Supporters' Trip 2006 - Burkina Faso, Africa

Since becoming our Head of Customer Services in 2005, Marie White has been a passionate supporter of WaterAid, so jumped at the chance to visit Burkina Faso and experience first hand the conditions people live in and how WaterAid is helping to transform their lives.

Burkina Faso is a small, landlocked, densely populated country in West Africa and one of the poorest in the world.

In the areas of the country that haven’t been helped by WaterAid or other organisations, whole villages have no access to fresh water or sanitation. The villages often know the water is making them and their children ill but without it they will die.  

 

Marie saw families living in such conditions:
"The women of the village had to spend twelve hours a day walking to a stagnant river bed with a pool of dirty water at the bottom. They would carry 20 litres at a time and make six trips a day carrying their babies on their backs.

The water they were collecting was full of dead insects and had been contaminated by animals. As a mother I couldn’t imagine giving it to my child to drink, but these mothers had no choice."

Sanitation conditions are also poor in many areas and without latrines the land gets contaminated and waste seeps back into the water table making the water even more unfit to drink. In turn this causes diarrhoea, and stomach and skin problems – one in five children dies before they are five years old.

Help is slowly coming to the region and WaterAid, along with other aid organisations, has already transformed the lives of thousands of people.

WaterAid's approach includes hygiene education, building and rehabilitating bore holes and Marie saw the results of the work first hand.

"WaterAid shows the villages how to build latrines in pairs, they use one and once it is full they cover it in ash and use the adjacent one. After a time the waste in the full latrine breaks down with the ash and can then be emptied and used to fertilise the land."

WaterAid also helps the villages obtain access to clean water by rehabilitating wells, digging boreholes and showing the villages how to build and maintain simple pumps to access the water. The work is done with the villages so they are able to sustain the simple infrastructure.

In one small village Marie and her colleagues from WaterAid helped the villagers install a rope pump which the villages named ‘George’ in honour of the oldest member of the WaterAid team.

Education is also vital and the children of the villages often have a key role:

"The children are taught ‘child to child’ about hygiene and sanitation, spreading the message to their friends and family. In one village the children acted out a play where a child was sick and the Doctor and Pharmacist came to visit them - instructing the patient how to build a latrine, wash their hands and use soap – something we are all taught as children."

The results of providing clean water and sanitation are nothing short of miraculous. Because villagers are healthy and not having to spend time travelling great distances to collect dirty water or tend ill children, they have time to take advantage of the other scheme offered by WaterAid such as soap production, enabling them to make money as well as encouraging good hygiene – the benefits snowball and multiply.

The experience has left Marie more determined than ever to do what she can to support WaterAid and to spread the message about how little it takes to make a big difference to the lives of the poorest in the world:

“Just £15 is enough money to provide one person with sustainable safe water and sanitation – just £15 could save somebody’s life.”

 

 

 

 

 

On average, people in developing nations use 10 litres of water a day. We use that amount just to flush the toilet.