NEW FOREST charity worker Roger Green - nearly killed in a flash flood while working on an irrigation project in Africa - has made contact with home after three weeks' silence.

Roger's wife Sally said a "brief letter" had made its way to Lyndhurst via a plane which visited his mission station in Kenya.

"Telephone lines to the mission are down so there has been no e-mail," said Sally, who heard via a Nairobi cyber cafe about her husband's brush with death.

A freak wave swept down a river just as Roger, pictured above with his wife Sally, and his colleagues were crossing in a heavily-loaded truck.

That was on May 12. Since then retired fireman Roger, aged 60, who is in Kenya as part of a voluntary team laying a pipeline to carry water to desert areas in the north, has had no time to ponder his lucky escape.

When the team leapt for their lives, they lost all their equipment and their vehicle.

Sally's offer to loan the couple's own Land Rover to the expedition was scuppered by the government's decision on May 15 to suspend UK flights to Kenya because of terrorist risk.

But in Kenya, Roger's team borrowed a jeep from another mission to carry them to Mount Kulal and keep the irrigation mission flowing.

Ironically for a project aimed at improving water supply, Roger's latest letter reveals that they have been dogged by the problem of too much water.

Sally said: "He writes that the weather continues to present problems - washed-away roads, landslides, river crossings flooded, storms and so on.

"They were still awaiting the arrival of the second lorry with supplies needed to complete the pipeline.

"The truck they borrowed is great, but keeps getting punctures. Unlike the one they lost, it is not geared up for extreme conditions."

Sally said Roger's team visited the work site for the first time on May 22. They camp under the stars during the week and return to the mission station three hours away at weekends to pick up supplies.

"Roger is likely to go to Nairobi to return the borrowed truck mid-June, and he will try to get a flight home via Uganda if British Airways are still not flying out of Nairobi," she said.

The couple are both members of the Testwood Baptist Church in Totton which has supported their mission work in Africa.

"Roger was a fireman for 23 years, first at St Mary's in Southampton, then at Lyndhurst.

"When he retired he felt he had so much more to give and what better than to give time and effort to an African community which has nothing," said Sally.

To offer help to the Ngororoi Water project in Kenya, contact John Cunningham of Testwood Baptist Church, Salisbury Road, Totton, on 07957 24 56 22.