06/07/2026
A Prayer That Rose Above a Dry Borehole
Some prayers are answered with rain.
Others echo through dry earth.
This is the story of one that still lives inside me.
Denderedzi High School had been waiting for water for more than twenty years.
Not a week.
Not a season.
Two decades.
The school sits in one of Zimbabwe’s driest regions, where the earth guards its water like a secret. It is one of the twelve rural schools supported by the Tererai Trent International Foundation.
Every time I visited, I found myself asking the same question.
How does a school survive without water?
But this was never merely a question.
It was a memory.
Standing there, I was transported back to my own childhood. I knew what it meant to grow up in a rural community where every bucket of water had to be earned. I knew what it meant to watch women disappear before sunrise with containers balanced on their heads, only to return hours later exhausted. I knew what it meant to learn while thirsty.
Suddenly I was no longer the woman leading a foundation.
I was once again the little village girl who understood that before a child can dream, she must first drink.
Nearly one hundred and eighty students arrived each morning carrying dreams far bigger than the dusty landscape surrounding them.
Yet before they could think about mathematics, literature or science, they first had to think about something far more basic.
Water.
Children arrived with cracked lips.
Teachers rationed every drop.
Some students carried cloudy river water inside worn plastic bottles, hoping it would last until the final lesson.
Hope itself seemed thirsty.
When our team finally secured funding to drill a solar-powered borehole, excitement swept through the community.
Word travelled faster than any official announcement.
Before sunrise on Saturday morning, the drilling truck rumbled into the school grounds carrying its towering machinery. The deep growl of the engine echoed across the valley, drawing people from every direction.
Women arrived balancing empty twenty-litre buckets.
Village elders came leaning on walking sticks.
Schoolchildren ran barefoot across the dusty yard.
Nobody had been invited.
Nobody needed to be.
Water belongs to everyone.
Watching those women quietly line up their empty containers before a single hole had even been drilled taught me something profound.
Faith often arrives carrying empty buckets.
Across rural Africa, women and girls carry the burden of water.
They wake before dawn.
Walk for kilometres.
Carry heavy containers home.
Then cook. Wash. Clean.
Care for children.
The absence of water steals hours from every day and years from every life.
This borehole represented far more than water.
It represented dignity. It represented opportunity. It represented freedom.
Normally, our drillers expected to strike water somewhere between forty and sixty metres.
Anything deeper meant more money.
More drilling.
More uncertainty.
More pressure on a budget that was already stretched beyond comfort.
The drill bit sank into the ancient granite beneath the school.
The machine screamed against the rock as clouds of fine dust rose into the morning air, settling on school uniforms, weathered faces and the empty buckets waiting patiently beneath the trees.
Every few minutes the drilling paused.
Every pause sent hundreds of eyes searching the earth for the slightest sign of moisture.
Then, almost instantly, a piercing ululation burst across the schoolyard.
One elderly woman had been sitting quietly beneath the shade of a classroom wall.
She slowly rose to her feet.
She lifted both hands toward heaven.
Then she began to sing.
Within seconds, other women joined her.
Their voices rose together until the air itself seemed to vibrate.
I lifted my camera and quietly walked toward them.
When they noticed me, the singing softened into warm laughter.
The elderly woman adjusted the faded cloth tied around her waist and looked directly into my eyes.
Then she began to pray.
She wasn’t praying only for water. She was praying for dignity.
Not quietly.
Not politely.
She prayed as though heaven stood only a few metres away.
“May God increase the number of TTI Foundation days upon this earth.
May He keep TTI and her partners safe wherever you travel.
Through water you are bringing us freedom.
Water is our greatest struggle, yet it is life itself.
Look at me.
I have grown old searching for water.
Look at these feet.
They can no longer carry me to the river.
What of these children?
They drink dirty water from bottles filled at the river.
Disease has become part of our lives.
The God of Samuel whom I pray to—
may you protect TTI Foundation and all its global partners.
May you bless them with long life.”
I slowly lowered my camera.
There are moments when recording history feels almost disrespectful.
Some moments deserve to be received rather than documented.
Behind her, the drill continued its relentless journey into the earth.
Forty metres.
Nothing.
Fifty metres.
Still nothing.
Sixty metres.
Silence.
The engineer looked toward me.
“Maybe if we drill deeper.”
Hope and fear collided inside my chest.
Just then a small boy, no older than ten, gently tugged at my sleeve.
His voice was almost a whisper.
“Do you think we’ll find water?”
I smiled, though I wasn’t sure I believed my own smile.
“My grandmother told me to bring fresh water home today,” he said.
“I was hoping to drink before I walked back.”
He wasn’t asking whether the borehole would succeed.
He was asking whether he could keep a promise to his grandmother.
His words settled somewhere deep inside me.
No child should have to hope for a drink of water.
I turned toward the drilling team.
“Let’s keep going.”
Every additional metre felt like signing another cheque I wasn’t sure we could cash.
Seventy metres.
Nothing.
Eighty metres.
Nothing.
Ninety metres.
Dry.
Every metre carried another cost.
But I also knew exactly what failure would cost.
“Keep drilling.”
One hundred metres.
Still nothing.
One hundred and ten metres.
Nothing.
By now the singing had disappeared.
Children stood shoulder to shoulder without speaking.
Teachers folded their arms across anxious chests.
The village elders whispered quietly among themselves.
Finally one elderly man stepped forward.
He removed his hat.
“Let us pray.”
The entire crowd bowed their heads.
Even the drillers stopped talking.
Prayer has a way of making everyone equal.
When the final drill stopped turning, the foreman removed his helmet.
He didn’t need many words.
“There is no water.”
No one cried.
No one argued.
Sometimes disappointment is too large for noise.
The workers began dismantling the drilling rig.
Metal clanged against metal.
Engines started.
Dust rose once again.
The hole remained.
Empty.
One by one the women lifted their empty buckets.
The same buckets they had brought believing they would return home carrying life.
Instead they turned toward the river.
The journey had not changed.
Only hope had.
Empty buckets make almost no sound.
That afternoon they were the loudest thing I had ever heard.
The men stood motionless.
No one quite knew how to leave.
The elderly woman who had prayed was the last to walk away.
Her cheeks were wet with tears.
I watched until she disappeared beyond the trees.
That night I hardly slept.
The next morning I contacted a professional groundwater survey company.
They carefully studied the geology and identified another location.
“This one,” they assured me, “will produce water.”
For the first time in two days, hope returned.
Then reality arrived.
Our drilling budget had already been exhausted.
We had found the answer.
We simply could not afford to act on it.
I sat quietly for a long time.
People often imagine that development work is made of grand speeches and ribbon-cutting ceremonies.
It is not.
Sometimes it is sitting with the unbearable knowledge that the solution exists only a few metres away, but money stands between people and survival.
That is one of poverty’s cruellest tricks.
It rarely says no.
It simply says,
“Not today.”
Long before I understood the statistics, I understood the walk.
Zimbabwe is among the world’s most water-stressed nations.
Millions live where rainfall is unpredictable, rivers dry too early and underground water lies hidden beneath unforgiving rock.
Climate change has only intensified that reality.
Water is no longer merely an environmental issue.
It is an educational issue.
A health issue.
A women’s issue.
A children’s issue.
A justice issue.
The United Nations recognises access to safe water as a fundamental human right.
Yet rights written on paper mean little to a child standing beneath a scorching sun holding an empty bottle.
Whenever I think of Denderedzi High School, I remember that elderly woman’s prayer.
Not because the borehole succeeded.
It didn’t.
I remember it because gratitude arrived before the miracle.
She thanked God for water she had not yet seen.
She blessed our foundation before she knew whether the drilling would succeed.
Her faith was never dependent upon the outcome.
That prayer has remained with me far longer than the sound of the drilling machine.
People often ask what keeps me doing this work.
They expect me to speak about awards.
Recognition.
Success stories.
But the truth is much simpler.
It is a grandmother praying blessings over someone she has only just met.
It is a little boy hoping to carry one bucket of clean water home.
It is women arriving before sunrise with empty containers because hope told them to come.
Those are the moments that refuse to let me stop.
I still think about those women.
They arrived carrying empty buckets.
I left carrying one of my own.
It was invisible.
It was filled with responsibility.
And I have been trying to empty it ever since.
