PARKER. Colo. (KDVR) — Most people travel to Africa to finally see the romanticized image of a continent they’ve spent a lifetime forging in their mind: the up-close experience with wildlife, the sweeping savannahs, brown and barren before the rainy season arrives and turns everything green.
But impoverished villagers are the draw for Wayne Schultz of Parker. He’s been travelling to sub-Saharan Africa for more than a decade as a volunteer and board member with Marion Medical Mission.
“Everybody tells you about the need and until you’re there, until you see it, so you just don’t have that appreciation,” Schultz told FOX31.
Schultz leaves next week for Malawi, just as he has annually since 2013. He’ll be part of the second team of American volunteers on the ground in east Africa, helping the non-profit in its quest to finish installing more than 4,000 safe, sustainable water wells in the most remote of villages in Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique this year. Over the last few decades, Marion Medical Mission has installed nearly 60,000 wells across east Africa.
Without the wells, clean water is often miles away and requires women and girls getting up in the middle of the night and walking for hours to retrieve it.
Traveling to Malawi wasn’t Schultz’s idea; it was his wife’s. One day, she was reading an article in the Estes Park newspaper about Marion Medical Mission volunteers from Colorado doing great things 9,000 miles from home. She wanted to get involved, but she became sick with a long-term illness and was never able to make the trip.
“She said, I can’t go, but you’re going,” Schultz said.
His wife died in 2017, but Schultz keeps her memory alive by carrying out her passion project, showing compassion to the most vulnerable in Africa.
“They see an immediate impact,” he said.
To learn more about Marion Medical Mission, visit their website.
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