Over the years people in Butmas in the central part of Santo Bush used to fetch their water from a creek. That was their only source of water for drinking, cooking and washing. Usually it would be the women and children who have to walk downhill along the bush track to the creek with water containers, filled them with water and then carry the containers back uphill to their village. Even pregnant mothers have to do the difficult walk down and up the hill to fetch water. Mothers with new born babies often leave their babies in order to go and fetch water.
Today, people in Butmas are enjoying clean and safe water right at their door steps.
In 2018, with funding assistance from the New Zealand Government Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, ADRA Vanuatu did what the people in Butmas with their chief never thought would happen. They pumped water from the source uphill to their village.
Mr Lolos David, the village chief said: “When ADRA came I had doubts that they would be able to bring water up the hill to our village in a pipe.”
ADRA worked with Kevin Smith from New Zealand to design the water system. They built a Spring Box to a certain height and then placed a Ram Pump below it. The force of the water inside the Spring Box now flows down and hits the Ram Bump and the bump pushes the water through a pipe up the top of the hill into a 22,500 litre water tank. Poly pipe runs from the tank and spread water to the village.
There are 20 households altogether in Butmas. Today three households can now share one tap stand. In total there are 10 tap stands altogether for the whole village.
“Providing clean and safe water to local communities around the country is part of the Vanuatu National Sustainable Development Plan which is in line with the UN’s SDGs, which replaced the former Millennium Development Goals.
Butmas was identified to be in the category for ADRA to provide clean and safe water for the community to reduce the risks of sicknesses, improve health and well-being for the local community,” said Graham Uzakana from ADRA Vanuatu.
When the village chief was asked about how easy access water was to them, he just smiled and said: “ADRA has brought water to our door steps. We do not have to walk down the creek anymore for water. We can now smile, and happily enjoy water at our door steps.”
The school headmaster is also seeing changes in the school children. He now sees children wearing clearner clothes than before. Previously Children would wear dirty clothes for days and not change because of lack of access to clean water. Now children would go home after school, wash their clothes and wear clean clothes every day to school.
Having access to clean and safe water in the village gives families more time to focus on other work to earn an income compared to before when they took hours to walk to and from the water source to get water.
Jacklyn Ulee, a mother, said, “We are happy now that our children don’t have to do that difficult walk to fetch water daily. As women, we also don’t have to go through all that trouble to get water like we used to. We can just get our buckets to the water taps and get water.”
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