Tiru Araya - on life before and after safe water

Posted by Sadie -

Tiru Araya is 38 and has 5 children. She lives 15 minutes away, and has lived here all her life. She used to walk two hours to collect water from the river, but now has a water point 100 metres from her house.

Before the construction was completed “I was using the water from the main river. At that time we were using the same water as our cattle. Their dung was in the water. The children were sick and everytime we had to go to the clinic. This made us feel sad that our children were getting ill and also we had to spend a lot of money at the clinic.”

“We would carry the jerry cans from the river and we would have to climb the steep slopes. It took one hour each way. There was a lot of water in the river, but fetching it was difficult. We went twice a day but we had to limit ourselves in using the water because it was so hard to collect. Sometimes I would leave my children with my neighbours and other times would carry babies on my back. It was hard.”

Bu since the gravity flow scheme has brought clean water to the village, the situation has improved. “At this time we are using clean water and we are even washing our clothes. There are improvements - there are not even diseases.”

We asked Tiru about fetching the water and if it was easier now it was so much nearer. She said: “now we go many times! Even more than three times, sometimes five, I also have a small garden and I collect water to irrigate. Now fetching water is the simplest work. Even now when we are cooking, we can put the pans on the fire and then go out to collect water. We have more time.

Before, our priority was to use water for cooking, drinking and washing our hands so we could not wash our clothes or bodies. For this we would have to go to the river. After the construction we have tried to be clean, everything is clean, before we had to economise with the water that we had.”