On World Water Day 2010, Jane Beesley looks back on her experiences of communities struggling with — and overcoming — difficult access to safe water.
Looking back over the year since last World Water Day, it’s easy for me to remember people, images and stories relating to water — for many reasons.
For some people, the daily struggle for water continues — like the group of women in Ethiopia who, in teams of ten, collect water from deep inside a hillside. Often it takes them all day — every day. They described being down the hole as like being in a grave. I have a short film of one woman ascending from the hole, reaching up and passing a heavy jerry can to someone at the surface, before turning back to descend into darkness again.
Safe water means a huge difference to people’s lives
Elsewhere, where Oxfam has been able to work with communities, I am constantly struck by the huge difference having access to safe water makes to people’s lives, and the positive effects of having a borehole, or any of the water systems we’ve been able to help with. In southern Sudan a community worked together to clear through dense bush a road where none had existed before, so Oxfam could construct a borehole. Now, despite the roughness of the road, other organisations can find the community and further development is on its way. The road and the borehole meant that more people were returning home from camps that they’d fled to because of conflict.
In another part of southern Sudan the boreholes were having other effects, often unexpected — like more girls attending school. With Oxfam buckets the girls can go to school, held under trees, and have something to sit on during lessons before going to the nearby borehole to collect water on their way home.
Women on the water committee
But it’s across the border in northern Kenya, in Turkana and in Wajir, where I’ve had the privilege to meet the same people five or six times, that I’ve seen real progress made. There are so many stories to tell, but those that stand out are the stories where women, through being involved in managing their water systems (often new, sometimes rehabilitated) has given them some standing in their communities. One woman, Mumina Ali Amin, on recognising me in a town in Wajir rushed up and said, “We are no longer in the kitchen!” Eighteen months earlier I had been at a meeting where several men had spoken about women not being strong enough to be on a water committee, and belonging in the kitchen. Women were now on the water committee, and Mumina told me how this had made a difference and improved women’s access to water.
Down the road in another community, where Oxfam no longer works, the committee reported back how they were not struggling during the current water shortage; how they had raised money to extend their water system and purchase solar panels to pump water instead of having to buy expensive fuel, and were even in a position to provide water for others and their livestock.
Over in Turkana, there’s a place called Kaikor. It’s one of my favourite places in the world – at night there are more stars than can be imagined. But the real stars are the water committee members. Over the years they have had — and continue to have — problems and challenges that they have worked together to solve. Recently a friend went to carry out an assessment and reported back that when a new policeman had tried to get water without paying the small charge, he was challenged by the kiosk operator, Lydia. Lydia explained the system and the reason for the charges, to which the policeman responded, “I didn’t know I was talking to someone in authority,” and handed over the money. Lydia was delighted to be seen as a person of authority.
I hope that the women who have to descend into darkness will soon have easy access to safe water.