The result is a public awareness campaign launched by the United Nations and spearheaded by a 30-minute documentary, "Diary of Jay-Z: Water for Life," which debuted on MTV last week and can be seen on their website.
The documentary follows Jay-Z during two visits to Angola, then Durban, South Africa.
In the town of Luanda, Angola, he followed 14-year-old Bela, who must fetch and carry 40 pounds of water, twice a day. When he offered to help share the burden and carry the water on a one-half-mile trek, he was taken aback by the sheer strength that was required.
"It's not only 40 pounds ... it's water so it moves," he said. "And the roads, they aren't paved. It's not like walking on perfectly paved Fifth Avenue. You're walking on rocks and it's a dirt road and the water is moving. I couldn't walk to the end of the block holding it. I had to switch hands about three times."
But if he found trekking for clean water a challenge, nothing had prepared him for his next experience in Luanda: the absence of any proper sanitation. Bela and her fellow students must walk across an open sewer on their way to school every day. It runs down the middle of the town's main road.
