Early this month, I had a pleasant visit to the boreholes in the surrounding districts of Lira which include Kole, Alebtong, Dokolo and Otuke in which co2balance rehabilitated 41 boreoholes in 2013 and since then has been doing annual maintenance and reactive repairs.
It was great to see how the communities have embraced these projects and have become engaged in sanitation activities by following the WASH guidelines. They have ensured that the boreholes are properly fenced, kept animals away from the water source, not constructed any sanitary facilities near the boreholes, dug soak pits and avoided pooling near the borehole. They also hold meetings regularly to address the concerns about the borehole like collection of ‘borehole user fee’, which is a government policy required to enable them do minor repairs to the borehole like greasing, replacing nuts and bolts among others.
This they do with a passion and this has gone a long way to make them embrace and own the projects.
Listening to their stories on how the boreholes has changed their lives was really inspiring.
Mama Franco – Caretaker of Kulu Franco boreholeWhen my son died, this borehole was named after him but when it broke down, I felt like my son’s memory also went silent. In 2013, we received information that there was a group interested in fixing it and the news warmed my heart. This borehole has been of so much help to me and my family plus other households. We no longer travel long distances to fetch water and this has given me and the other women some spare time to develop income generating projects as a group. We have also had less cases of waterborne diseases like typhoid, diarrhea etc, which was common when we fetched water from the open stream located 2km from my homestead.Thank you co2balance ……….Mama Franco.
