Another visit this morning to one of SWASCO's water plants. But this time a solar powered one that supplies water to Chisekeshi, which is a peri-urban area about an hour's drive from Monze. Although quite basic in design, the solar powered plant appears functional. Although it clearly doesn't operate when it's cloudy and when there are 3 cloudy in a row the area can go without water - no "back-up" batteries / storage.
In this particular area the local community get their water from a number of "water kiosks" that have been built. Very simplistically these are manned water pumps where people have to pay for their water once they've filled their containers up. In some areas people pay in advance for the water and a record is kept of how much water they take (via a record book) and in other areas people pay when they fill their containers up. The process seems to work well and there is a definite sense of pride in the community and, so I'm told, very little sickness these days. Prior to the water being supplied by SWASCO water was collected from shallow wells within the local community. Although SWASCO believe the supply is adequate for the area at the moment, the community would like to see more water kiosks being installed and a larger storage tank installed at the water plant to minimise the risk of having no water on "cloudy" days. During the rainy season - November to April - people collect rain water from their roofs etc to use on their crops etc - rain water harvesting at its best!
Unfortunately the community we visited in the afternoon didn't give me the same sense of pride. The area we visited, Muzoka, is an urban informal settlement, that hasn't had any intervention - yet. On arrival in Muzoka we went to what was a little bit like a public meeting would be at home. There were representatives from Monze District Council, Southern Water and WaterAid Zambia. The meeting had been called as part of the first stage of assessment by Monze DC etc so they could start to understand the issues the people had, how much knowledge they had about the importance of sanitation and the link between dirty water and various illnesses. Everyone seemed to just want "someone" to give the community several water points. There seemed to be very little understanding of the need for education and no overall community sense of ownership. What really brought this home to me was that about 500m away from where the meeting was held there was a broken water pump. Apparently this pump, which was in a very central position, was installed by a charity about 6 years ago.
However there was no evidence of the community "owning" the pump - no water community set up, no one to regularly maintain the pump etc etc and so it got broken, and remains broken. This is such a shame, and a shocking waste of resources. Unfortunately for many of the people living in this area this broken pump means they use dirty water from a very shallow "well" at the side of the main road and railway track - which at the time of our visit had a film of diesel on the top of it!
Once again our visits today have demonstrated to me now important the overall education and awareness is, and of getting community buy-in - simple!
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