Gurimila's story

Gurimila Chakma lives in Sapchari Jowthakhamar village in Bangladesh.

Credit: WaterAid

In the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the one hilly area of Bangladesh, poor communities often have to walk up steep paths through the jungle to find clean water, or collect water from dug-out polluted sources or streams lower down closer to their villages.

Gurimila Chakma who lives in Sapchari Jowthakhamar village describes life before and after WaterAid and its partner Green Hill helped provide safe, clean water for her community through a gravity-flow scheme.

"At a very early age I married Lakhmicharan and came to my husband's house at Sapchari. We both had to work hard to look after our family. If any of us couldn't work due to sickness we had difficulties looking after everyone.

As there was no safe water in the village I had to collect water from a stream downhill or use a dug-out well - both of which were 1.5-2 kilometers from our house. Water used to slowly seep into the well, so you had to get up very early in the morning to ensure you got there when it was full. If we couldn't get this water because of crowds or because we overslept we'd have to spend at least half a day collecting water as once it was empty it would take at least 15-20 minutes for enough water to slowly filter through before we could fill a container. On these days we wouldn't have time to work.

As I usually had to spend between four and five hours every day collecting water I could never finish my housework. I hardly had any opportunity to rest in-between work. Because of the unbearable water hardships people from nearby villagers were not very interested in marrying their daughters to men from our village.

Throughout the year we used to suffer from various diseases. Looking after the family would become even harder then as each family member in turn used to suffer for at least a week every month. We didn't only suffer physically, we also couldn't afford for anyone to stay at home without earning a day's wage.

In 1999, Green Hill started working with us to provide a safe water supply from as well as motivating the villagers about good hygiene. Initially, we didn't believe that we would have a sufficient supply of water near our houses, but eventually it came true and we really started believing it!

As we were so accustomed to waking up very early in the morning to fetch water from the distant water sources, when we had the new supply we still awoke in the moonlit night at about 1am or 2am expecting a crowd of people to be collecting water. We thought that the water would soon run out like it used to at the dug-out well. But after a few days we realised that there was plenty of water available the whole day and night - there was no need to queue, impatiently waiting at the tapstand. In a word, it was a miracle to us and our thanks are not enough for the amazing water supply.

Now, we have safe water in the village. The distance is so close that we can even leave the boiling rice pan on the cooker and return to the house after conveniently collecting water from the nearby tap. We only need a few minutes to fetch water. Now I have time for rest and can work more too. I just feel so much more relieved than before. I can help my husband more with the cultivation and gardening work and together we can now sow at least 30kg of paddy seed compared to only 10-12kg before. That's why our family income has significantly increased. We also don't fall sick as we used to. In the whole village water and sanitation related diseases have been significantly reduced and we feel much happier than before.

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