contrast to most of Maasai country where the women walk as much as half a day to get water for cooking and drinking.