Project Status



Project Type:  Borehole Well and Hand Pump

Regional Program: Port Loko, Sierra Leone WaSH Program

Impact: 142 Served

Project Phase:  In Service - Mar 2020

Functionality Status:  Functional

Last Checkup: 02/13/2024

Project Features


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Deep inside Lokomasama Chiefdom is Kamayea, a village that was settled by fisherpeople. Centuries later, the founding tribe has been taken over by the Temne and Susu tribes. Kamayea is a rural community with an ample supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. Lokomasama is best known for its vast fertile swampland, making it a major producer of rice in the country.

The hard labor involved in planting rice has driven a majority of the youth away from the profession and led them to ride motorcycle taxis for work instead. The transformation from mud houses to cement blocks and wooden windows to glass windows is slowly happening. Homes here used to have grass roofs, but with changing times they have converted to zinc roofing.

Susu Gospel Church started in March of 2016. It started with 7 members and 1 pastor that was sharing his time with another Susu Gospel Church in Lungi Town. Some 3 years later, the population has increased to 100 congregants. Families come from surrounding villages to attend the church.

We have worked with this pastor on several projects. He is very active and very thorough when it comes to helping both his community and our team in achieving our work. We are really excited that he has planted a church in this village, as this will bring further development. This church is also known for starting schools, so we are awaiting the announcement that they will start a preschool in the church.

But the church and the nearby community lack a water point. There are 2 streams that people fetch water at, and a protected well located on the other side of the village. The well was constructed in 1981. It was never fenced and the well pad has cracked over the years. The first casing has started to show above the ground and the organization that constructed the well has long since stopped working in the Lokomasama Chiefdom. As a result, the quality of the water from the well is compromised.

Due to that and crowding at the well, many people travel about 25 minutes to reach the nearest stream for water instead. The stream is hidden under large trees that keep the water cool to the touch, even in the scorching dry season sun. The water is praised by the whole village as a good source of drinking water, but it is in fact highly contaminated. People bathe and launder their clothes in the stream, exposing it to chemicals. Furthermore, since it is an unprotected stream, it is open to nearby farm runoff and other contaminants that cause waterborne diseases.

Salamatu Bangura

One of the people we met during a visit to the community was Salamatu Bangura, a 19-year-old mother of 1 girl. Her school career ended when she was 14 years old, but in the village, she was then considered a grown woman ready to be somebody's bride. But for Salamatu, the reason she left was due to the fact at the age of 7 she fell ill and developed kyphosis (the forward rounding of the spine). She was teased throughout school and it interfered with her studies so much that her parents decided to remove her from school.

This robbed Salamatu of the opportunity to get an education and better her own life. Now she cares for her daughter. Salamatu shared that her priority is to ensure that her daughter is healthy, but this is difficult for her to do due to the physical limitations caused by her disability. Salamatu cannot perform any hard work, so her duties are limited to cooking and light cleaning around the house.

Salamatu cannot even go out to fetch water from the swamp. Worse yet, she struggles to find people who will help her get water because the source is so far from her home. A new well can change that.

"Not having enough clean drinking water has great detrimental effects that our people never think about," she said.

"If a water well is next to my house, I can ask somebody to easily fetch water for me."

What we can do:

New Well

We will be drilling a well at Susu Gospel Church. This project will relieve the people here of the heavy control and rationing they're encountering at the private well.

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 been pushed to the swamp for their water. By drilling this borehole, Kamayea Community will be provided with plenty of accessible, clean drinking water.

Training

We will offer 3 consecutive days of hygiene and sanitation training in this community.

Community members will learn how to make a handsfree handwashing station called a tippy-tap. We will then use these tippy taps for handwashing demonstrations, as well as teach about other tools like dishracks and the importance of properly penning in animals to keep them away from people's food and water. We will also highlight the need to keep latrines clean, among many other topics.

These training sessions will also strengthen a water committee that will manage and maintain this new well. This committee will enforce proper behavior and report to our team whenever they need our help in solving a serious problem, like a pump breakdown.

Project Updates


May, 2020: COVID-19 Prevention Training Update at Susu Community and Gospel Church

Our teams are working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Join us in our fight against the virus while maintaining access to clean, reliable water.

We are carrying out awareness and prevention trainings on the virus in every community we serve. Very often, our teams are the first (and only) to bring news and information of the virus to rural communities like Susu, Sierra Leone

We trained people on the symptoms, transmission routes, and prevention of COVID-19.

With distancing and/or small groups: Due to public gathering concerns, we worked with trusted community leaders to gather a select group of community members who would then relay the information learned to the rest of their family and friends.

We began training communities before the first reported case of COVID-19 in the country and before the government enacted public health guidance related to it. We worked with trusted community leaders and Water User Committees to gather community members for the training. Although community members did not observe social distancing during the training, we sensitized them on its importance and effectiveness in combating the spread of the virus.

We covered essential hygiene lessons:

- Demonstrations on how to build a simple handwashing station

- Proper handwashing technique

- The importance of using soap and clean water for handwashing

- Cleaning and disinfecting commonly touched surfaces including at the water point.

We covered COVID-19-specific guidance in line with national and international standards:

- Information on the symptoms and transmission routes of COVID-19

- What social distancing is and how to practice it

- How to cough into an elbow

- Alternative ways to greet people without handshakes, fist bumps, etc.

- How to make and properly wear a facemask.

During training, we installed a new handwashing station with soap near the community’s water point.

Due to the rampant spread of misinformation about COVID-19, we also dedicated time to a question and answer session to help debunk rumors about the disease and provide extra information where needed.

We continue to stay in touch with this community as the pandemic progresses. We want to ensure their water point remains functional and their community stays informed about the virus.

Water access, sanitation, and hygiene are at the crux of disease prevention. You can directly support our work on the frontlines of COVID-19 prevention in all of the communities we serve while maintaining their access to safe, clean, and reliable water.




March, 2020: Susu Community & Church Project Complete!

We are excited to share that there is now a safe, reliable borehole well at Susu Community & Church! The students and community members no longer have to rely on unsafe water to meet their daily needs. We also conducted hygiene and sanitation training, which focused on healthy practices such as handwashing and using latrines.

New Well

The drilling of this new borehole was a success, and clean water is flowing!

"The new water point is going to improve our daily lives more than we have ever imagined," said Mabinty Kanu, a farmer who lives in the community who will use the new well to get water for her family.

"The new water well not only is going to provide clean and safe water for the community, but the hygiene and sanitation training the entire community received is also going to benefit every single household. The set up of the water user committee is going to strengthen the community development that was greatly lacking."

The dedication was planned for a Friday afternoon. We were concerned that people might not turn out for the event, but our fears were quickly allayed upon arrival when we found people singing and dancing at the new well.

The day of the dedication was witnessed by a representative of the Port Loko District who happens to be the current council person, Mr. Paul Dickson Kamara. He is very devoted to the development of this region and is working closely with our organization ensuring that wherever a hygiene training or dedication is held, he is always available to aid his community.

The Process

The crew was moved a day before the drilling took place to the site, making sure all equipment and supplies had been checked and double-checked before the drill team traveled there. A specific location, not too far from the well, was chosen and cordoned off from being accessed by the community members so the team could store all of its supplies. The drill team was given an unfinished house as their living quarters for each night after work on the well.

Groundbreaking ceremony

2 pits were dug next to the drill rig, 1 for the drill’s water supply and another for what was pulled back up out of the borehole. Since the community already struggles with finding enough water, we ordered a private supplier to deliver the water we needed for drilling.

Day 1 of drilling started with filling the 2 pits with water mixed with bentonite. A 4-inch carbide-tipped bit was fixed to the 5-foot-long drill stem. The mud pump was started to supply water to the drill rig and the drilling starts. During drilling, after every 5-foot length of drill stem put into the hole the team would take material samples. The bags were labeled 1, 2, 3, and so on. These are to be reviewed later to determine the aquifer locations.

The second day of drilling was meant to expand the hole and clear it of mud. The team reached a total depth of 21.21 meters.

The team forcefully pumped clean water into the well to clear out any mud and debris from drilling. After, filter pack was added so that the screened pipe would be protected. The temporary drilling casing was hoisted out so that we could fortify the pipes with cement.

The well was bailed by hand for 3 days before doing a yield test to verify the water quantity, which ended up being 38.985 liters per minute at a static water level of 11.21 meters.

Yield test

With these great results, a stainless steel India MkII pump was installed. Water quality tests show that this is clean water fit for drinking!

New Knowledge

Before conducting any hygiene training, we make repeated phone calls and visits to the local water user committee to better understand the challenges and status of sanitation facilities in the community. We brought the findings from our baseline survey to the attention of the committee to help them make the necessary adjustments before the training or drilling could commence. When all the necessary guidelines were met, only then did our team of hygiene trainers go to conduct the training.

Training

Nearly 175 people attended the 3-day training. People came from across the community to learn about how to care for the new well and lessons on improving their hygiene and sanitation.

Constructing tippy taps for handwashing

Training topics covered included handwashing and tippy taps; good and bad hygiene; disease transmission and prevention; worms and parasites; proper care of teeth; proper care of the pump; keeping the water clean; the cost recovery system; dishracks and clotheslines; the importance of toilets; keeping the latrine clean; balanced diets; the diarrhea doll; and HIV and AIDS.

Pastor Sheku Sesay said the training was very timely since the rainy season is fast approaching, raising the risk of waterborne diseases spreading in the community. Cases of cholera and other diarrheal diseases are a concern here, so having information on how to prevent the spread of them and the availability of safe water from the new well means the community is positioned to prevent people from getting sick.

"This training will definitely impact our hygiene and sanitation positively," said the Pastor.

Thank you for making all of this possible!




January, 2020: Susu Community and Church project underway!

A severe clean water shortage at Susu Community and Church drains time, energy, and health from people here. Thanks to your generosity, we’re working to install a clean water point and much more.

Get to know this school through the introduction and pictures we’ve posted, and read about this water, sanitation and hygiene project. We look forward to reaching out with more good news!




Project Photos


Project Type

Abundant water is often right under our feet! Beneath the Earth’s surface, rivers called aquifers flow through layers of sediment and rock, providing a constant supply of safe water. For borehole wells, we drill deep into the earth, allowing us to access this water which is naturally filtered and protected from sources of contamination at the surface level. First, we decide where to drill by surveying the area and determining where aquifers are likely to sit. To reach the underground water, our drill rigs plunge through meters (sometimes even hundreds of meters!) of soil, silt, rock, and more. Once the drill finds water, we build a well platform and attach a hand pump. If all goes as planned, the community is left with a safe, closed water source providing around five gallons of water per minute! Learn more here!


Contributors

Mitchell Zimmerman
Mitch Brownlie, Australia
96 individual donor(s)