This project is a part of our shared program with Safe Water and Sustainable Hygiene Initiative (SAWASHI). Our team is pleased to directly share the below report (edited for clarity, as needed).
Welcome to the Community
Shivagala Community is home to farmers who plant seasonal crops such as beans, maize, sorghum, and other vegetables. Some of the community members are employed by the nearby sugarcane factory known as Butali Sugar Company to cut sugarcane. Other men and women harvest sand at the local river to sell to local distributors. Most of the young people in are unemployed, staying home to watch the younger children.
Society has written the roles for each and every family member. Husbands are the bread winners who provide security, shelter, food and many other basic needs for their families. Wives carry out household chores such as taking care of children, cooking, fetching water and maintaining good hygiene and sanitation. Children help their parents do chores like collecting firewood, looking after livestock, and fetching water.
Water Situation
Shivagala Community has a hand-dug well that they excavated in 2001. The community members wanted to alleviate the burdens caused by water scarcity. Women were wasting a lot of time traveling long distances in search of water.
While the community had the resources to dig down to the water table, they were not able to finish the well with a pump. The water inside is instead accessed through a hatch; a bucket tied to a rope is lowered until a woman or child has enough water to fill their jerrycan. This process contaminates the well water. Since the well is not sealed with a pump, rainwater washes waste through the hatch.
When delivered back home, water is separated into different containers by use. Drinking water is stored in covered clay pots, which keep the water at a cooler temperature. Water for cleaning, bathing, and watering are either kept in the fetching containers or larger plastic barrels.
A common consequence of drinking this contaminated water is diarrhea, especially in children and elderly. Cases of typhoid have also been reported. Moreover, the hole covered by the hatch is wide enough for small children to fit through. It is dangerous for them to fetch water for their families. Assistant Chief Rose Kiteki said, "Currently, our nearby dispensary has a big percentage of cases of diarrhea and typhoid, in both young and old."
Sanitation Situation
A little over half of households in this area have a pit latrine. If a family does not have a latrine of their own, they often share with a neighbor. These latrines are made of mud walls and sackcloth doors.
There are no places to wash hands, and not many families even have helpful tools like dish racks or clotheslines. Garbage is disposed of in open fields that are far enough from the home.
Plans: Hygiene and Sanitation Training
Community members will be trained for two days on applicable hygiene and sanitation practices. The facilitator will use the PHAST (Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Training) method to teach about topics like: Importance of Using Latrines, Good and Bad Hygiene Behavior, Water Treatment, Water Storage, Food Preparation and Storage, Disease Transmission Routes, Blocking the Spread of Disease, and last but not least, Hand-Washing!
Training will result in the formation of a water user committee which will oversee, manage, and maintain the rehabilitated well. Participants will be taught how to build a tippy tap, which is a hand-washing station made out of a jerrycan, rope, and sticks. The facilitator will also encourage every household to build new sanitation facilities like latrines, bathing rooms, dish racks, and clotheslines.
Plans: Hand-Washing Stations
Two hand-washing stations are scheduled for delivery by the time well rehabilitation is complete. Training participants will be taught the steps to effective hand-washing, and of the importance of using a cleaning agent such as soap or ash. Water user committee members will also check that there is water inside the containers on a daily basis.
Plans: Well Rehabilitation
Locals confirm that this well has never run out of water, even in the driest of seasons. At the time of our visit, we measured it to be 8.3 meters deep with a static water level of six meters. The inside is lined with bricks, and the top has a hatch made of steel that is a little over a half meter wide.
The rehabilitation process will start with resource mobilization. Locals will help us gather all of the materials we need for construction, such as sand, bricks, and water. We will mix that sand with concrete and use it to build a new well pad. The inside will be flushed, we will test pump, and then finish the well with a new AfriDev pump. A new well pad and a new pump will seal in the water, protecting it from outside contaminants. Water will come out, and nothing will go back in.
This project will end with a handing over ceremony. We will meet locals at the rehabilitated well and hand the project over to the water user committee. They will oversee and maintain the pump and hand-washing stations, while encouraging their neighbors to adopt the healthy practices they learned about during training. If there's ever a problem too big for them to solve, they will give us a call.
We are very grateful to the local leadership's role in this project. They applied, unified the community, and mobilized participants. We strongly believe that this project will empower the community, especially the women and children who are most responsible for fetching water.
