Biya area 248 villagers

15th September 2016:

Sometimes I have to shake myself into believing that our Malawian workers can utterly change the lives of 248 of the poorest villagers in a a short space of time, like minutes, not with a magic wand, but a few plastic pipes, some hard work and a little ingenuity and some wonderful donors.
Put all that together and there is no great reason that water won't flow all day every day for years.
WHY? because if anything goes wrong the village women have been trained to sort it. NOT THE MEN, THE WOMEN, because water is the women's responsibility.
If I didn't absorb this fact quickly, we could be spending days and weeks discussing and sensitising (A great word for NGO's) villagers.
Now the men dig the wells, make the bricks, get sand and do all the labour
Our guys advise and supply cement and the pump.
The villagers have ownership
Job sorted.
We rarely have to return to maintain a pump, even though Africa is strewn with broken pumps, never fit for purpose in the first place

RANT OVER

The village is Selemani, 17km from the factory and has 248 villagers and the furthest from the pump walk for 15 minutes

GPS:
S: 11 24 28.3
E: 34 00 12.2

Contact: Vita Selemani  0884031581

Donor: Bon Secours Community, Cork, Ireland