BOREHOLES
Providing clean water in Zimbabwe is ”good aid”. Kiwilink Zimbabwe is helping provide boreholes and hand pumps in arid rural areas. Having water security transforms communities.
Water shortages have been a problem in Zimbabwe for many years and in resettlement areas especially, it is common for families to walk up to 10km to get drinking water. Often children are sent to fetch water in the afternoon when they return home from school. They go to the nearest source which might even be a dried river bed where they dig a hole and wait water for water to seep in. The water is then transferred to a container and taken home. Kiwilink has responded by raising money to drill water bore holes in these areas.
Costing around US$6,000 each, these boreholes have reduced the walking distance and provided more accessible water for growing vegetables. Since 2007 an additional 70 boreholes have been drilled. A recent borehole has proved particularly successful and in continuous operation. Some families are traveling with the donkey carts up to 15km.
A 12 year old boy said “… I have had to wake up at 4am before I go to school to fetch 20 litres of water every day for my grandmother. I walked 10km each way. Now, to think that from tomorrow, I will only have to walk 200 metres is like a dream…”
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Deputy Head, Lochard Village 5 School
This borehole has alleviated so many problems and I can safely say it is total life in itself. I don’t know for how many years we did not have water here. We encountered many problems here as a school and as a community at large. Sometimes the streams where we used to fetch water were dry which meant we needed to walk more than 10kms and take our scotch carts to cart water. But now we have this borehole, even the community comes here and peoples lives are now running smoothly due to this wonderful gift we have received. We have invited the community to take advantage of this borehole so that they can grow their own vegetables and supplement their own livelihood. We have also started the construction of another classroom block that will use water from here. Even the parents who are having difficulty paying their Childrens school fees can make use of the land we have set aside and grow vegetables to sell for money. We also have the toilet that was completed last year and again it was water from this same borehole which was used to construct the toilets at this school. Prior to that, we did not have any toilets because we could not construct as there was no water nearby. My words can never explain the joy that we got through this borehole.