Project Status



Project Type:  Borehole Well and Hand Pump

Program: Wells for Masindi / Jinga Uganda

Impact: 500 Served

Project Phase: 
Community Managed
Implementing Partner Monitoring Data Unavailable
Initial Installation: Apr 2012

Project Features


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Community Profile

Our implementing partner reports from the field...

Kantenga is an isolated village standing on a solitary hill in Bukanga sub-county, Luuka District. It is surrounded by wide flat bottomed valleys made up of swamps, with fewer than average trees on the periphery of this village. This gives it a strangely bleak feeling when you consider you are almost on the equator. There are around 800 people living in the 92 households that make up Kantenga. There is no school in the village, but the community have begun a joint nursery system to cater for the many children that live in the area. It is a particularly poor village, over 80% of the houses seem to have thatch roofs, a clear sign of poverty. This is born out in testimonies from the community who say they are suffering from food shortages during the dry season. They say there maize is being plagued by witchweed, their banana has the dreaded wilting disease and rice is failing to thrive in the valleys, so their harvest is very small. This is dreadful for a community of subsistence farmers. There are cash crops such as coffee, but according to the community most people do not have coffee plantations as it is the older generation own that land, whilst the children remain with small plots.

The water situation in the village is also dire. The nearest safe water source 1 mile away and the round trip to the borehole is a minimum of 1hour, if it’s not busy, which it often is, in which case it can take 3 hours for water. Considering each household uses at least 5 jerrycans a day, water is a heavy burden for the community. The alternative is the muddy pools in the swamp that are shared with animals, and that is what many of the community are using to this day.

[GPS coordinates for this project are approximate.]

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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!