A woman drinks water in Asinge Parish, Kumi Sub-county. There

A woman drinks water in Asinge Parish, Kumi Sub-county. There is only one borehole in Asinge and residents sometimes walk up to 10 Kilometres in search for clean water. Photo by Faiswal Kasirye

By ISMAIL MUSA LADU

IN SUMMARY

For people living in Kumi District, the old adage ‘water is life’ makes real meaning as the changing weather patterns force them to queue sometimes all night long at the few available clean sources of water.

Kumi- Ms Lydia Akol is not prepared to go back home without water, no matter what time of the day it is.

Normally, by 8pm she is already dead asleep. However, with nearly two hours past her usual bedtime, though looking feeble, her resolve to even wait all night seems to be getting stronger.

Still dressed in the same clothes she had when tilling her land in the morning, Ms Akol seemed determined to wait in the long queue for her turn to draw water from the only functional borehole in the village.

The alternative would be to buy a 20 litre jerrycan of water at Shs1,000 from the village water vendor, but that option is too expensive for a family that on average survives on just about a dollar or Shs2500 a day.
Two hours later, she is heading back home with a group of other women, most of whom are her neigbours, all delicately balancing faded 20 litre jerrycans on their heads.

She treks at least a kilometre and in some cases, especially during dry spells, distance covered in search of water in Kumi District stretches to 10 kilometres.

Despite all that effort, Ms Akol is rewarded with violence by her tipsy husband. He beats her for staying out that late, claiming she has been cheating on him.

And when the house runs short of water, particularly when he needs it, Ms Akol will endure another beating, this time on the ground that she is a lazy, good-for-nothing woman.

Similarly, Grace Apolot, 8, has no plan to attend school because she is taking care of her little brothers and sisters as her mother, Ms Jane Apio, goes in search of water early morning.

In a week Grace, misses school at least three times because her mother must leave her home taking care of her much younger siblings.
By the time her mother comes back after negotiating 3 kilometre or more with 20 litre water bucket, it is already too late for Grace to make it to school in time for crucial morning classes.
Upon arrival, Ms Apio will dash to the garden, but in most cases, not before getting a beating from her drunkard husband who doesn’t seem to understand the kind of sacrifices his wife undertakes to ensure survival of the family.

The predicament experienced by the two housewives and their children is almost a permanent fixture in most families in Kumi District, thanks to perpetual water shortage in the area.
During the dry spell, which has since become sporadic, it is not uncommon to find nearly the entire village, save for the men and the elderly, pitching camp around a borehole.

The process of drawing water from the pump is further slowed not just by the sheer number of people battling to get the water but the facility itself as well.

It takes so much energy to pump the water underground and another half an hour to fill a 20litres jerrycan, making the exercise one of the most dreaded by most women and children whose role is to ensure there is water in the house.
“People here (in Kumi Sub-county), especially women spend the whole night at the borehole—waiting for water, and during the dry season, it even gets worse because the entire village pitches camp at the borehole,” the Kumi Sub-county chairperson, Mr Abdul Aziz Ongodia, said in an interview.

Exposure to diseases
He continued: “Here we majorly depend on water from the swamps and with dry season looming, we are headed for tough times as we will have to grapple with water scarcity, again.”

As a result of shortage of water in Kumi District as a whole and in particular Kumi Sub-county, the residents are exposed to diseases such as typhoid and other related ailments that emanate from consumption/usage of unsafe water, one of the Kumi District health assistants, Mr Joseph Etidau, told Saturday Monitor.
It gets worse when the Kumi health centre borehole breaks down as another alternative available is 10 kilometre away.

Despite all that, the plight of the people of Kumi Sub-county is not about to get any better anytime soon. According to Mr Ongodia, government has since made several promises in regard to solving the water scarcity in Kumi Sub-county with none of the pledges coming to fruition thus far.

“Government has come here many times promising to deal with water problem but nothing tangible is coming through beyond repeated promises,” Mr Ongodia says

“We now understand that there is a plan by government to extend piped water to Kumi Town Council by 2017. The distance between the town council and Kumi Sub-county is 11 kilometres. That means by the time we get piped water in Kumi Sub-county, it will be many years after,” Mr Ongodia adds in frustration.

He disclosed that there are 11 boreholes that serve about 26 villages with a population ranging between 300 and 500 people per parish. Adequate number of boreholes needed in total is 55 with preferably each parish having two wells.

In an attempt to narrow the gap that should have ordinarily been taken care of by government, Non-governmental organisations have stepped in to avert the situation from getting out of hand.
One such organisation is the Bernard van Leer Foundation (BVLF), an international grant making foundation based in The Hague.

With its mission to improve opportunities for children up to age eight who are growing up in socially and economically difficult circumstances, it has drilled 30 boreholes across the districts of Apac, Nakapiripirit and Kumi to improve access to water and sanitation facilities which is one of the biggest problem these districts are grappling with.
The Private Sector Foundation Uganda, Executive Director, Mr Gideon Badagawa, whose organisation is implementing the $1 million (about Shs2.5 billion) BVLF project, said situations like this (water scarcity) have a terrible ripple effect on children and the economy as well.

He said: “Clean water is a necessity for children. And lack of it impacts on their growth. So to have mentally and physically healthy nation, children must have access to clean and safe water. We are committed to being part of the solution because we care about the future.”

The chairperson of the committee that takes care of Ongoria Borehole, Kumi Sub-county, Mr Patrick Ariong, said there are instances where more than 300 people from three other parishes depend on the BVLF donated borehole.

He said: “There are times when women spend the whole night fetching water from this borehole because the one they normally use is either broken down or it is not pumping any water. So this borehole to us is like the only star in the sky—we cannot do without it.”
In a conference held in Kampala earlier in the week, bringing together water sector experts and analysts from across the region, the minister of Water and Environment, Prof Ephraim Kamuntu, said prescription to the water shortages lies in new innovations.

“We need technology that will help us harvest rain water and solve this problem. Our people in the rural areas use more than 70 per cent of their time fetching/looking for water, that means they do not have enough time to engage in income or economic generating activities,” Prof Kamuntu said.

In a separate interview, a commissioner at the Ministry of Water, Mr Joseph Eyutu, said public-private partnership investment into water sector will go a long way in solving water scarcity that is responsible for the nightmares that Ms Akol, Ms Apio and the young Apolot perennially go through.

iladu@ug.nationmedia.com