| The Welcome Gush of Water | ||||||
| By Tu Xin-yi Compiled and translated by Tang Yau-yang Photos by Lin Yan-huang | ||||||
Financially strapped, the government of Zimbabwe was unable to keep up its water supply infrastructure. This directly impacted the everyday lives of the people and led to poor sanitation and subsequent outbreaks of cholera and typhoid fever. A well with a plentiful water supply not only helps quench thirst, but it also keeps people clean and fends off disease. People welcome the wonderful gush of water.
Zimbabwe endured eight and a half years of devastating hyperinflation. In March 2009, the economy took an additional toll when Finance Minister Tendai Laxton Biti announced that the government, unable to maintain the value of the Zimbabwean dollar, was abandoning its use altogether. “The death of the Zimbabwe dollar is a reality we have to live with,” he said during a March 18 budget presentation. “Since October 2008, our national currency has been moribund.” As Zimbabwe took its own dollar out of circulation, it adopted the South African rand as a reference currency. The rand and the United States dollar were among the nation’s multiple currencies in use at the time. At the end of January 2013, another financial crisis struck. After paying its employees, the government of Zimbabwe had only 217 U.S. dollars left in its national coffers. With the nation in such dire financial straits, many public services were suspended. Signs of disrepair and neglect abounded throughout the nation. Roads cracked, and roadside grass and weeds were left unmown and grew to human height. The nation could not afford to buy electricity from its neighbors, so many Zimbabwean citizens were left in the dark, some for as long as half a year. Schools had no supplies; hospitals had no medicine…. The list goes on and on. But the most serious shortage of all, one that touched the daily lives of people, was water. Tino Chu (朱金財) is a Taiwanese businessman and Tzu Chi volunteer. On May 19, 2013, at his home in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, he turned on a faucet and was delighted to see water coming out of it. “We’ve been without water for three weeks now,” Chu said. “There’s no telling how long we’ll have water this time around. I count myself fortunate, though. Some places haven’t had water service in several years.” He kept the water flowing and filled the containers that he had lined up. The expression “save for a rainy day” could be amended to form another expression more appropriate for the occasion: “Save for a dry spell.”
Poor sanitation breeds disease Chu attributed the water woes in the nation to its on-going financial woes. The running water system was built 60 years ago, during the colonial days, and long years of use and inadequate maintenance have resulted in a leaky system that caused “a drastic reduction of water levels in reservoirs,” said Chu. “Even if there is water, it needs to be purified. But where is the money to buy the chemicals to purify it?” The collapse of the water system led to a public health issue further exacerbated by the collapse of the urban sanitation and garbage collection systems. Untreated sewage escaped from broken sewage pipes, some into open drains and ditches, but there was no money to repair the pipes. Additionally, the government was unable to purchase gasoline and equipment for its sanitation departments to haul away garbage. All these hygienic problems eventually led to a cholera outbreak that hit the nation in August 2008, and eventually spread to Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zambia. As it turned out, the cholera outbreak hit the nation at a particularly inopportune time—when conditions were most ripe for it to spread fast and wide. The hyperinflation in Zimbabwe had shut down most public medical facilities because of shortages in equipment and medications, which in turn drove large numbers of unpaid doctors and nurses out of the country to find work. In addition, food shortages had kept more than half of the population in need of food assistance, according to the World Food Programme. The prolonged starvation had weakened people and their capacity to fend off disease. All this helped the cholera epidemic spread like wildfire. As of May 30, 2009, nearly 99,000 suspected cases, including 4,276 deaths, had been reported by the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare of Zimbabwe. Fifty-five out of 62 districts in all ten provinces had been affected since the onset of the epidemic less than a year before. “Once infected, a person could die very quickly,” Chu said. “One person in a case that I heard about died less than seven hours after the symptoms first appeared.” Chu said that the fastest way to stem the spread of cholera was to provide people with water purification pills. “But the government was too poor to do that,” he lamented. Furthermore, the embargo (imposed by the United States and the European Union against the regime of President Robert Mugabe) curtailed exports and imports; water purification pills were consequently in very short supply. Even people who had money were unable to get them. Chu continued: “When I learned from my sources that some pills donated by an NGO a few years back were available for purchase—a box of ten thousand pills could be had for over a hundred American dollars—I ordered five boxes without thinking.” Many cholera patients were placed in a hospital in Harare to manage them centrally and to prevent further spread of the disease. However, even that hospital did not have enough medicine, so neighboring villages were affected. One day Chu took his truck, loaded with more than 20 local friends and the 50,000 pills he had purchased, and drove towards a village near that hospital. “In the distance, we saw the hospital surrounded by a wooden fence. The fence itself was draped in white canvas. That unusual sight quickly spooked those in the truck.” Chu stopped the truck about a hundred meters (330 feet) from the fence—the closest they dared get to the hospital. Then they got off the truck and distributed the pills to local villagers. “We’d be lying if we said we weren’t scared,” Chu said with a smile. “After the distribution, we used a folk remedy to protect ourselves. We bought 60 kilograms [130 pounds] of salt and rubbed it on our bodies, socks and clothes. I even used highly salty water to wash the truck, knowing full well how bad that would be for it. But I didn’t know any better way to defend ourselves against the germs. I only thought that salt could make it harder for the germs to live.”
Dirty water still Often during the dry season, which runs from April to November, not a drop of precipitation falls. Though the scorching sun evaporates what little moisture there is on the surface of the ground, underground water remains quite plentiful. Such water is also free of industrial pollution. Why does the nation not tap that source of water? Chu replied, “Where’s the money?”
Finding underground water and drilling wells is not difficult. The challenge lies in building wells that can give clean water steadily over a long period of time. William Duncan, a resident in Epworth, southeastern Harare, dug a well beside his house. “We dig our wells by hand,” he pointed out. “After we reach water, we can continue to dig no deeper than two meters [6.5 feet], because the gushing water forces us to stop. We don’t have pumps [to keep the digging area dry enough for workers].” The wells that local people dig this way are not very useful. Duncan explained that they do not have money to buy bricks and cement to build walls for the wells. Without a wall to help filter out mud and other foreign objects, the quality of the water in a well is poor. This water should be boiled before drinking, but that takes too much firewood. There is no money for water purification tablets either. Duncan added that they usually just let the cloudy water they get out of a well sit a few hours to settle. Then they scoop the cleaner water off the top, run that water through a white cloth to filter it a bit more, and then drink it directly. Although this method does not produce good drinking water, the situation can actually get worse. The wells, being so shallow, dry out in the dry season, and people are forced to seek out water in ditches. In these cases, the quality of drinking water goes from bad to worse. The unsafe water purification practices were like a standing invitation for another epidemic. It was only a matter of time before one broke out. And it did, in October 2011, when the first cases of typhoid fever were reported. An international team was invited to help the government investigate the situation. The team, working with government officials, tested water samples from seven shallow wells, six public boreholes, and three municipal taps in Dzivaresekwa, a high-density suburb of Harare. Samples from all seven shallow wells and two of the six boreholes yielded E. coli, an indicator of fecal contamination. All of the municipal taps tested negative for E. coli. By May 2, 2012, 4,185 suspected cases of typhoid fever had been identified in Harare. Upon learning of the outbreak, Chu began applying for permission from concerned authorities to distribute water treatment drops in afflicted areas. But a few days later, he learned from his daughter-in-law that his own oldest son had contracted the disease, too. Chu explained that his son did not drink dirty water like folks in the countryside did. The fact that even he got infected showed how bad the situation was. Chu rushed his son to a hospital emergency room, but it still took doctors three weeks to cure him. During that time Chu frequently went to the hospital to visit his son, and he was also busy buying water treatment drops. When he had finally amassed the quantity he wanted, he couldn’t wait to call the black volunteers he knew—even though it was four o’clock in the morning. Time was of the utmost essence. “I was really anxious to get moving on the distribution,” Chu recalled. “If I didn’t hurry up, the delay might allow some country folks to get infected. If they fell victim to the disease, they wouldn’t be as lucky as my son, because they wouldn’t have the money to receive treatment.” The black volunteers shared his sense of urgency. His early morning calls mobilized 180 volunteers. They assembled at six, and Chu divided them into six teams. They knocked on one door after another in Epworth, giving out water treatment drops. They worked nonstop, without even stopping for meals, until five in the evening. The next morning, they met again to repeat the process, which only came to an end after three weeks of work. In all, Chu and his cohort gave out 35,000 bottles of water treatment drops, one for each family. Assuming four persons to a family, their effort touched the lives of 140,000 persons.
A better way to help Water shortages contributed to the cholera epidemic in 2008 and the typhoid fever outbreak in 2012. Chu tried water purification pills and drops, but he knew that neither could last very long for those who had them. People would become vulnerable as soon as the pills or drops ran out, and the water shortage problem would still persist. Nobody can live without water. “I had helped needy people in Epworth for a long time,” Chu recalled. “Even the water treatment drops were distributed there. So I thought about drilling and giving them a well, one that would be well-equipped and provide clean water.” Chu knew that no company in the nation manufactured well-drilling equipment, so he would be dealing with imports and the few professionals in the nation who had imported such equipment. The service of one such professional contractor to drill a 40-meter (130-foot) well would cost US$5,000–6,000 for labor and the use of the equipment. But that wouldn’t be the only cost—the well owner himself would need to provide 600 liters (160 gallons) of engine fuel to run the equipment. In the face of a life and death situation, the cost, even such a high cost, was a minor consideration. Chu decided to build a good well for the residents of Epworth, one that would give abundant water, one that would keep giving water even in the dry season. But where should such a well be situated? “We used an old-fashioned way to find the ideal spot for it,” Chu explained. “Put a one-liter [one-quart] glass bottle on the palm of your hand. Fill it with clean water. Walk slowly and observe the water in the bottle. If there’s water underground, the water in the bottle will shake. The more the water stirs, the more water lies underground.” He went on: “When you’ve found the spot, walk crosswise and repeat the process. Find the meeting point, and that will be where the underground water is the most abundant.” It took them two days to locate such a spot. Then it was time to talk to the landowner. “The owner was of course delighted, and he quickly agreed to give us the use of the land,” Chu said. “But I needed it in writing.” He got three trusted elders in the community to witness the occasion where the owner promised to allow all people, whether he liked or loathed them, to fetch water from the well. When everything was in order, the drilling began. That was in September 2012. The news greatly cheered up the residents of Epworth, and crowds flocked to the site to help. “We hit water after digging five meters [16.5 feet], so we started running the water pump nonstop. That enabled us to continue to dig deeper without causing the well to collapse,” Chu said. Local residents, 40 to a team, worked nonstop in turns, day and night. They pumped water, and they dug and dug. They also laid bricks and mortar and built an inside wall for the well. The project lasted eight days. Finally, the well was deep enough. “When the well was completed, I wouldn’t let them fetch water at first because the water coming out of the well was still dirty,” Chu explained. “We continued to pump until the water changed from gray to clear, which showed it was safe to use.” But the crowd could not wait. Anxious and excited villagers got their buckets and lined up at the wellhead. There was quite a stir when they were finally allowed to fetch water. “To prevent people from getting back in line after they had already fetched water once, the crowd agreed to a rule that when someone had gotten water, they had to stay on the scene,” Chu recalled. “Nobody was to leave the site, and only after everybody had gotten water could anyone leave for home.” He knew all too well why they did so. “Their fear stemmed from having been burned so badly for so long before,” he rationalized for them. “But now they’re no longer afraid of not being able to get water. This well, 1.5 meters [4.92 feet] across, has never let them down—no matter how many people come to fetch water.”
Building a well in Zimbabwe is a sizable undertaking. It is something that requires the cooperation of lots of people, including landowners and community volunteer helpers. Despite the effort needed, Chu realized how precious water was. Thus, as he drove from place to place helping the needy, he continued to look out for communities that needed wells. He has since had several wells built.
He himself has a well at home. He pumps water from the well—about a thousand liters (264 gallons) each time—and he drives his truck around and distributes it to people who need it. He said that the well at his home has helped a lot of people. Only four days after the resumption of municipal water service on May 19 in Chu’s neighborhood, the water was turned off again. His neighbors lined up outside his home late that afternoon, each with as many empty buckets or containers as they could manage. At exactly five o’clock, a gardener pulled open the heavy iron gate and walked out with a hose in hand. He filled each waiting container and bucket with clean water. The municipal water service was unavailable for several days, so this service at Chu’s house continued for each of those days. About a hundred people a day came for water. “I give people as much water as they wish. Two hundred liters [53 gallons], if they like—as long as they can carry it home,” Chu remarked. “What’s miraculous is that my well has never run dry.” Just stop taking in any liquid for a few hours and you’ll get a better appreciation of how beneficial it is to give people water to drink. It is truly saving lives. However, Chu is humble about his benevolent deeds, and he is quick to give credit where credit is due. “This well at my home was here when I moved in. I’ve always thought that it’s a well from the bodhisattvas. Giving water to people is what the bodhisattvas want to do.” |
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