Examples of our work in Zambia 

Sichiyanda village in focus

In Zambia WaterAid supports the Government's WASHE (water, sanitation, hygiene and education) policy which calls for water, sanitation and hygiene all to be incorporated in to one project.

WaterAid works with the district committees to help implement the policy. One main area of their work is to help communities create focus villages, with water, sanitation and hygiene projects running alongside one another.

Rosemary Mande, one of the village latrine builders, shows off her new toilet.

Credit: WaterAid / Jon Spaull

These villages are then used as showcases, which other communities visit to see what they too could achieve.

Sichiyanda is one such village in the Monze district, made up of 41 households. The project began here in 2001 and the community worked quickly to dig and build a well with dedicated bucket and windlass.

Hygiene education is taking place and 28 latrines have already been constructed with more underway. They are built in a mixture of styles depending on the type of latrines that each family wants and can afford.

Rosemary Mande, the chairlady for hygiene in the village, and a trained latrine builder, describes the differences that the project has made:

"We used to have to collect our water from a stream, where we would dig holes in the sand and let the water flow through into pools. The water still wasn't clean but at least the sand would filter it a bit. It used to take me an hour each time I went there, and I went three times a day in the morning, afternoon and evening. The water from the river had germs in it and so it often made us sick.

"Now we have the well and so the water is much cleaner than before. It is also closer now which means that I have more time to harvest food in my field and can also work more around the home. We still use the old source, but only to water our gardens as they are next to the river.

"I am the chairlady for hygiene in this village. We regularly promote good hygiene promotion - we promote keeping areas clean by building dish racks and rubbish pits and making sure that there are no stagnant pools of water where mosquitoes can breed.

Now that she no longer has to spend so much time collecting water Rosemary can tend to her vegetables.

Credit: WaterAid / Jon Spaull

"We also promote washing hands at critical times, like before eating and after going to the latrine. Diseases like diarrhoea have decreased here because of the good hygiene we are now using.

"I am also one in a team of six latrine builders. I helped build our family latrine first - so we showed we could do it. It was a family affair, the boys helped to dig too. It is a ventilated improved pit latrine. It took about four days to dig it, and two days to build the structure around it. We are really happy that we are able to do it ourselves.

"Before I just used to use the bush, but since having the latrine it is so much cleaner. Flies used to land in the bush, and then follow us back to the village bringing the dirt with them. Now this doesn't happen - and it is cleaner and safer. This year we hope we can help everyone else build latrines as well. Being able to do this makes us feel really good and positive about our futures.

"There are three children and three grandchildren in my household. They are much healthier now - we have seen real improvements here. The surroundings are much cleaner now as well. Before the dogs used to lick the plates, but now they are all on dish racks instead and the dogs can't reach them.

"Everyone here is happier now and we have all got involved in the project. In the future I want to see us continue to improve our health situation and continue to improve our development."

Digging for the children's future

In the baking sun Robby Machindu hacks deeper into rocky ground.

Credit: WaterAid / Jim Holmes

In the baking sun Robby Machindu hacks deeper into rocky ground. He is helping his community to dig a new well in Tambala village.

"The problem of water for the community inspired me to volunteer to be part of the digging team" he says.

"It is hot and very hard. I will rest now. I am tired but it is good to dig. I dig because children here have bilharzia from the stream.

"Twenty children are sick at the moment. When they urinate blood comes out too. It is painful, but they are brave and try not to cry. The stream is bad for us, the pigs and cows go to the stream too."

Kitchen garden

Jessie Haamando, waters Chinese lettuce with river water.

Credit: WaterAid / Jim Holmes

Sixty-one year old Jessie Haamando, waters Chinese lettuce with river water. She keeps half the crop to feed her family and sells the other half. "During the dry season it is difficult to find enough water." she says, "The river will soon dry up and we will have to dig deeper to find water. The journey itself takes at least 30 minutes each way."

"Soon the community will have a well providing a safe water supply close to their homes and won't have to collect water from the river. Instead they will have clean water to drink and enough from the run off to water their plants all year."

With less time spent collecting water, women and children will have more time for other things: women can work to earn money and children can go to school or simply play.

Life before clean water

"This is where we used to collect all of our water from", explains Agnes Mwiling from Choobana village. "When we drank it people were sick with diarrhoea. But it wasn't only diseases that were a problem - it used to take at least two hours to collect water from here. Depending on the time of year, we had to dig down. Sometimes the pits would be as tall as I am but then animals would push the sides in and we had to re-dig them every day."

This muddy stream is where Agnes used to collect all of her water from.

Credit: WaterAid / Jon Spaull

"We could never bathe our children then. We had to economise with our water. Our 20 litres had to last between our family for all our drinking, cooking and cleaning.

"Sometimes even a month would go by before we could wash our children. The women here used to suffer a lot; they used to walk a long way just to collect this dirty water. Now though things are different."

The latrine builders

Life in Choobana village has changed now. As well as having safe water and hygiene projects, nearly all of the 53 houses have latrines. Lucenia and Maklena, both trained latrine builders, explain more.

Lucenia and Maklena at a model latrine they have built in the village.

Credit: WaterAid / Jon Spaull

Lucenia: "We have helped people to build latrines. For those who can't afford bricks we promote other latrines. We encourage people to collect logs or grass for the structure instead."

Maklena: "Then we help them to construct their latrine. We are proud to be involved in this scheme and have seen a big reduction in diarrhoea. Before there were a lot of diseases here.

"When we had to use the bush as our toilet the dogs would follow us and eat all of our waste. Then they would come back and lick all of the plates and go near our food."

Lucenia: "We didn't even have the dish racks then or the rubbish pits, but now we have seen how important both of these are."