John Irwin
We woke to an insistent cock’s crowing. It was 5.30 on Wednesday 19th September and dawn was breaking. We had arrived in Kaoma the evening before just 48 hours after leaving the BSD Congress. The Rollright Stones were distant memory!
After the 10-hour flight from London, David Dixon, Guy Hudson and I had arrived at dawn the previous day. Elisha Ngonomo (Field Director, Village Water Zambia) had met us at Lusaka Airport, and we met the rest of the party who had flown out earlier to make a tourist visit to the Victoria Falls. Together with BSD members Peter Taylor, John and Liz Baines and Richard Pithers were Nigel Neville, Colin Brown and Chris Staines, all, apart from Peter, from Rotary Clubs in East Anglia, major sponsors of Village Water’s work in Zambia. That morning we had the pleasure of meeting Geoffrey Lungwangwa, Minister of Education in the Zambian Government, Peter Sievers of the Royal Danish Embassy and Alastair Harrison, British High Commissioner, before setting out on the 400 km drive west to the town of Kaoma.
We were staying in a simple guesthouse next to a Cheshire Home orphanage run by Sister Mary from Ireland. The guesthouse is there to generate income for the orphanage. After breakfast we met with Renny Mwanamambo, Village Water manager in Kaoma District, and the members of his team. They had prepared for us to visit 20 villages as prospects for our well and sanitation programme for 2008, in addition to the 16 which were either about to have wells built or already had them in the 2007 programme.
Thanks to a kind donor earlier this year, Village Water has added two new Ford off-road vehicles to the used Land Rover we bought in 2004. The Rotary party had hired a large Land Cruiser so with four vehicles we were able to divide up into four groups and visit up to 14 villages a day.
That morning our group comprised Emma, a water technician from the Government’s Department of Water Affairs, John Baines, now on his second Zambian trip, Peter Taylor, myself and Joseph, our driver. Our job was to visit four villages, which Emma and her colleagues had identified as potential candidates for our programme of hygiene education, sanitation and the provision of a good fresh water supply.
Focus On Fresh Water And Sanitation
The Village
Water concept is to help villagers help themselves towards sustainable fresh
water and sanitation. This means everyone has to be involved from the start
and that we and the villagers need the time to ask questions. We ask about
the village, the population, the number of households, their crops, their
health, how far they are from a school or a health centre, what they can
sell to raise money, usually vegetables or handcraft items. We ask them
about their present source of water, how good it is, how far they have to
walk, whether it runs out in the dry season or floods in the rainy season,
and if they have to share it with others. We look around and get an
impression of the cleanliness of the village and the health of the children.
We ask about latrines and talk about ways of digging them and supporting the
pit walls so that they don’t collapse.
Assuming the population is large enough and they are willing to start to improve sanitation by digging latrines and installing simple hand-washing facilities, we go on to discuss the possibility of helping to provide them with a shallow well with a concrete cap and a manual hand pump in a suitable location. The well will be theirs to keep and look after. They will need to set up a committee preferably with 10 members to organise the village for this work, half men and half women, to elect a chairperson, a treasurer to collect subscriptions, a secretary to take the minutes of meetings. A well once dug can’t be moved – so the committee is a vital test of energy in the village – they will collect a little money from all the villagers who will benefit. We will organize the well diggers, the casting of the concrete rings for the well and the pump, plus cement and reinforcement for the concrete tops for the pit latrines and the training of the pump menders. The villagers will contribute their labour and a commitment fee of around £30 towards the total cost of around £2000 per village for a complete scheme of water and sanitation.
 |
|
Village meeting under a mango tree to discuss the Village Water scheme for water and sanitation |
We sit down in the shade of a tree after meeting the headman and wait for the villagers to gather, greeting many of them in the traditional Lozi way of first clapping your hands gently, then shaking hands, then again lightly clapping your hands.
“Moulumeni-shah” – Good Morning. We introduce ourselves and begin to talk with Emma translating into the Lozi language.
We ask the headman if two villagers could accompany one of us to look for potential sites for a well in an area that would suit them. This is a cue for a dowser in our group to slip away from the meeting and dowse for the site with the best flow of sweet water at not too great a depth.
Two-Way
Commitment
In the
meeting we get to the key points where we ask them to commit to the
sanitation programme. The answer is a deep resounding cry “Eni!” Yes! To
the commitment fee? “Eni!” Yes again!
So with their word as our contract we go on to the details of when we might start with the sanitation programme and the well digging.
Meanwhile Peter, the dowser, has found a meeting place of two good underground streams and has it marked out with flags. The streams come from the direction of the flood plain and there are no latrines or cattle shelters within 40 metres of either stream – so we’re not permitting the possibility of pollution entering the water supply.
Dowsing for the depth of both streams and their saturation bands, he finds one is from 6 to 8 meters and the other from 8 to 10 meters. So we recommend a well to 10 meters with a potential flow of 49 litres per minute (adequate for the population of around 400). The headman and the village water committee members are happy with the position so we mark it with a stake and take a GPS reading of the precise position, S 14° 52.185', E 24° 49.557'.
 |
| Water diviner Peter Taylor stakes the spot for Kayuka’s new well |
Having taken some photos of the committee and the stake in position, we bid farewell, say we look forward to returning next year to see the well in action, and move on to the next village.
Although there are broad similarities, no two villages are ever the same. Each one needs our undivided attention. As a team we notice how much better we work together as the day goes on. In the last village we visited, amid much laughter, the women laid on a traditional dance with singing. Their freedom of spirit was a wonderful gift to us as we bumped away down the rough track and forded a stream on the way back to Kaoma.
We spend another day and a half in the Kaoma area, checking on wells and sanitation programmes in progress and prospecting for new villages to take part in the 2008 programme.
We also pay a courtesy visit to the DWASHE (District Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Education) Committee and to the District Commissioner. Maintaining good relations and two-way communication with all levels of national and local government is not only essential, but also very fruitful in our mutual aim of getting more aid of the right type to those who need it.
As dowsers we learn much about the finer points of water dowsing from Peter Taylor’s long experience, his patient encouragement and his rigorous confirmation of responses. To their surprise, those new to dowsing find they can get dowsing reactions like the rest of us!
We drive on another 200 km west to Mongu, the capital of the Western Province, on the edge of the flood-plain of the Zambezi river as it flows towards the Victoria Falls, much further south-east. There we meet up with Rusmus Masinja, our local manager, and our community field workers, Albertina, Precious and Claire.
After a day’s work on the Saturday, on Sunday morning most of us attend a service in a local evangelical church with an amazing choir. Possibly 25% of the 300 congregation are choir members, and their inspired singing and a surprise lunch kindly furnished by the church elders allow us to set off in good heart for a full afternoon of village visits.
Encouraging Expansion
 |
|
The Zambezi River at Senanga |
We also visit an orphanage there where the only water supply for 300 children is from one tap which runs dry by midday. We hope to be able to remedy that situation and a similar one in a Community School in Mongu in our 2008 work programme.
In Mongu, we meet the Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President, representing central government, local managers of other NGOs and church leaders – receiving a warm welcome from all.
In the evenings we eat at the Oasis, a restaurant run by Khaled from Lebanon and his partner Karim. The food is simple, but a lot better than in Kaoma. Like some famous Paris café, everyone who is anyone is there! Guy had the amusing experience when flying home later of being asked by the person sitting next to him on the plane, “Didn’t I see you at the Oasis in Mongu?”
Our drive back to Lusaka was long and slow as our 110 Land Rover needed some nursing and gentle driving before going for a complete refurbishment and a new turbo at a good garage – recommended by the ever-helpful British High Commissioner.
In Lusaka we spent a busy two days arranging the Land Rover repairs and procuring the spare parts, having management meetings, getting detailed maps of our working areas and looking for a new Village Water office. The Kusinta-Lusaka Rotary Club invited us to a reception to welcome their fellow Rotarians from England with the British High Commissioner as guest of honour – an occasion to appreciate the Rotary principles of service and fellowship.
In total in 11 days we had visited 67 villages with well sites already in our 2007 programme or to be included in the 2008 work.
We had learned much and been given more.
John Irwin