Donated by The Customers of Coastal Food Service and ESS Through Purchases of Cases of Water

“My name is Maria Akuol Deng Deng; I am a 20-year-old girl studying in class seven at Comboni Primary School – Lietnhom. These pupils in the picture are accessing clean drinking from the Comboni borehole. The beneficiaries of the Comboni borehole are comprised of 621 pupils, where 420 are males and 201 are females, 18 teachers, and 52 households usually come to take water here.  

Two days ago, the borehole couldn’t longer release water, and the handle became lighter and easily fell when raised or pumped, the management of the borehole informed mechanics the same day about the issue, but the two mechanics were not normal. The female mechanic had a very heavy maternity almost to the birth stage, and the male mechanic was sick. Therefore, the sick mechanic scheduled the construction to happen after two days in order to finish his medication.  

After two consecutive days, the school didn’t work because there was no drinking water, the neighboring borehole of Achiek, which is 8 minutes on foot from our school, was banned from being used by Comboni School, and we were denied access to it from the entrance as a gatekeeper always keeps the gate closed. The headteacher announced to the school that pupils should remain home for two days and return to school on the day of repair instead of walking for distances in search of clean water or drinking dirty water from streams and hand-dug wells.  

A mechanic just came in the morning as arranged and started taking off parts of the well, it was found to be a chain coupling that had broken into pieces, although the borehole was examined, the only issue was the chain coupling, and the rest were fine, the mechanic finally fixed the borehole by installing another coupling that was in the school office, everything was smoothly resolved, and pupils are now enjoying clean drinking water. They finally received labor fees from the management team.” 

Maria Akuol Deng Deng, Community Member.

This project was undertaken as part of our campaign of projects that actively reduce carbon emissions. This project helped the community save their much needed wood which was previously being burnt daily to boil water. This project has also eliminated the many thousands of hours previously spent on walking to collect water.