Every water solution carries its own story.
“The washing machine, piped gas, running water and all these mundane household technologies enabled women to enter the labour market, which then meant that they had fewer children, had them later, invested more in each of them, especially female children. That changed their bargaining positions within the household and in wider society, giving women votes and endless changes. It has transformed the way we live.””
As Unicef states so well, water collection is by and large the job of women and the burden on them is overwhelming. Read more from the UN here. In Sub Saharan Africa 200,000,000 hours are spent each day collecting water, that’s 40,000,000,000 hours/year!
Given that women raise 75% of the crops, raise 50% of the livestock and yet collect only 10% of the income and own a mere 1% of the assets in Africa, our aim is to eliminate water as a burden in their lives.
We are literally saving lives every day. Imagine your life totally dependent on finding water, any water, every day, day after day after day. The challenge is real; the reward for doing something: LIFE!
We empower women to solve local water problems
It takes 30 minutes to drive from Yei town to a small village called Logo northwest of Yei River County headquarters, South Sudan. The village is inhabited by a clan of Logo who speak Kakwa language. It is a peaceful community because they have lived together for many years.
There was an old woman called Priscilla Bari’ba living at the village, between 65-70 years old. She lives in a small grass thatched house with farming land around the homestead. The woman has three daughters who are all married and live with their husbands. Priscilla is a widow who lost her husband long ago, and as result she is living at the old homestead that belonged to her late father. Her properties from her husband’s house were taken away by the relative of the late husband.
The only source of drinking water, water for domestic work and construction of houses is entirely borehole water. Logo community has a borehole that was drilled and constructed on the 5th of December 2008, by Water is Basic. The borehole functioned well those days. But when I visited the area the hand pump was not functioning well; it took 30-45 minutes to fill one jerry cane of 20 liters, for an old woman like Bari’ba it takes an hour to fill her 10-liter plastic bucket of water.
There is need to repair the borehole to supply adequate water to these 50 – 70 households which use 10 - 15 jerry cans of 20 liters per day, and improve the water yield. If a jerry can of 20 liters takes 30 minutes to fill, it will take 300 - 450 minutes for a household. She said that in the morning there are rushes which are reddish in color for the first water coming out of the bore hole which make it difficult to drink.
Her health condition has deteriorated and she cannot carry a jerry can of 20 liters on her head any more. She had an operation for appendiatisis long ago but now it has started to trouble her again which means she needs serious medical attention.
The water problem is not only for the older people, it is a general issue; the other sources of water such as a well and the running streams have dried up. This has forced small boys such as Peter Lomoro (6 years old) and his friend Michael Juma (5 years old) to move along this busy dirt road for 3 km to look for water for washing their school uniforms and taking baths, because water collected by the mothers and the elder sisters are used only for preparing food and our domestic work.
I followed her up to where she lived. What she needs is more than provision of clean drinking water; the roof of her grass thatch house is almost broken out by the wind and it is close to rain season in Yei River County.
Bari’ba is desperately in need of help. First the fixing of the borehole so that it functions well so that it allows her to get the water in as short a time as possible. Although the water committee is collecting some money for the maintenance of the borehole, the money is not enough for fixing the borehole. Secondly, a small help is needed for putting the roof of the house. Her age does not allow her to climb as high as the roof of the house to put some grass there.
I remember the promises made by the international communities, IMF, World Bank, Donor Nations, MDG that by the year 2012, 85% of the people who were living in the rural areas will have clean and safe water for drinking - that has not happened here in South Sudan. In South Sudan, the majority of the people did not feel the dividends of peace and independence of the nation because of lack of basic services rendered to them.
