By Louise and the Dream Team | Director
Avuxeni, minjane? Umfikile, minjane! (Hello, how are you? I am well!)
Greetings from cloudy, overcast, cool Tzaneen! It is November and we should have seen the start of the tropical rains but as yet, we have not really seen anything more than light sprinkles instead of the torrential rains. The dams are getting lower, the municipalities in the local areas are unable to provide water to the towns on a regular basis, with most towns in the area actually having their water switched off from 0900 till later in the evenings if it returns.
That applies to a large number of the cities in this country, as infrastructure decays due to lack of maintenance over the last 20+years. Water restrictions have become common place, in the small town where I live, water on a daily basis is unavailable except for a few hours, the villages have a worse problem as reliance upon water tankers provided by municipality or entrepreneurs capitalising on the corrode infrastructure profit from a commodity guaranteed under Human Rights.
Water and sanitation are Sustainable Development Goals identified by the South African Government to action urgently.
Imagine, you have a family of 5, 2 adults and 3 children. You will probably have a drop toilet, which means you won’t need water for flushing however with 3 children, you will need to do hand washing daily. School uniforms on a daily basis, plus play clothes as most children may only have one uniform or perhaps two if very fortunate. Imagine trying to wash blankets, sheets, bed linen, by hand and you have minimal water access. What if you have a sick member of the family who has fever and sweats repeatedly overnight, you may need to do bed linen on a daily basis.
Cooking, cleaning floors, washing dishes etc., plus drinking! The average water consumption per day is 230-800Litres per household. Now consider, you have to walk 4kms every day with 5 x 20Litre water containers to go and collect water from the closest tap in the village which is turned on daily or even twice a week plus take your turn in the que to receive this precious commodity.
Although South Africa is viewed as a first world nation, it has third world conditions. Many school children spend their precious study time waiting in ques for water, as do mothers to whom this chore invariably falls to.
Through your support, our SHG groups are consistently demanding the infrastructure to be fixed. At least now in three communities, boreholes have been repaired and water restored. You are making such a huge difference to the day to day lives of the people we serve. Thank you for believing in the work we do!
God bless you
Louise
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