Welcome to the School
What is child labor in Sierra Leone? Children at an early age who are given responsibilities fit for an adult. This kind of village setting is not easy for children. Early in the morning or late in the evening, schoolchildren are sent to the farm to fetch wood. Some of the teachers here are not paid a salary, so they rely on the children to do their farm work as education compensation. The children are required to do any work a teacher might have for them. When it is time for planting peanuts, the children till the land. They fetch firewood for the teachers, fetch water and you name it, they have to do it. The parents and teachers are all part-time farmers, because it is not possible to just depend on one source of income.
Early in the morning, the children line up for food provided for them at the school by the government. A little bit of food is better than no food at all. Some children go to school hungry everyday, so if it wasn't for the help of the food program, children would go to bed hungry too. Children only have to deal with getting food at night.
Water Situation
Headteacher Morlai Conteh says, "The people had been drinking swamp water for years, even though the two wells had been constructed by the NaCsa organization, the monitoring and maintenance was left to the community. An added expense they cannot afford! The community cannot afford to pay for the the minimum amount needed."
We came alongside this school and adopted one of these hand-dug wells, monitoring its functionality and repairing it as needed. We noticed that during particular months of the year, we receive complaints from Headteacher Morlai. It so happens that during the driest months, the hand-dug wells stop providing water. Headteacher Morlai is forced to require students to carry their own containers of water from home every morning, which have to be rationed throughout the day. For up to half of the year, this school is suffering from a severe water shortage.
Sanitation Situation
There are three usable latrines on school grounds. Maintenance is a big problem in Sierra Leone: A huge amount of money is spent on the construction of latrines, but all the cleaning is relegated to the children. How is a child of ten years supposed to do a good job cleaning a latrine that is used by more than one hundred people per day? The latrines are cleaned with a native broom and water. The children throw water on the floor and sweep towards the pit; that is as far as the cleaning will go.
There are no hand-washing stations for either students or staff.
Plans: Sanitation and Hygiene Training
Training will last for three hours a day for three days. The facilitators have already assessed sanitation here and decided that hand-washing will be strongly emphasized. During our hand-washing sessions, students, staff and community members will be taught how to make their own hand-washing station out of a plastic jerrycan, sticks, and rope. These are the best solution for rural areas, since all the materials are all easily replaceable.
Training will also result in the formation of a water user committee that will take responsibility for their new well. The members will manage and maintain the pump to the best of their ability, and will call our office if they need a mechanic to make a repair.
Plans: Well Rehabilitation
The well marked for this overhaul needs major work to supply adequate, clean water to the community once again. The pump will be removed, and a man will be lowered inside with a hand auger. This hand auger will allow the team to drill several meters deeper to hit a new water table, which will ensure the well supplies water throughout the drier seasons. As the team drills, casing will be installed, transforming this hand-dug well into a pseudo-borehole. PVC piping will connect this lower system directly to the pump, a construction that we know will also improve the quality of water.
Once this plan is implemented, everyone within the school and surrounding community will have access to safe drinking water in both quality and quantity.