The following is a report received from the field this week. Our South Sudanese team uploads two of these per day now.
Bor Dinka Congregation is located within Yei town, South Sudan.
Classroom
This project of Water is Basic is aimed to relieve the water crisis that the Bor Dinka congregation is facing. There was an existing borehole that was drilled by Water is Basic that has not been working for six (6) months. The community around the Dinka congregation are mostly the displaced people from Bor and even from other states affected by the war.
The Water is Basic team took one full day and found out that the problem was with the cylinder and the GI pipes which have some fault in them. So the process includes removing the borehole head, and removing each pipe. There were a total of 8 pipes reaching 24 meters into the ground. Each one was removed and examined, the faulty pipes were replaced by new piping and the addition of pipes extending the depth to 33 meters.
The borehole is under a well managing committee that consists of the community members and members of the church that formed the committee. The committee has also introduced the collection of fees of (5ssp). This money is collected monthly from the family households that use the borehole but not with force, because most of the community members are refugees from Bor and have no money for paying.
The primary result of the project improved access to clean water and improved health. The borehole now gives access to clean, safe drinking water for over 2000 people who attend the church every Sunday. The construction of the church will now resume due to the presence of water near the church; over 1000 people in the nearby community benefit from the borehole and have shorter waiting times, and also a primary school of about 767 pupils plus 19 teaching and non teaching staff.
Jorum Ayom Kilri, aged 12 is in primary grade five. He is one of the students from the IDPs from Bor due to the wars that happened in the nation. Jorum’s family fled in early 2014 to Uganda and started his primary schooling in Wakeso district in Uganda. Later his parents returned to South Sudan leaving Jorum and the other family members behind. But due to the economic crisis of the South Sudanese pound (SSP), Jorum’s parents were not able to earn money for Jorum and his brothers to continue with school in Uganda. They had to move to Yei and settled near the Dinka congregation. Jorum is so happy to be back home to meet his friends and he joined Lomuku Primary School in Yei town. Jorum is a polite, kind boy so the pupils voted him to be the head boy of the school just as he joined the school in January 2016. Everybody loves him because he encourages his friends to be interested in education and he wants to become a pilot in the future.
Michel Adira, the head teacher of Lomuku primary school, informed us that the presence of the working borehole brings great advantages to the whole school. We have a total of 767 pupils and 19 staffs at the school. As a result of the clean drinking water “all my staffs and the pupils now participate actively at the school which results in better education for all.” The borehole enables the agriculture learners to practise on gardens and will improve the food security at the school by allowing watering of the planted crops, increase the knowledge of gardening, and be a convenient food source.
