"My day starts early in the morning. When I get up, I wake my family for prayer. My sons, my grandchildren and I walk to the mosque together. After prayer we come home and share breakfast as a family. Here we usually call it 'buyi.' Once we've eaten, I give my grandchildren their money for school and see them off. Then I head to my own field.

I work the land until about two in the afternoon. Then I come home, wash, and go back to the mosque for asr prayer. After prayer I sit and talk with my friends for a while, pray maghrib, and head home. At night we pray isha together with my children, as a family, at home.

Water used to come only once every three days. It was precious to us, almost like jewelry. When the dry season hit, things got hard. Then IHH came and dug a well. Now, alhamdulillah, we have enough water for everyone.

Where there's water, there's everything. Farming, livestock, all of it. It used to take hours to find water. Now it takes me five minutes to walk out and get what I need, and that time comes back to me. I can put more work into my field. Farming is like anything else. The more you put in, the more you get back. This well didn't just bring us clean water. It made our work more productive too.

About a month ago, we were given two kinds of fertilizer along with corn and soybean seeds. I planted them right away. The fertilizer is high quality, the kind we could never find around here on our own. As soon as I used it on the field, I saw the difference. My crops are growing thicker and healthier than before. May God bless everyone who brought us clean water and made our land fertile again."

Abdullah, Togo 2026