These days when Father Pirmin Ngolle returns home to visit his family in southern Tanzania, it is a matter of life or death.

The Benedictine priest has been watching children raised in villages where he grew up dying by the hundreds.

Their killer is not HIV/AIDS, which is taking such a toll throughout Africa, and it isn’t famine.

It is in the water they drink from contaminated rivers, causing one out of three children to die by the time they reach their 12th birthday.

Father Ngolle’s most recent journey to Tanzania last summer was made from his current residence at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Klamath Falls, Ore. On that trip he had the heartbreaking task of presiding over a funeral Mass for four children.

“There were four coffins with kids lying there who had died of stomach aches,” Father Ngolle said. “I don’t think we’re supposed to let someone die because of a lack of clean water.”

So Father Ngolle went to work.

As director of missions at St. Maurus Hanga Abbey in southern Tanzania, he heads a major fund-raising project to pipe clean water from artesian wells 16 miles over the mountains to five villages. The $500,000 project will provide schools, health centers and thousands of villagers with clean water for the first time in their lives.

“People share the streams with pigs, cows and goats, and if they have to wash their clothes, they wash in the same stream where they get water for cooking,” he said. “If you are given a glass of water, you cannot drink it unless you are on the point of death.”

In May, Father Ngolle’s fund-raising drive brought him to the Sacramento Diocese, where he spoke during weekend Masses at St. John Parish in Quincy and Holy Family Parish in Portola. He plans a similar visit to St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Oroville on Aug. 11.

Father Ngolle was accepted to participate in the diocese’s Missionary Cooperation Plan for this year after writing a letter to Bishop William K. Weigand. Both Father Ngolle and the bishop attended Mount Angel Seminary in St. Benedict, Ore.

Father Ngolle’s passion for this humanitarian project to bring clean water to southern Tanzania is rooted in some very personal experiences growing up the village of Utanglo. Here and in neighboring villages he saw children so emaciated they looked only half human due to improper water sanitation.

Before he was born, Father Ngolle’s two infant brothers died of diarrhea caused by contaminated water. His own chances of surviving childhood were slim had it not been for the intervention of a Benedictine priest. The priest was a missionary in Tanzania and saw in Father Ngolle’s older brother, who was studying at a Benedictine seminary in Kenya, the makings of a priest.

“When my brother came home for vacation from seminary he would come with candies, something we had never tasted,” said Father Ngolle, smiling broadly. “So I thought if you want to be a priest, you’ll be eating candies every day.”

Actually it was learning about the presence of Benedictine missionaries in Tanzania — who were educating people, giving them clothing and caring for their needs — which shaped his own decision to become a priest.

Since his ordination in Tanzania in 2001, Father Ngolle has split his time between Klamath Falls and his abbey in Tanzania. At the abbey he assists families to meet basic human needs and to build mission schools.

The Benedictines have drilled wells at their schools so students have clean water to drink on site and are given containers of clean water to take home.

“People are saying this is our miracle for the town because we haven’t lost a single child for four years,” Father Ngolle said.

The project’s master plan calls for the purchase of 20,000 pieces of pipe to bring clean water to five villages, which has the potential to reshape the future for thousands of children.

So far in Father Ngolle’s fund-raising efforts on the West Coast, one donor from San Diego has pledged to match every $500 donation and another donor pledged $10,000. A $25 donation purchases a 20-foot length of pipeline.

“People are living beyond hope and they will continue to live beyond hope if we don’t do something,” Father Ngolle said. “What we do is not just for this generation but for generations to come.”

For more information or make a donation to purchase pipes for the clean water project, call (541) 884-4242 or visit the Web site at www.hangaabbey.org.

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