Rehabilitation Project
This is one of the oldest communities in Kaffu Bullom Chiefdom, Sierra Leone. It is only partially urbanized, built on the hills around swampy land. It is located very close to the sea. There are very few houses with a good many trees. It is a very peaceful community, except on holidays, when tons of people from the surrounding communities come to relax on the beach.
Most of the people living here haven't received a formal education. Without it, they haven't been able to find gainful employment. They are mostly self-employed in the areas of gardening or fishing.
Everyone here is Muslim, so everybody is up early for morning prayers. But there are also other groups of people who will rise up early not for prayers, but to fetch water. For example, a pupil told me that she will normally rise early because she has the daily assignment of fetching one hundred and twenty liters (six bata) of water for the home before going to school.
By 8am, most people will have gone to their respective business places, the pupils would be in their schools, farmers in their gardens and traders in the streets hawking. Anyone you find at home is probably too old to move. By 8pm, most people are back home.
Later in the day, women will be doing household chores and petty trading. When they come home from school, children will go fetch water and wash their uniforms. Then they would come home, get washed, eat, and go to bed.
Water
There's packaged water sold at the local market, but not everyone can afford it on a daily basis.
The swamp changes with the seasons. Depending on the time of the year, the water quantity could be low and dry. This is when it becomes potentially deadly, because people, especially kids, will start scavenging for water from any available source.
Of course the swamp is exposed to all sorts of contaminants, with most of these coming from humans and animals. Humans will use this source to launder all their dirty clothes and they sometimes bathe in the source at the same time. And most of the chemicals used to produce these laundry and bathing detergents are dangerous to humans. Wild animals use this swamp as their own water source, too. Some of them may carry diseases that are harmful to humans.
Sanitation
About a third of households still don't have their own sanitation facilities. They don't even have the simplest of pit latrines. Those who don't have their own share with their neighbors. Most families have a container dedicated to hand-washing, but there's no soap nearby.
The majority of families don't have counters for their dishes, pens for their animals, or private places to bathe. Even more don't have a pit dug to keep their garbage; instead, it's piled up and blown around the community on windy days.
Here's what we plan to do about it:
Training
There will be hygiene and sanitation training sessions offered for three days in a row.
After our visit, the hygiene and sanitation trainer decided it would be best to teach community members how to build a tippy tap (a hand-washing station built with a jerrycan, string, and sticks). They will use these tippy taps for hand-washing demonstrations, and will also teach about other tools like dish racks and the importance of properly penning in animals.
These trainings will also build up and strengthen a water user committee that will manage and maintain this well. They will enforce proper behavior and report to us whenever they need our help solving a serious problem, like a pump breakdown.
New Well
This borehole will be located at 10 Tulun Road, which is the best location because there are no latrines nearby.
Our team will drive over the LS200 mud rotary drill rig and set up camp for a couple of nights. Once the well is drilled to a sufficient water column, it will be cased, developed, and then tested. If these tests are positive, our mechanics will install a new India Mark II pump.
This community has struggled to find clean water to drink. By drilling this borehole, Tulun Community will be provided with plenty of safe drinking water.
This project is a part of our shared program with Mariatu’s Hope. Our team is pleased to provide the reports for this project (edited for readability) thanks to the hard work of our friends in Sierra Leone.
