Integrity guests arrive

Published 1:04 am Tuesday, October 27, 2009

SELMA — On his second visit to Selma and the U.S., Moses Meeli Ngusa, bishop and director of Integrity Worldwide in Kenya, and his wife Agnes Meeli Ngusa are spending a week here to raise funds and build relationships for Integrity Worldwide.

The program has already brought a 75,000-liter well (which converts to about 19, 813 gallons) and a state-of-the-art library to their town of Massai in Kenya.

The next plan is to bring irrigation systems to the area.

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“When you say well, you might think ok, a well with a great little handle,” said Averee Hicks, founder of Integrity Worldwide. “No, this is the mother load of wells.”

Each day the whole well is used to hydrate all the people of the area, plus 10,000 cows, 300 donkeys carrying 80 liters or about 19 gallons each, 6,000 goats and wild animals, such as hyenas, baboons and zebras at night.

Before opening the 600-foot deep well in July, “many children have suffered diseases from that water,” Ngusa said. Women would walk all day to Tanzania to get water for their families, and even that water was not clean.

“Now because [Integrity International] came, found us and helped, people have been so generous that we now have clean water,” Ngusa said.

In the process of building and filling the library, the program intends to bring the community modern conveniences such as running water and toilets in the bathrooms to a computer lab and conference room. Pipes run from the well to the library for the running water. The library will also run via solar power.

Ngusa will speak at Morgan Academy Tuesday as part of the Change for Change program and at an event in Birmingham on Thursday before returning with his wife to Maasai on Nov. 2.

Ngusa said he is honored to be here again, and refers to Selma as his second home.

Integrity International is a Christian mission program founded in 2006 and based here with offices also in Birmingham and North Carolina and has a partnership with villages in Kenya and Uganda.