When the Mountain Stops Giving

I think about water a lot. I find myself doing this because I live in a country where I have virtually unlimited access to water in my daily life to use however I please. It's also because I personally know so many people in Tanzania whose lives center around spending a good part of each day labouring to have enough water to just stay alive. Literally.

In Kimokouwa I am thinking about Merikenoi, Paulina, and Mama Sokoyani; in Longido, Elizabeth, Esupat, Maria, and Nairukoki. Seven women out of thousands, with children and grandchildren they love so much that they really do risk injury daily simply to be able to provide water and thin porridge made with maize flour and water, for their children. It's happening right now, today, as you read this. I know this because last Friday when I spoke by phone with TEMBO Trust Coordinator, Paulina Sumayani, she said that Longido was very hot and very dry and that the TEMBO Guesthouse is purchasing tanker trucks of water in order to stay open. This is remarkable because it is the middle of the season of the "long rains", the time each year when Mt. Longido has a chance to become replenished so it can provide water for the villagers for the coming months. But the rains are failing. Again.

Mt. Longido is the only source of water for people in Longido and Kimokouwa.

Longido and Kimokouwa are situated near the base of Mt. Longido. This is important because Mt. Longido is the only source of water for people who live in this area. Mountain streams flow into a large man made cement reservoir built near the bottom of the mountain, and pipes take the water to common taps scattered throughout the villages. When the rains do not come the water level in the reservoir is very low. Eventually there is no water. Every aspect of life is interrupted and negatively impacted. It's not the same in Ottawa where I live. When water is in danger of getting low we are restricted in watering our lawns.

Here is what is happening in Longido and Kimokouwa right now.

The pipelines bringing water from the mountain to the villages have all but dried up. In Longido, all but one of the taps will be shut off. People who ordinarily would bring their colourful buckets and line up to get water at different taps throughout the village, on their one weekly water day, must now all line up at one tap in the village center. The UN suggests that each person needs 20-50 litres of safe fresh water a day to ensure their basic needs for drinking, cooking, and sanitation (World Water Assessment Programme). Today, most people will wait for hours at the tap and then will go home with empty buckets. Water is prioritized for use in the schools so they can remain open, since schools are the one place where children will receive food each day. In Kimokouwa this is one cup of corn kernels boiled in water to soften them. It may well be the only food many children receive today.

Women fetching water from a deep well in Kimokouwa.

During times of drought, the women walk long distances each day in search of water in deep open pits that have been dug near Mt. Longido. As the water level goes down the danger of slipping and being injured increases. Water is being delivered by tanker trucks from Namanga, 30 kilometers away or Arusha 100 kilometers away, and sold by the bucket to anyone with money to buy it. Young men push crudely made heavy wooden carts filled with large yellow plastic drums to the cattle trough a few kilometers outside of Longido to fetch water to sell to villagers. Many people will buy a bucket or two of this because it is all they can afford. So, contracting typhoid and diarrhoea are also problems. Many people will get sick.

TEMBO staff member Mary Laiser, and women in the KWGP, share
 their challenges with July 2011 Traveling with TEMBO visitors.
Mt. Longido is in the background.

Why am I writing about this? It's important that you know the world the families of the girls TEMBO sponsors for education live in. I am thinking of Tepayani, and Nana, and Joyce's families. And the mothers and grandmothers in the Micro-Business program or the Kimokouwa Women's Goat Project - this is their world, too. And the TEMBO staff who live and work in Longido and Kimokouwa. If these days are any indication, 2012 is going to be another year - maybe the seventh or eighth in a row - of a drought that only gets worse and deepens.

And tomorrow and the day after, and the day after that, will be just the same as today. It is my deepest desire that a secure source of clean water will be available for all the people in Longido and Kimokouwa by the end of the UN International Decade for Action on Water in 2015. It's a basic need and a right that I look forward to working with the people to realize and enjoy, however I can.

Longido children sitting on plastic water containers.
Their future must include having their right to clean, safe water realized.