KWAHO - Kenya Water for Health Organisation

The long walk is over

Original location: http://www.newint.org/issue207/decade.htm

The UN Decade is not all ‘targets’ and ‘consultations’
– it has changed some people’s lives utterly.

Mwanaisha Mweropia, a 23-year-old mother of six from Mwabungo village in the Kenyan district of Kwale, used to make seven journeys a day to a well some distance away. There was always a line at the well, even at dawn, and the rule was that no-one might draw a second bucketful without joining the queue again. Everyone quarrelled and women with large families - which was most of them - were constantly tired. Mwanaisha coughed perpetually and had chronic chest problems.

In 1984 her life changed when the Kenyan Water for Health Organization (KWAHO) installed an Afridev handpump in Mwabungo - part of a special project to drill boreholes and install pumps in more than 100 local communities. Rainfall in this arid coastal area is seasonal and most streams and traditional wells dry up. Women were trekking long distances to dig in dry riverbeds. The picture is a familiar one in Africa where 60 per cent of women engage in grinding strain and hours of labour to produce a few miserable bucketfuls of water - which are often unsafe to drink.

Not only is the Afridev handpump much closer to Mwanaisha’s home and far less onerous to operate but the water is safe and her cough and chest pains have disappeared. The local KWAHO community worker, Mwanauba Omar. says that all water-related disease has declined. Before the project, schistosomiasis used to claim around 10 lives a year in Mwabungo alone and cholera was not unknown. Schistosomiasis, called tego, used to be blamed on adultery. No-one has died from it recently. And the number of diarrhoea cases has dropped by half.

The striking feature of KWAHO’s programme, which has attracted much international attention during the Water Decade, is the degree to which it is focussed on women. The organization was inspired by women, is mostly run by women, and has fully involved women in the villages.

The Water Ministry drills the boreholes, which at up to 50,000 shillings ($3,125) each are the most expensive part of the pumps. KWAHO gives the pumps and knits people together. Each community collects money - a shilling (six cents) a week per family - for repairs and replacements. To Mwanaisha Mweropia it is a small price to pay for a better, healthier life.

Winnie Ogana / Panos