iambeckyroar!
Water Talk 02/10/2012
 
For the past month, my village has been suffering from water shortages.  When I left for in-service training (IST) in mid-January, I had had limited access to water for two weeks.  When I returned home, two weeks later, there was still no water.  It just returned yesterday, after a whole week of being absent; well it sort of returned.  Water does not gush through the pipes like you would expect. Rather, it trickles out drop by drop and I collect it in a bucket to be used later.  But at least now I have it.

The water problem, it turns out, has many layers.  At first glance, it seems pretty simple: my village is supplied water by a borehole, which in turn is powered by a diesel generator.  When the generator runs out of gas, we run out of water.

But, as is life, there is a lot more to it.  The town pumper is responsible for maintaining and fixing the borehole; when there is nothing he can do to fix the borehole, he must notify the right authorities in the right order to come and fix it.  Should he fail to do so, then the entire community waits for him to muster his energy and report the problem.

Once the pumper does his job, the request travels through government channels to the Ministry of Water Utilities, and they send a team to come and refill the generator (or fix whatever problem exists).  The village is also called to a kgotla meeting to be informed of what is going on.

Should anyone in this chain of action fail to do their job, there are no repercussions.  In fact, given that Batswana highly value formality and protocol, no one can do anything.  If the pumper fails to notify the government, which is what I was told accounted for the most recent shortage, there is nothing anyone can do.  Protocol rules that it is inappropriate to approach the pumper and say, "Hey, why don't you fix this?"  It is inappropriate to approach the councilor (our village representative) and say, "The pumper isn't doing his job!"  It is inappropriate to approach the Water Utilities Dep't and say, "We have no water!"  We have to wait for the information to pass through the proper channels to reach the proper people.  And we wait with no water.

The only way to jump start this process is for the head of school to call a Village Extension Team (VET) meeting, discuss the problem, and then contact the councilor.

As you can imagine, when I learned all of this information, I was very upset.  I had had no water for three weeks (total), because someone had failed to do their job -- but it was inappropriate for me to do or say anything about it.  I was out of clean underwear, I hid my dirty dishes in the stove, I was constantly dehydrated and I bathed using baby wipes.  And that was just okay.

The next layer in this story is the response of the villagers themselves.  Instead of turning to the pumper, councilman or parliament representative to fix the problem, they turned to the government workers in the village to support them.  All government workers have 5000l tanks, called Jojos, in their yards that collect rainwater.  Including mine, there are at least 10 Jojos in Hatsalatladi; you can imagine my surprise when strangers started knocking on my door at odd hours to ask for a bucket of water.  My first reaction was displeasure, for a wide variety of reasons that I can elaborate upon later, but the bottom line was that 10 Jojos is not enough water for a whole village.  Some people would go to the teachers quarters, ask and drain half the tank, while others would just sneak into someones yard and take water in the middle of the night.  I couldn't help but feel angry, because rather than combatting the source of the problem, my community was content with displacing its need onto a few of its members.

I know it is wrong to blame victims, especially because there was a strong cultural value telling them to behave in such a way, but I wanted to march through the village screaming and banging on doors.  I wanted to shake people and yell, "Do something!"  Don't just roll over and play dead.

Then came the final, and in my mind, most disturbing layer to the water problem.  Water requires electricity to flow.  We use diesel generators because Hatsalatladi has not been wired for electricity (or electrified, as the Batswana say).  Thus getting electricity would solve our water problem, and in fact better enable Hatsalatladi to develop.  However, both the councilor and the member of parliament (our governmental advocates) objected to bringing electricity to Hatsalatladi.  It was economically imprudent, they claimed, because the population was too small and too poor.  No one would be able to purchase electricity (it's a pre-pay system) here, and the need was not great enough to eclipse the economic disincentives.  I should add here that neither my councilman nor my member of parliament live in Hatsalatladi.  They both live in Molepolole.

When I heard this news, I almost erupted.  How can a village develop without electricity?  We cannot refrigerate food.  We cannot work at night.  We cannot use computers, let alone learn computer skills. We have no water.

The school, the borehole and the clinic really do need electricity in order to function. Moreover, nearby villages that are just as small and impoverished, such as Medie and Mogonono, have electricity -- and all because their representatives went to bat for them.  I was livid.

I was even more livid when I heard a rumor that Mahetlwe, 20km east of Hatsalatladi, was being electrified.  They were then running the lines over Hatsalatladi to Botlhapatlou, 30km west of Hatsalatladi.  Electricity lines were going to be run over our village, just not into it.

This is injustice, I thought as I walked to my waterless home later in the day.  It dawned on me, as I trudged through sand, that my community was entirely disenfranchised.  I have to change this, I thought.  I just wasn't sure how.
 


Comments

Marion link
02/10/2012 10:47

I am enjoying your blog, See you at regionals.

Reply



Leave a Reply