Life is looking up in Nafadji

WaterAid and its partner organization have been working with communities in Nefadji, an area in the capital city Bamako, to set up safe water supplies.

Having a ready supply of clean and safe water has greatly benefited the community, especially the women and children who are mainly responsible for collecting water.

Awa, 51, lives in Nafadji, a community where people faced great misery due to an unreliable water supply.  There were wells in the village, but they often dried up in the hot season.

This left the women and children with the choice between buying water from vendors at exorbitant prices or queuing for hours on end at the nearest alternative water source, which was a 1.5 kilometer walk away.

The whole process of getting access to safe water and toilets has made us feel like a team. We have advanced very much.

Awa explains, “If we collected the water ourselves we had to queue for a very long time – usually around one hour for a 20 liter bucket of water. Going back and forth collecting water would take all day. Sometimes we would go at night when the queues were less long.”

The scarcity of water was made worse by the fact that the water sources were unprotected, which left them open to contamination.  Poor sanitation added to the problem - pools of dirty water would stagnate in the street and the makeshift latrines would overflow, adding sewage to the stagnant pools.

The inevitable result was the spread of diseases in the community, and usually it was the most vulnerable members that fell ill the most.

“If a child fell ill it was normal because that is how we lived.  It was not unusual for children to die.  There was so much illness and everything was on the shoulders of women.  There was so much stress which can lead to conflict”, Awa notes.

Life took a turn for the better when the community began working with WaterAid’s local partner organization Jigi to set up a reliable water supply in the village, and also clean up the village by building proper latrines and drainage and learn safe hygiene behavior.

Awa describes the impact the new waterpoint has had on their lives:

“Now we are free.  Before we spent all day fetching water. Children used to get water and they didn't have time for learning.  Now they are at school.

“They love going to school.  We have time to do the housework, cleaning and also small business.  Nafadji women can go out first thing in the morning to go to market and sell things.  Some women sell vegetables: eggplants, cabbages and tomatoes and some make soap to sell.  If women work, everything works.

“I am training as a health worker. And some of my neighbors are training to take on other development roles.  It is due to the development of the village there is lots of training and the whole village is so much more dynamic.  We want to act.  And the whole process of getting access to safe water and toilets has made us feel like more of a team.  We have advanced very much.”