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As we increasingly focus on safe drinking water, we have now to our goals added the construction of rainwater collection systems, with a capacity of 5,000 liters, in villages that are difficult to reach. These are remote villages where a truck loaded with a 10,000 liter plastic rainwater collection tank cannot reach and where the use is on a smaller scale than at a school. The system as we construct is is made of a mixture of sand and cement and does not contain a plastic inner tank; for a high-quality result it is of great importance that a specific type of sand as well as a good quality cement is used, whereby the two components must also be used in the correct proportion. If those essential conditions are met, the system can serve for up to 30 years!
Recently Erasmus Mutana, who also constructs rainwater collection systems at schools for us, built a first sample at a widow’s house in Katooma village. This woman had to take the long, arduous, mainly steep road all the way down to the lake for water every day and back up again. A heavy burden for her that has now come to an end. Of course, other villagers also use the facility.
In the selection of locations for next to construct samples we very much look at the presence of elderly and/or vulnerable people in a village. By helping the elderly with this, we often also relieve children from a village who are charged with fetching water for, for example, their grandmother or elderly neighbor. A very heavy task for young children who unfortunately also have to miss many valuable hours at school.
In the below video heavy sacks filled with sand, which is needed in the construction of system is carried up the steep hill to the village location. It all comes down to pure manpower!
This first sample was a test for us; the result and the reactions are so positive that we have decided to structurally add to our goals the construction of 5,000 rainwater collection systems. As mentioned above, the systems will be constructed in remote locations that are not accessible to a truck and where to construct the rainwater collection systems that we have installed several times.
We call them ‘Enyungus’.
The specific composition of materials (which makes that the tanks can serve up to even 30 years!) used by constructor Erasmus Mutana in combination with the inner shape of the tanks (the bottom rounded as a ball) made us agree as a team that the product deserves its own name: ‘Enyungu’. The word symbolically refers to the clay made pot, that the local population used for collecting water from the lake until it was replaced by the much lighter plastic jerrycans. The picture to the left shows an original enyungu that we found by chance at a market in Kabale town.
We thank Thijs-Jan van Hoek for his generous donation that made the construction of this first system possible!
If you would also like to help us achieve our goals, please visit the page ‘How You Can Help’ on this website. Every donation, small or large, is highly appreciated by us.
HWMCO-Nederland & NiCA Foundation
‘We Fight Poverty by Bringing Development’
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