Khadija Kagoya, a widow and a mother of six, hails from Busowobi, a village in Uganda's Busoga region about 120 kilometres east of Kampala, whose inhabitants grow maize, cassava and bananas for a livelihood.
Busowobi used to suffer from a lack of sufficient and safe water, and from water-borne diseases. But that was before community members, including Kagoya, got involved in a campaign against water scarcity initiated by the Busoga Trust, an Anglican church-based organisation helping to provide safe water, sanitation and hygiene education in Busoga rural communities.
Visiting the village, participants in a 21-25 May Ecumenical Water Network conference in Entebbe, Uganda, find Kagoya and other women gathered under a mango tree near the village's new water pump.
"We used to get water from a spring down there," explains Kagoya as she points to an area overgrown by bush and grass. "We would often fall sick. My children were never free from diarrhea or dysentery, and I was often afraid. We used to have to walk a long way, but now I just walk a few metres to the pump or send a child. The water is good, and we are happy."
For many years, the only source of safe water for Buwosobi's inhabitants was a borehole on a private property about five kilometres away that was sometimes inaccessible due to the owner's restrictions. When that happened, villagers had to use the traditional well, springs and ponds, and the children frequently fell sick with diarrhoea, dysentery or cholera.
"The open well was subject to contamination, and was also used by animals. There was really a serious need," says Samuel Kiiza, a social scientist working with the Busoga Trust. The Trust began operating with funding from churches and schools in the UK in the 1990s, taking over when changes in government policy on foreign funding ended the operations of a state rural development programme.
At the moment, the Trust is constructing shallow wells and promoting rainwater harvesting at household and institutional levels. It does awareness-raising work on sanitation and hygiene, advises on how best to do advocacy with policy-makers, and carries out hydro-geological surveys and water quality analysis. Community members receive training in the maintenance of wells and other water equipment.
This is an holistic approach to water and sanitation that goes beyond simply drilling wells to include sanitation, health and hygiene education, and training in systems maintenance as well as in advocacy. It takes into account that if water sources are only provided, people are likely to continue to suffer from diarrhea and other water-borne diseases because of contaminated water or inadequate hygiene.
