Ugandan children

14 December 2004

The Independent

Better school grades for Ugandan children flow from the village pump's clean, safe water

By Meera Selva in Zziba, Uganda

At the local waterpoint in Zziba, Uganda, the children giggle and gossip as they fill their yellow plastic jerry cans with water from the one pump in their district. Their cheerfulness hides the monotony of their daily routine. Three times a day, they run the 500m down to the pump, and then stagger home with a heavy bucket of water on their head.

On school days, they wake up at 5am and make the trips three times in a row before they go off to school. In many parts of rural Uganda, water collection can totally dominate a child's life.

The exhausting, unremitting job of collecting enough water for the family to wash, cook, and drink with each day belongs to children. They start when they are four years old, carrying small bottles down to the water point. By the time they are eight, boys and girls are expected to carry 20 litres of water home on each trip; the equivalent of the full baggage allowance on an international flight.

But the children in Zziba collect clean water from a safe source. The British aid agency WaterAid installed a pump in the area in 2002, to cater for the 600 people near by who have no other access to water.

There should be no shortage of water in Uganda. It lies on the shores of Lake Victoria, one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world, and much of the countryside itself is lush and fertile. But bad planning and lack of information means only 62 per cent of the country's 25 million people have access to safe water. The rest collect it from murky ponds and streams, leaning precariously over makeshift wooden boards to reach the water.

Since WaterAid began operating in Uganda in 1983, it has provided safe water to more than a million people, but millions more are still collecting drinking water from unsafe sources. The problem is most complicated in urban areas. Shanty houses are often built on waterlogged soil where pumps cannot be installed, and sewage flows from open latrines in the slums directly on to the dirt paths and the children's bare feet. WaterAid could only help residents of the Kazo slums outside Kampala build latrines and ensure that a natural spring that flowed into the neighbourhood was kept clean.

Children between four and seven are most susceptible to the sicknesses the dirty water transmits, as they often drink the water before their parents have boiled it. "I come to get this water three times a day, but it gives us stomach ache. And there are snakes in the reeds, which think they are the masters of this water. I am always scared they will bite me," complained 11-year-old Maureen Nukavu, at a watering hole in the wastelands north of the city of Kampala.

Her sister is determined to be more cheerful. "It's not so bad," she said. "When we get sick, we go to the doctor and he gives us medicines. We don't die."

Children's problems with water do not end when they go to school. Most schools have no access to clean water, and classes take it in turns to go down to a local pond or stream to collect water for the rest of the school.

"Sending children down to the pond was always very dangerous," said Helen Natkunda, a science teacher at Namugala primary school. "We were always afraid they would fall into the pond and drown, or get abducted by people hiding in the bushes, but we could not spare any teachers to go down with them either. Many of the children, especially those who were not doing well in class, would also use the water collection as an excuse to play truant for the whole day."

WaterAid Uganda altered the school week, simply by building a rainwater tank and latrines for the school. They also painted rather garish murals on the school walls, to teach students the importance of using the latrines and washing their hands properly afterwards.

Now there was a constant supply of water in the school, children no longer had to skip lessons to go and collect water. As the water was clean, they fell sick less often and were more alert in lessons.

"The children's academic performance has improved so much with this clean water," said Ms Natkunda. "The government almost closed us down because our performance was so bad. Not one child managed to get the top grade in the public exams. Now this year, five of our students got the top grade and every single one passed the exams - no failures at all. And it is from something as simple as water."