Ending water woes with rope pumps

It is 5am in the area of Traditional Authority (T/A) Maseya in Chikwawa. Most women are up, balancing on their heads buckets of water drawn from Mwanza River.

In one group there is Malita Josamu. As she walks part of the two-kilometre journey from the river, water spills from the pail on her head, soaking part of her clothes. But she shows no sign of discomfort.

She has been doing this for decades.

“If you miss drawing water in the early hours of the day, then you will get dirty water as livestock have their turn as well when it is hot,” says Josamu.

The story of lack of access to safe water in the area is serious. You hardly see an operational borehole except at some selected schools.

Group Village Head  (GVH) Bereu says three quarters of his subjects drink water from open wells.

“There is a borehole at Bereu Primary School, but people walk long distances to access clean and safe water. There is always a long queue, as pupils use the same borehole,” laments Josamu, who lives a kilometre from the school.

It is this situation that makes use of shallow wells practical, but that has its own challenges. Shallow wells, dug using hoes and mostly no deeper than one metre, are a common sight in the area.

They have a wide mouth that allows dipping of small containers when collecting the water. Josamu reveals that they drink with animals from the wells are uncovered.

VGH Bereu believes that the 51 years of Malawi’s independence have failed to bring lasting solutions to access to safe water in the area.

“For the past 20 years, we have received many boreholes and some projects brought piped water, but they are not operational,” says the chief, adding that the challenge is sustainability.

He adds that Chikwawa has a high water table that digging a well is easy,  but the water is salty. He says for the past 50 years, wells have been a relief. Many boreholes are broken down and some pipes planted some years ago are dry.

Josamu testifies: “Between 2005 and now, NGOs planted three water sources near my house, but they are no longer functional.”

The story in T/A Maseya area is not isolated to the area. The mushrooming of non-governmental organisations and other government community projects over the past 20 years has seen many communities graduating from drinking unsafe water through different projects such as boreholes.

Most reports indicate that Malawi is on track in the quest of achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on water, targeting the increase of people’s access to safe water and sanitation by 50 percent this year.

One of them is the 2012 Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report by the United Nations Childern’s Fund (Unicef) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) which says 95 percent of the urban and 80 percent of the rural population have access to safe water.

This represents an average of 87.5 percent and backs the Malawi  MDGs report of 2010 which indicates that by the end of the year, 81 percent of the population had access to safe water.

Both figures are above the MDGs target on water, which was pegged at 74 percent.

Executive director of  Water Services Association of Malawi (Wasama) Ben Chakhame, in an interview argued that access to safe water is a big problem. He says that the statistics in most reports do not really represent the facts on the ground because most water sources counted in the reports are now down.

Chief Maseya agrees and says sources such as borehole and piped water are expensive to sustain hence most of those he got for the area are down.

It is for this reason that experts argue it is time government and NGOs start thinking lasting solutions to basic services such as the provision of safe water.

Dumisani Botolo, a water and environmental specialist consultant, faults NGOs and government for not thinking of lasting solutions. He says it is high time each household owns a tap to cater for their needs.

He argues that most water sources are run down quickly due to overuse and people are reluctant to contribute for maintenance because of the long-held belief that community services are supposed to be repaired by the providers.

He tips providers of such services to think of reducing the population of people relying on a single water source.

But is this practical in Malawi?

Botolo argues that with vision and utilisation of increasing technology, Malawi can achieve this. The Nation reviewed several water projects by both government and NGOs and observed that they lack direction, sustainability and breaks down due to over use. A research by A Self-help Assistant Programme (Asap), an NGO that promotes locally sustainable self-help technologies, says the country falls short in utilising technology that can influence everyone to own a water source for sustainability’s sake.

It says boreholes have been a solution, but due to costs, some communities cannot afford to sustain them.

With this knowledge, Asap is running a project, with support from the Catholic Organisation for relief and Development Aid (Cordaid) based in The Netherlands, that ensures water sources are durable due to few users and is moving towards ensuring that each household has its own water source. The project is running in T/As Maseya and Lundu in Chikwawa and in Blantyre Rural.

Twisiwile Mwaighogha, Asap executive director says the project is planting a rope pump to be used by few households and for those capable can buy at K60 000 ($133).

“The pump is low cost technology and the main parts are plastic pipes, used car tyres, a rope and some cement and bricks for the floor,” says Mwaighogha.

He adds that they have also adopted the manual drilling system where fresh water is unavailable.

“Manual drilling accesses water 35 metres deep and this is not salty. To own this, one coughs up K200 000 [444], which is far less than the cost for drilling a borehole. But as a project, we are providing these free to rural communities and we are making sure that few households are using them,” says Mwaighogha.

Botolo supports the idea: “Let each household dig a well and support them with a rope pump either for free or at a low cost and assess their impact after a year so to make a decision.”