We Are Constructing 20 Rainwater Collection Systems Of 5,000 Liters In Villages

Dit artikel is hier in het Nederlands beschikbaar.

As part of our goal to invest in clean water facilities, we have early this year constructed a first 5,000 liters rainwater collection tank at a widow’s house located on the Lake Bunyonyi surrounding hills. The old woman was often seen struggling to take the long, arduous, mainly steep path all the way down to the lake for water and back up again; a very heavy burden for her that has ended with the construction of the tank at her house, of which also villagers around her benefit.

This first sample has been a test; following the positive feedback we received, we decided to definitely add construction of these tanks to our goals; this has resulted in raising enough funds to start construction of another 20 of them now. In the selection of locations for them we very much look at the presence of elderly and/or vulnerable people in a village.

We call them ‘Enyungus’.
The specific composition of materials that constructor Erasmus Mutana uses (which makes that the tanks can serve up to even 30 years!) 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 … shows an original enyungu that we found by chance at a market in Kabale town.

It’s our intention to mainly construct the enyungus in remote village locations that are hardly or not accessible to a truck. Locations where the larger rainwater collection systems (with inner plastic tanks), such as we install them at schools, are not an option, and where the use is also on a much smaller scale than at a school. The cost per system is significantly lower than that of a larger rainwater collection system with inner plastic tank. At schools, where there are hundreds of children and the risk of (serious) damage is many times greater, we will stick to the systems as we have installed them already several times.

The below slider shows pictures of completed systems. More pictures will be added as the project progresses.

We thank engineer Erasmus Mutana for his amazing work! For making this investment financially possible we thank Dutch foundation ‘De Carolusgulden’ and another Dutch foundation.

If you would also like to help us achieve our goals, please visit the page ‘How You Can Help’ on this website. Every contribution, no matter how small, is always highly appreciated by us!

HWMCO-Nederland & NiCA Foundation
‘We Fight Poverty by Bringing Development’

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