Ugandan Cooperatives Construct Alternative Water Source

Lawrence's three daughters, Quinn, Genesis and Genevieve, will no longer be threatened by water scarcity and contamination.

Daily, these children walk miles to purchase and collect unclean water from this natural source, which, during dry seasons, is often too low to draw from.

According to the UN report on water scarcity, about 2.6 billion or 42 percent of the world’s population lacks access to basic sanitation, and the impact is staggering. Every week, an estimated 42,000 people die from water-related diseases, such as low-quality drinking water and lack of sanitation. Almost all of these people are from developing countries.

With the increasing scarcity of safe water in the Sub-Saharan region in Africa, Uganda is among the countries where access to safe water is a great challenge in most villages. Children and adults, especially women, walk miles and spend much of their time everyday fetching water from wells for domestic use.

In Bombo, Uganda, where our organization is working, water is mainly collected from a few wells, which, due to the increasing population in the area, can no longer sustain the increase in demand for water.  Therefore, water is expensive and hard to access.  Also, these wells are not covered, so animal feces, leaves, bugs, and eroded substances contaminate them. The safety of these water sources has been compromised, which further threatens the health of countless people.

In response to the scarcity of water and the issues associated with wells in Bombo, our movement has begun implementing an alternative method of accessing safe water for our friends in Uganda.  This last summer, a group of our East Africa cooperatives were trained in how to use a compressed earth block press to make bricks, which can be used for construction purposes.  The brick press forms an appropriate mix of soil, clay, sand, and either ten percent lime or cement into a compressed block. This building technique is protective against insects, heat, fire, and mold, and it is economically friendly. Thus far, they have produced one ton of bricks and used them to construct a water cistern for the Semakula family. It filters and reserves up to 7,000 liters of rainwater collected from the roof of a house.  This cistern will allow our friend Semakula Lawrence and his family to have clean water, as well as eliminate the expense of retrieving water from the well. Safe, clean water is essential to healthy living for all human beings.

Written by John Nyago