Meet Julius

Mr. Okuni Julius

Julius is the chairperson of Machari East, one of the villages of the AWS operation in Petta subcounty, Tororo district, Uganda. In 2022, he donated the land on which the tank reservoir is hosted and became a member of the water user committee. He had observed the water wasted during the overflow, but had no idea how to make valuable use of it until the president’s speech triggered his mind to think out of the box. During the presidential State of the Nation address in October 2023, Julius was attentive, as the president advised that for economic development, people ought to diversify into different farming sectors, such as fish farming, beyond rice.

The 45-year-old father of five shared the idea with his wife, who seemed supportive, and soon he went to the fishery office at the district and made inquiries about what was required to farm fish. First, he needed a reliable water source, capital, and knowledge. He then visited a place called “Kadama”, with an established fishpond for a learning visit, and eventually went home with the Fishery officers for a site visit. He was advised to dig a ditch 5 feet deep, plant trees for shade, and get water weeds to help in cooling the water temperature for Fish habitation. He adhered to these requirements and then started with 500 fish early this year, and as the fish grew bigger, he was advised to add more fish, so that he could have growing fish as he sells the older ones; thus, he added 300 more fish.

His current capital stands at UGX 700,000, and he plans to grow it by opening a second pond so that he can have a constant fish supply to his future clients, since he harvested in late July 2024. He is very grateful to Africa Water Solutions for its support towards the economic development of the community and glad that he offered his land without much expectation, not knowing that a bigger reward opportunity awaited him.

PHOTO: Julius holding a cat fish from his pond

He pledges to continuously support the sustainability of the organization’s programs and plans to officially invite the AWS team for his next harvest, as he shares his testimony, since he believes that his life’s trajectory has changed.

Meet Savious

Nowamanya Savious is a resident of Karungu village, Mpungu Parish, Hamurwa Sub-county, in Rubanda District. She is married to Monday Levi and they have three children. At the time of baseline, Savious didn’t have a pit latrine, a bath shelter, a rack among others. She only had a house she was staying in. When the AWS staff asked her about the latrine, bath shelter and others; her response was that she shared with her mother in law. It was after triggering that Savious picked courage of constructing her own pit latrine, bath shelter and other facilities. She affirms that “Had it not been AWS intervention, I would still be in the darkness of poor sanitation waiting for my mother in law to put up pit latrine for us. “Hangara AWS” meaning long live AWS.

As many other households in this village, Nowamanya also struggled to fetch water up and down the hill for about 4 hours. Today, she collects her water from a Ferro Cement tank that has been constructed with help from Africa Water Solutions.

Meet Marvelous

Kyompeire Marvelous is a wife to Magezi Everest and they live with three children. The couple lives in karungu village, Mpungu Parish, Hamurwa Sub-County, Rubanda District. It took a couple of days for this home to get transformed. During baseline, this home had a very poor old latrine without a door, latrine cover and wasn’t well mudded. The couple didn’t have a bath shelter, a kitchen and even a rack. At the time of triggering and training karungu village, Marvelous was among the participants and she thought the Health Assistant was talking about her home when he could highlight on some homes in the village that had alarming sanitation.

She did not pick up very fast, she required a little more monitoring visits! Slowly, she started to put in place WASH facilities like a new pit latrine with a cover, well mudded with two doors and she was constructing a kitchen though incomplete. She had put up a bath shelter and a drying rack. However, Marvelous was struggling to get water to improve on her sanitation due to the long trek of walking about 4 hours to and from the spring.  Her husband suffers a long ill health and her child is mentally retarded. Construction of a 6000L Ferro cement tank adds a smile on her face, she is able to take care of the family and improve on her sanitation.

Meet Adrian

Clean water is only part of the story in bringing lost lasting health changes to rural communities. To achieve the greatest health benefits, improvement in sanitation and hygiene must be made alongside access to clean water. Karungu is one of the highly water stressed villages in Rubanda District.

Adrian Ruzamaba, 69 years old, and Hope Audria, 67 years live in Karungu village, Mpungu parish, Hamurwa subcounty. They currently stay with 3 of their 10 and five grandchildren. Before receiving the WASH trainings, Adrian and his family used to drink untreated water from the pond that was shared with animals and were in-and-out of hospital due to water borne
diseases. Washing hands after visiting the toilet and before eating food was unusual and seemed water wasting and his grandchildren hardly bathed and suffered from skin infections (Dermatitis). Due to old age, it was difficult for Adrian and his wife to travel up and down the hills to fetch water and therefore their grandchildren often missed school to first fetch water; because of the water scarcity, the grand children rarely washed their school uniforms in order to spare the little water they had and consequently they would have to wear dirty uniforms to
school. The family would sometimes have to pay someone 2,000Ugshs (52 cents) to fetch a jerr ycan of water which was too costly for them given their economic status.

After continuous interaction and WASH trainings with Adrian’s family, they had the urge to improve on the hygiene and sanitation at their home. They were able to construct a proper bathing shelter and a latrine with a sato pan and a tippy tap, they now understand the benefits of hand washing, use SODIS to treat drinking water, and improved sanitation and hygiene around their home also makes them proud. Their grandchildren no longer fall sick and the money that was spent in treating them is now used to venture in income generating projects.

Clean and safe water means healthy families; more money is saved that they can now spend on education, business investments, and thus economic empowerment.

Adrian and Hope are forever grateful to AWS for giving them access to clean and safe water through the rain water harvesting tank and continuous trainings and lessons that helped them improve on the sanitation and hygiene conditions of their home.

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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.

Ann’s Story of Relief

Uganda is blessed with beautiful nature scenes and topography; however, this in some parts of the country, becomes a hinderance to accessing basic water supply and sanitation services. Africa Water Solutions is working towards providing people with approaches to access safe and clean water and suitable sanitary and hygiene conditions.

Many districts of South-Western Uganda e.g. Kabale, Rubanda, Kisoro & Kanungu are extremely hilly and steep. Households in these areas settle along the slopes of the hills with only a few water sources that are located in the valleys. While there’s much water during heavy rainfalls, there is also prolonged dry spells yet the people predominantly depend on agriculture.

Anna Akankwas a resident of Mpungu village, in Rubanda district had to walk for 6 hours to fetch only one twenty-litre jerrycan of water before Africa Water Solutions constructed a rainwater harvesting tank for her home. She narrates that the tank has given her and the family relief from those long and tedious journies across hills to fetch water.

“Before I got the tank, I used to wake up at 6:00am to go and fetch water. I would find long lines because the well is only one; on top of that, the path there is rocky and steep and after all those struggles I would only leave with just 20-litres of water which is not even enough for my house household. My children were always late for school hence poor class performance,” explains Anna.

Primarily, the water source for the entire community is one well, the long distance and queues are an everyday struggle for people as they fetch water. The main occupation is farming-and spending hours daily to fetch water is troublesome and leaves them unproductive in the gardens.

Anna’s life and that of everyone in her household has sincechanged after receivingarainwater harvesting tank in her home. As a mother, she has many responsibilities to take care of like cooking, washing, cleaning in addition to farming. Today, with no struggle of getting water, Anna has more time to fend and look after her family.

“Since we got the tank, I prepare my children for school on time, cook and go to the garden on time. Because I was gardening late or not at all after spending long hours while fetching water I was unproductive. But now, I don’t have to wake up so early to go the well, water is at my door-step” Anna

testifies.

We are working to improve the quality of life of more people by bring clean and safe water closer!

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