Communities name water tap ‘Women’s Freedom’
Tap relieves them from pumping and waiting for water
When UNICEF constructed a mini water system in for Mungula Health Center IV, in Mungula refugee settlement, the benefitting communities were relieved from the daily pumping from an old borehole for water, especially the women and children who usually bear the responsibility for collecting water.
With funding from the Government of Japan, UNICEF upgraded the community borehole into a solar-powered motorized mini water system that provides clean and safe water to refugees and host communities alike that stay near the health center.
Today, the communities have a reliable supply of clean and safe water. There are no queues and no pumping. Mothers and children are seen strolling to the tap stand – which has four faucets (outlets) – with water containers. All they do is gently pull the tap upwards and the water flows. What a relief! School children passing by wash their hands and quench their thirst.
Tebisa Arac, a South Sudanese refugee mother, shares the story of the tap stand, which the community now calls ‘Women’s Freedom’.
“The borehole was hard to operate,” she says as she demonstrates by moving her hands up and down. “But now these taps are easy to use. I just pull and the water comes out.”
“We used to go to the borehole and line up for water. But now, within a few minutes I can collect three or four jerrycans of water.”
“Some elderly women would find it difficult to pump water because it was very hard.”
Children too have been relieved of the burden of spending long periods of time collecting water. “These days we get water quickly when we come back from school. It used not to be the case with the borehole. School breaktime is short. We can now rush home and quickly collect water and then go back to school,” says 17-year-old Awut Deng Awan.
“We used to spend many hours at the borehole waiting for water. We could not even get time to work in our gardens or go to sell our things in the market.”
“Hygiene in our homes is much better now. Everything is clean. Our clothes, our utensils and our houses are clean.”
"The water is always available and it is pumped from the nearby health facility - Mungula Health Centre IV."
"This tap made our life easy. The women are free now. That is why we call this tap water tap ‘Women’s Freedom’.”
