- LOCATION: Village of Pandinga, Northwest Uganda, across Lake Albert from the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the heart of Central Africa
- POPULATION: 1375 people
- PREVIOUS WATER SOURCE: Although a few villagers make a daily trek to the next village where there is a well, it is 3 miles each way, and the trip back means carrying about 45 pounds of water (a 20 liter plastic container, about 5 gallons). Most villagers however, just scoop water from a shallow hole, muddy cup by muddy cup. This is a slow tedious process, requiring many dips into the muddy water before a container is filled. Waiting in line for your turn and filling the container takes hours. If someone needs more than one container, after the first one is filled, they go to the back of the line. It is only fair, but it also takes half a day to complete the task of merely bringing water into the home.
- ENTERPRISES: Most residents are subsistence farmers, growing little more than their personal food needs.
Community Contribution
The local leaders help in community mobilization, provide security, officiate at various functions and settle disputes. The community tree in the center of the village is used for important meetings. Around this tree, our organization provides education, training, and leadership insures that the well will be producing water for the village for generations. We require certain commitments before we bore the well.
The village contributed land for the well site, and other locally available materials to help build the supporting structure. Each village household contributes 1,000 Uganda shillings a month for well maintenance and repair. This provides over $1,000 a year, most of which the water committee uses for pump maintenance. The excess is held by the committee for future major repairs as needed. By organizing this system, the village can sustain the project into the distant future with no further outside assistance.
Borehole Drilling
We contracted with Sumadhura Technologies Limited – one of the leading companies engaged in drilling deep boreholes for potable water — of Kampala, Uganda to drill the borehole, install the pump and related equipment, and make sure water production is both plentiful and tests pure in government labs.
The Technology
Sumadhura offers a full range of consultancy and services in drilling, construction of piped water systems, pump testing, installation of hand pumps, submersible pumps, generators, maintenance procurement of drilling equipment, water pumps and execution of urban and rural water supply programs.
Sumadhura has state of the art mobile water quality analysis kits manufactured by HAIG of USA for on site assessment of chemical parameters conforming to USEPA standards. In Uganda, all the water samples have to be sent to Government owned laboratories for independent quality analysis and approval.
