September 2025 Update

As we prepare for the second wave of Barotse Strong Pump (BSP) installations we have been busy with logistics and a side project. In May 2025 we shipped two parcels by truck, rail, ship and back to truck from Union Kentucky to Lusaka Zambia. Weighing a little over one ton the shipment contained enough materials for 200 BSPs. As per design the actual pump bodies will be fabricated by a local machine shop in Lusaka from locally purchased steel. We hope to be back in the bush installing BSPs within the next month.

Before John Simasiku returned to Lusaka to oversee the BSP fabrication he journeyed onto the Matebele and Mulonga Plains to document the villages to be served this year. Recall we were surprised last year to find many villages that were missed during the 2020 survey. John found 160 villages in need of water. This will bring us to about 270 BSPs including the 116 installed in 2024. John is also happy to report the BSPs installed last year are doing fine and changing lives!

Before there was Project Sheluka Beth and Joe donated funds to Kalenge Village for several years in honor of our friendship with Professor Imasiku Nyambe. The village council decided to save until they had enough to build a house for a nurse. Years prior the Czech Republic built a regional health clinic but the Zambian Ministry of Health would not provide a nurse until there was a home for the nurse. In June 2019 I was invited to a ceremony dedicating the house in honor of my late mother, Joy, who was a nurse. This is what brought me to Kalenge Village and it was then that I saw the issue with water access and thus began Project Sheluka.

While we have provided several BSPs to Kalenge Village as well as the village school, the Kalenge Regional Health Clinic is located about 250 yards away and at an elevation too high above the water table to be served by a suction pump.

024 was a very busy year for Project Sheluka. Thanks to your donations we shipped over 2,000 pounds of material to Zambia, commissioned the fabrication 120 Barotse Strong Pumps (BSPs) in Zambia and installed 116 BSPs. These installations include one health clinic, three churches, four schools and 107 villages. We do not yet have a number of people served by our efforts but it is over 8,000.

We encourage you to find the Google Map botton on the website and explore our work on the Matebele and Mulonga Plains.

Liyumbo School students turn out for their BSP installation.