Meet Judith

Meet Judith

Judith Wafyoyo’s face lights up when she talks about her home.

Looking back, the state of water, sanitation and hygiene in Judith’s village was dire. She and several other families in her community would walk for hours each day to collect water. The sanitation situation was just as bad. Most toilets did not have roofs, doors or even covers, barely any handwashing facilities and even worse, some people were practising open defecation. Her latrine did not have covering lids. Judith says flies were flying everywhere in her house. They were drinking dirty untreated water causing illnesses in the different families – Judith often had to take her children suffering from water-borne related diseases such as diarrhoea and stomach aches for treatment in nearby clinics.

 

Now, Judith is excited when talking about water because she has a water harvesting tank in her compound – giving her a lot of relief. She says, during the rainy season, she shares the water with her immediate neighbours, who replicate the sanitation practices AWS has trained her on. But she is most proud of her new home – having an improved pit latrine fitted with a satopan to keep out flies and odours, a bath shelter and treating their drinking water using SODIS. Together, Judith and her community members have banded in a Village Savings and Loans Association to help them save and borrow money for their small income-generating activities or to meet their other expenses like school fees with much ease. 

Meet Mrs. Okaro

The AWS Program ensures that rural communities in our implementing areas have access to safe water and build their capacity to maintain safe water sources for even more years later. Like most areas in Uganda, access to safe water in the Alwi sub-county known as the dry corridor of the Pakwach district, was a big challenge forcing communities to use unsafe water sources such as local wells, ponds and streams. This prolonged the impact of waterborne diseases. Children and women continued to face the burden of walking for long hours to collect water. 

In the past, whenever the people of Alwi gathered, they discussed how a lack of water not only brought them diseases but also put their lives at risk of being attacked on their way to collect water, in the long run, hindering their children’s education and dreams. The children continued to drop out of school to help fill the family water shortage.

She further explains that the mothers in this village feel that the dirty water had contributed to widespread waterborne illnesses such stomach aches caused by worms, diarrhea among others. But thanks to the borehole, these illnesses have been fought and the families have since experienced reduction in prevalence of waterborne diseases. They can now spare some time saved from the long walks to tidy up their homes, engage in small businesses and do some farming. The borehole has brought a multitude of changes to the community, including the development of a water committee that has been trained to help with the maintenance of the water and sanitation resources. Mrs. Okaro explained that to ensure that the borehole remains functional and reliable; water users are required to pay a small monthly fee and an operating Water User Committee that is tasked with the functionality of the borehole was elected.

The Mitalas

Meet the Mitala's

In WASH intervention communities, Africa Water Solutions often meets families that melt the team’s heart with joy after experiencing massive transformation. Occasionally, when we think of a house, we picture walls, a roof, windows, and doors; but when you fill those walls with families trying to build a better life for themselves and their children, that house becomes a home. We believe that a home is a foundation, a primary building block for healthy families. We are intentionally training these families to improve their sanitation by encouraging them to build their WASH facilities that translate to the elimination of WASH-related illnesses. Among these is Lumu Mitala’s household.

Meet Mitala, a 34-year-old living with his family in Kimbugu village, Ssi Bukunja Sub-county, Buikwe district. He and his wife, Nakkonde Faith, 32-year-old, have five children – aged between 12 years and 14 months old. Before receiving WASH training, the Mitalas suffered illnesses from drinking contaminated water. These illnesses resulted in hospital visits, which created unplanned medical expenses, taking a significant toll on the family whose source of income is as good as inexistent.

The Mitala’s transformed home

The Mitala family has experienced a holistic transformation from AWS training in WASH best practices, drastically reducing the disease burden on their family. Our staff became more intentional in his household after several failed attempts to train him and his family members how to improve the WASH condition of their home.

Mr. Mitala repairing the roof of his kitchen

On our initial visits, the family house was dilapidated and rugged; Mitala himself was elusive – he spent much of his time away from home. They had no kitchen, no handwashing facilities and were practising open defecation in the neighbouring bushes.

After triggering and training, we succeeded in getting Mitala to spend more time improving his home; he reinforced the leaking roof with better iron sheets and smeared his house walls to make them more firm and beautiful. Mr Mitala now has a proper latrine fitted with a satopan, handwashing facilities installed at the latrine area and entrance to his home, a good kitchen, and a dish rack. Together with his family, they practise SODIS to improve the quality of their drinking water hence reducing the diarrheal disease burden on the family.