“We are dying of Cholera”: residents of Clara town cry for help

Clara town located on Bushrod Island, a suburb of Monrovia, Liberia became famous for being the birthplace of Liberian football star George Oppong Weah.

Clara town, founded by a Methodist missionary 40 years ago, is attracting global attention in recent years, as its inhabitants are burdened by the effects of poor, inadequate and over stretched sanitation facilities, unsafe drinking water supply, decrepit drainages, and poor hygiene practices.

The Clara community has a population of 48,000 with 67 fully built up houses (and another 967 unfinished houses) inhabited by 12,335 women and 11,730 men, people, according to a community census exercise. Its residents face huge challenges in accessing improved water supply, safe sanitation and hygiene services.

Access to water, sanitation, and hygiene services is generally poor in Liberia including its capital city Monrovia. Facilities have generally old and deteriorated no thanks to a 14 year old civil war.

Statistics are also unreliable, but a 2009 story by Allwestafrica.com reports that “just one-third of Monrovia’s 1.5 million have access to clean toilets, and 20 to 30 cholera cases are reported weekly; in 2008 there were 888 suspected cases, 98 percent of them in Monrovia’s overcrowded shantytowns such as West Point, Buzzi Quarter, Clara Town, and Sawmill”

Open defecation

Raymond is a 45 year old male resident in Clara town, who admits to practicing open defecation because basic sanitation facilities are inadequate, unaffordable, and over stretched. He narrates his experience,

“When you go to the toilet, you stay in line, sometimes 100 people can be outside, and sometimes 50 people can be on the queue waiting to use the toilet. You may pou-pou (defecate) on yourself if you have running stomach”

Veronica: I ‘toilet’ in the open

Another resident, Veronica a 9^th grade female student of Saint Mary’s Catholic School in Clara Town, says some of her colleagues often contact water borne diseases due to the poor WASH services. “One of my friends had got cholera after drinking “. As a way out the school pupils resort to buying packaged water in plastic bags: “In the school, we buy us spent $5 Liberian dollars to buy Mineral water”

Though there is a toilet in her school, there are no soap and hand towels for her to ensure personal hygiene after using the toilet facilities. If lack of hand washing items is only her headache in the school, it would have been better. 15 year old Veronica faces challenges in maintaining personal menstrual hygiene due to lack of safe water and sanitation facilities in the school, saying some of her colleagues including at times excuse themselves from class work in order to cater for their mistral needs: “If the menses of any of the female students start in school, then you will tell the Teacher, and you will come home. We often miss classes and lessons because of this.”

Read the whole article here:

By Babatope Babalobi, in Monrovia.

Water Privatization

Every day, millions of women and young girls are vested with the responsibility of collecting water for their families. With a growing list of governments choosing to vest responsibility for providing a life-sustaining service, such as water, in the hands of large companies, how do citizens, especially women, ensure that they receive access to affordable, high-quality and reliable water services?

Like many countries in Latin America, Uruguay courted private sector participation in its water and sanitation sectors in order to improve efficiency and service quality.

Notes from Story telling session during the Opening of the water house. 30.9.09

I got interested in stories because stories explain logical reflection from people’s actions that seemed illogical to me as un outsider and explain what their underlying reasons are.

 Women in a village in Morogoro, Tanzania, used two wells. They maintained one well and not the other Why? Because the maintained one was a drinking wells and the “not maintained” well was a well for clothes washing and bathing.

Our Successful Partnerships, Success Story and Successful Projects

Three years ago, Life and Water Development Group Cameroon and its US partners, Hope College chapter of Engineers Without Borders USA started a water project in the community of Nkuv, Cameroon. A locality out of Kumbo in the North West Region of Cameroon.

Laying the pipe into the pipeline

The project history started as follows: Mr. Peter Njodzeka, the founder of LWDG-Cameroon submitted a project application to the EWB USA and Hope College Chapter was awarded the project, and from that moment the EWB USA linked their chapter Hope College with Peter Njodzeka to discuss the possibilities and understanding the project. Hope College traveled to Nkuv, Cameroon for their first time in March 2006 for an assessment trip, and returned in May 2006 for a tentative implementation. We tried drilling wells using hand drilling equipment, which was a fiasco, we could not find water and could only find rocks and dry sand. This first trial, which was a failure, Hope College did not surrender, they returned in December the same year and constructed three biosand filters trial, which some people in the community were using to filter their water directly carried from streams, and after six months, the health survey team from Hope College had a good results from the families using filtered water, and we increased the number to 15 filters, during this time, we were trying other ways out searching for water sources in the mountains, we finally found a spring, but after testing, the results were not good for consumption because of cows that are all year round in these hills.

We, the Women of Jayyous

Take a tractor ride through the Jayyous countryside behind the Wall, where more than 70% of the village’s land and all six of its groundwater wells have been confiscated. See the illegal Israeli dump with industrial waste from the settlements located just above Azzoun’s Well, from where the Jayyous residents now get their water. Learn about the sewage crisis affecting 90% of Palestinians in the West Bank. And meet the women of Jayyous, who together with LifeSource, are beginning to do something about all of this. Click to see a video story from the Arab water Channel:

Murumba Primary School Kisumu, Kenya

The school lacks safe water for drinking and for sanitation use since the only other available source, which is not safe, is located more than 400 metres away. The use of this water source is controlled by the community who do not see the use by the school as a priority.

School children now have no safe access to water and this causes poor sanitation which is made worse to the girls and there is no safe drinking water.

Learning and Demonstration Project for Safe Disposal and Use of Excreta

The Indigenous Paéz Community Munchique – Los Tigres, Municipality of Santander Quilichao, Cauca Department, Colombia, South America Project title .

The Indigenous Government of Munchique-Los Tigres and the Municipal Government of Santander Quilichao, CONSAM, Alter-Eco Description of project Los Tigres – Munchique is an indigenous community with 4.000 inhabitants distributed in 17 villages in a mountainous rural area, two hours from the town of Santander.

The Secret of Cleanliness

Juliette Kanini from Mathabithi settlement, Isiolo District, attended training on sanitation and hygiene together with her husband. “Actually the training was meant for the women, but the men got curious and they wondered what we were being taught so they joined as well.” “Since we have settled into this place, life has become easier. Water is sold for 2 Ksh per 20 litres at the water kiosk is nearby, only 1. 5 km away,” she says. During the training she learnt about keeping the house and the surroundings clean. Juliette keeps her goats away from her house using a fence of thorny bushes and her puppy dogs are kept in a separate place underground during the day. This way animal waste will not contaminate the compound the family compound. A dish rack is used to prevent dirt getting on clean plates and utensils, and they wash their hands. Her husband even dug a hole for the latrine, there is a floor made of sandbags and logs, and an iron sheet for a roof. Although the wall is not yet finished – you can see right through the branches from which it is made – the latrine is used.” This  all pays off,” she says. “I don’t have to pay for medicine anymore because my children are much healthier now. I could even buy some chickens. I call it the Secret of Cleanliness.” While she is telling this story, her husband fetches the water.

 

This field story by IRC is based on field visits undertaken for UNICEF Kenya to study and analyze the hygiene and sanitation knowledge, attitudes and practices in three targeted districts, namely:  Isiolo in Eastern Province, Garissa in North Eastern Province and Tana River in the Coastal Province.