Water - The Source of Life - Simbabwe 1983

Water is a basic human requirement. At best, the lack of a good clean water supply is a time-consuming nuisance. Hours are spent daily transporting water from the source to the home where it is needed. We all need water for the same reasons and functions. To drink, to wash, to prepare food, and to grow that same food. When it is in extremely short supply, vegetation, both natural and cultivated, withers and disappears, affecting first the livestock and then the people. Nutrition suffers. Feeding the family ceases to be a mere chore as it veers towards the impossible. Children are denied the right to grow healthy and strong. The infirm become weaker. Hunger is an accepted part of normal life. Without water, we die. In many parts of Zimbabwe, water, or the lack of it, has always been a problem. The rainfall, which is seasonal, is often sporadic and can fail altogether. Rivers dry up and within weeks the local communities are struggling to live a life without water. Of course, there is water somewhere under the ground, but where are the means for the people of ensuring an adequate and clean supply? The rivers do flow most years for some weeks, but the skill and wherewithal to dam them is lacking. Zimbabwe is a country where the needs of the majority, those living in the rural areas, were for decades ignored. The communities were contained in those lands which were least fertile, least arable, and left to scratch out what living they could from the parched earth. Times have changed, but the independent state is young and miracles cannot occur overnight. In this, the southwest and one of the drier areas of Zimbabwe, the initiative to improve what was for some an almost nonexistent water supply came from that section of the people which the world over is burdened with the feeding of hungry mouths, the women. The Vashandiri, the women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Zimbabwe, led by Mrs. Shirley, the wife of the bishop, were determined that an answer be found to the constant anxiety caused by lack of water in the rural areas. Without water, a woman suffers more than anybody else. What do we need now is not only water in the country, but close to the homes where women can get water close. Some women in the rural areas, they can walk for 4 hours going to fetch some water, 4 hours coming back. The Vashandiri women in our church thought of this and then in 1980, we made an appeal to the church and the church asked the Lutheran World Federation to help us. >> [music and singing] [music] [singing] [music and singing] [music] >> There should be an effort to bring water to the people, not just those of the Lutheran Church, but to all people in need. Through the representations of the Vashandiri, the Lutheran World Federation's help was sought and the water program was born. Now in its third year, the Lutheran World Federation runs with a dual purpose. Water must be brought to those that need it, but at the same time, those same people must be given the means to fulfill the task themselves. With the initial advice of the program's water engineers, the project is staffed by people from the community. People who have lived in the area with all its problems all their lives. The engineers will move on to other areas of need, but they will leave their knowledge and experience where it is most needed, among the people. 1983 in Zimbabwe, as in many other southern African countries, is the year of the drought. Thanks to the Lutheran water program, it will also be remembered as the year of the wells. If water can be reached this year, it is unlikely that these wells will dry up in other years of more normal rainfall. The project is at present operating in the south and west of the country, Mberengwa, Gwanda, Beitbridge, Chishawasha, and Mwenezi, where communities without adequate water are located by the program supervisors and organizers and work can begin. The site of the well must be in short and easy reach of those that need it. It is frequently traditional dancing methods which decide on the exact spot. As the data is very often the well sinker himself, he is anxious to make doubly sure that the chosen site will provide sufficient water as easily as possible. Communities very often dig the first few meters of comparatively soft ground themselves, recognizing that with the support of this project, the solution to the problem is theirs. The well sinking teams trained within this program move in to complete the task once it becomes beyond the capabilities of the people and mere hard work. Each team is led by an experienced well sinker. He is responsible for the progress of the well and is paid for the depth that has been dug on a scale according to the hardness of the rock. A well is considered to have been dug deep enough when at least 50 mining buckets of water are being lifted per day, enough to serve the needs of 10 families. The well sinker pays his laborers from his fee and in turn receives an added bonus for any laborer he trains to a sufficiently high standard to become a qualified sinker and leader himself. >> [clears throat] >> No man is considered until he has completed an explosives course and obtained a blaster's license. Once he has attained this, he can hire his own team and work within the Lutheran program. There are at present 120 well sinking teams trained by and working in the program and when the LWF completes the project, these men will have the practical experience to go on working, sinking new wells, and renovating and repairing old ones. They are acquiring a skill and a practice which is not only invaluable to the people of the country, but which will ensure their continued employment. The people's participation does not stop after the first few meters have been dug. The well sinker and his team are fed and housed by the people for whose benefit they are working for the length of time they are in the area. Food is often scarce, the community is poor, but the sinking team can be sure of being well looked after. It is considered a small price to pay for the privilege of having water on the doorstep as opposed to one, two, or even 4 hours walk away. The Lutheran water program aims to see to it that no one has to walk further than 1 km for their daily water. The fitting of the pump is the next stage, another skill being learned for the long-term benefit of the people. Whether it is this deep well pump or the various shallow pumps being tested and improved upon by the water engineers, this is the man on the spot who will be able to repair and maintain the pump over the years. Now completed, the well is opened with joy and celebration, and Mrs. Sherer is there to share it. I'm going to discuss first about how difficult this project has been. It took us and the I can do it group, the community, and the department 3 years before we got the solution about this problem. So, they asked the money from the Lutheran World Federation, and then here we are. >> [crying] >> A dream became true. And again, it was the women of the community who were instrumental in the further development of the water program. The growing of vegetables is traditionally women's work. In rural areas, where people who live on what they can grow, vegetables are an invaluable source of minerals and vitamins in an otherwise staple diet of maize meal and only occasional meat. Each family traditionally has its own small plot as near to the water source as possible. Fenced individually to keep out the cattle, and watered by bucket, by hand. The departure from this individual way of cultivation to one based on a collective ideal is not easy for all [clears throat] people to accept, especially the men. When life is so precarious, wealth, however meager, in the form of livestock and land is of vital importance. The women, however, have been quick to recognize that an irrigated collective garden is cheaper to fence and less demanding in terms of individual labor. It provides vegetables for the family and can be a source of additional income if there is a surplus. All aspects of the water project, wells, dams, and gardens, have committees through which decisions are made. And although they are generally led by men, the voices of the women are heard loud and clear. This community at Stanmore in Gwanda North has used this clay pool for livestock and cultivation for years. This year, the year of the drought, the level of the pool has dropped drastically. The people sought the advice of the Lutheran World Program, and working on a dollar-for-dollar basis, where for each dollar raised by the community, the LWF will match it with a similar sum, a trench has been dug and a wall is being constructed to help combat seepage from the pool. When it was suggested that an irrigated garden could be made with a pump from the pool, it had only the simplest of demonstrations for the women to realize the value of such a scheme and to complete the garden and the irrigation canals themselves. Within 2 months of the suggestion being made, the pump is installed, the canals built, the water is flowing, and the first vegetable crop is on its way. Traditions may die hard, but in this, another collective garden scheme running off the Pungwe Dam in Gwanda South, the men too are coming round to the idea that it can indeed be a sound commercial venture. While others continue with their familiar individual plots, this group is a fine example of the economic sense it makes to grow collectively. The men and women are working together. The garden promises a good yield, and the profits will serve to expand the scheme further. Word spreads fast in Africa, especially when it concerns new methods and ways of improving standards of living. This is another garden, also in the Gwanda district, with the pump and materials for the irrigation scheme bought on the dollar-for-dollar basis. The existence of the Silonga Dam means that the garden will flourish and the cattle survive even in years such as this. There are many rivers in the area, but few dams, so that most of the scenery tells little more than the story of where water once flowed. Building dams is too often considered to be a job solely for the experts. For there is much of the process which can be undertaken by the sheer hard work of the people. It is hard labor. With tools, shovels, and wheelbarrows provided by the Lutheran World Program, the people here at the Silonga cleared the riverbed of sand, and carried rocks and clay, and built the masonry core of the dam wall. On a small dam such as this, the entire project can be completed with volunteer labor, coupled with the determination of the people's water committee here working together to complete before the next rainy season. Other large and more ambitious projects, such as this dam at Samende River, need mechanized help, too. The Lutheran World Program has the full support of the Zimbabwean government, and in many areas they are cooperating with each other to complete projects. The dam scoops, tractors, and operators here are provided by the District Development Fund. The success that the Lutherans have had in encouraging local participation has prompted the Zimbabwean government to ask the LWF to implement on its behalf a similar scheme in Masvingo province. At another dam site in the remote southwest of Gwanda province, the manual labor required for building it was far greater than the initial response that the organizers got from the people. But this is the year of the drought, and drought means hunger. And so, it was decided to introduce food for work. At first, stones in large quantity were needed to construct the masonry core, and people were accredited for each barrow load of stones they fetched to the site, for bags of maize meal. The response was so great that there weren't enough bags to go around, and the work proceeded at a rate that exceeded all hopes. Those without barrows carried by the only other available method, on their heads. >> Number five. 32 74 five 22 37 56 The determination of these people is enormous. 220 barrel loads of the clay soil now required for filling in the dam wall and 150 kg bag of meal. And one needs to transport seven loads an hour but eight hours a day to earn this in a week. However, this inducement has proved sufficient for the completion of the dam to be a certainty before the next rains hopefully fall. The dam will be completed with the help of the Zimbabwe government's District Development Fund giving all those working on it and more besides a more secure and healthy life. Whatever our lifestyles, whatever we live, our basic needs are the same. Irrespective of culture, color, and class, man shares one universal aim, to work to improve life for himself, his children, and his children's children. The basic necessities are the means to provide shelter and food for the family. Some have the benefit of a well-developed infrastructure which provides these as a matter of course. Others are still struggling on the road to attain this. It would take only the tiniest fraction of the wealth of the developed world to make that struggle bear fruit. To give to every man, woman, and child the only right which can be claimed by all, the right to live.