Fresh Clean Water
May 2024
St Matia Mulumba Primary School has a fresh clean water supply from rainwater harvesting and a solar powered water pump.
We take fresh clean readily available water in the UK for granted. The area where St Matia Mulumba Primary School is located has no piped water supply. Children had to collect water daily from nearby polluted ponds and the kitchen staff had to boil it to remove bacteria and other impurities. This was a labour intensive and arduous task that entailed small children carrying 20 litre containers over rough and hilly terrain.
In 2018, with funds from St Josephs Church, Bedford, a solar powered submersible pump was installed at the school to bring water up from underground reservoirs.
With grants from the charities Wilmslow Wells for Africa and SPICMA, in addition to funds collected from a sponsored marathon run by our Vice Chairman, Gordon Lland, we installed 12 rainwater collection tanks each with a capacity of 10,000 litres. The tanks collect water from the roofs of the school buildings.
It rains for about 8 months of the year in Uganda, often torrentially. In November 2023 it was reported that all tanks were full. This will provide sufficient fresh clean water for all school activities, eg. drinking water, personal washing, food production and laundry.
In addition, we recently installed smaller 1,000 litre hand-washing tanks adjacent to toilets.
A maintenance regime has been put in place to regularly clean roofs and tanks and we are investigating additional filters for the production of even cleaner and safer drinking water.
No more back-breaking daily fetching and carrying polluted water. The children’s health will be greatly improved due to having access to this onsite readily available water supply.
