Thursday 30 September 2010

Water water everywhere but....

After some of the rain we had in Englnd recently it got me thinking about water in Uganda. You would think that with the second largest freshwater lake in the world there would be no shortage. But live up country things can be very different.
Uganda used to have fairly predictable dry and wet seasons but like much of the world this really seems to be changing and not for the better.
Our St Zoe's schools used to rely on a large and rather forbidding pond for all the water needs of perhaps 300 on the site during term time.


We brought a hydrologist from Kampala to carry out sonar exploration to see if it would we worth sinking a bore hole.
The answer was disappointing.
So with the help of Bob Bishop's family and other donors we funded a water harvesting system with capacity of 250,000 litres. This was enough to cover all the needs for the dry season.


But not any longer. Last year we had to use our truck to travel 12 kilometres to Mubende and purchase water from stand pumps.
So this year we are just starting a major enhancement costing £14000 and this will collect water and filter and store it.
I am writing this in Cairo, 6000 kilometres from the source of the Nile in Jinja, Uganda. This extraordinary river brings life to much of Uganda and all of Egypt and the 22 million people who live in Cairo.
It is no surprise that nations go to war over water.



We will say some more about water in later messages

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