As soon as he was strong enough to ride a donkey and carry buckets, little Mahmood went to the well to collect water for his family of seven - a six-kilometre round trip. “Sometimes I had no time or was simply too tired to go to school,” he said, with the look of a child who has grown up too quickly.
Mahmood fetches water from a tap for the first time ever. ECHO has funded a collective fountain at the heart of Al-Thawbani village, situated on Yemen’s Red Sea coast.
Photo : EC/ECHO/Sébastien Carliez
Today, eight year old Mahmood can fetch water from a tap for the first time ever. With support from ECHO, the aid agency Dia has just installed a 12-kilometre water pipe network connecting a newly-dug well to Mahmood’s village, as well as to eight other settlements located in the heart of the Tihama strip. “It is much quicker this way,” he explains with a large smile, filling up two plastic containers with fresh drinking water. A collective fountain has just been set up at the most central place in Al-Thawbani, a village composed of several straw huts and small concrete houses. Photo : EC/ECHO/Sébastien Carliez
The Tihama is a dry region lying along the Red Sea coast of Yemen, one of the least developed countries on earth. The average rainfall here is somewhere between 20 and 50 millimetres per year. Vegetation is scarce, with only thorny shrubs resisting the harsh desert conditions. Uncertain livelihoods and malaria - endemic in the Tihama, make living conditions difficult for local people.
But Dia’s project has made a big difference to the lives of Mahmood and the other 3,000 or so members of the Al-Thawbani community. Before, people used to draw salty and sometimes contaminated water from an old, uncovered, 15-metre well, using ropes and buckets. Now, water is mechanically pumped from more than 60 metres underground and is channeled, through pipes, to fountains located in each settlement in the area. Thus, water is always safe for drinking.
Meanwhile, training sessions were organised to raise people’s awareness about water hygiene, with a view to changing unsafe habits. Dozens of women in Al-Thawbani were taught why, and how, to boil water before drinking it - and were warned against the use of stagnant water which can help to spread malaria. They also learned that dirty water promotes other diseases like diarrhea, hepatitis and typhoid.
Yemeni women give birth to an average of six children. In rural, remote areas such as Al-Thawbani, girls often get married at the age of twelve, and many girls do not reach secondary school. It was the first time that these women had ever been offered such a training opportunity.
It was equally important to target children directly since they are often involved in water collection and management at home. Two-hour sessions on basic hygiene were organised for 345 pupils in primary schools. A puppet show was created for the occasion and performed for the children of Al-Thawbani, with a few, simple but practical, key messages: one must wash hands before cooking and after going to the bathroom, take a shower more than once a week, etc.
A local association, the first one of its kind in Al-Thawbani, was created to ensure the long-term sustainability of the water supply network. Five out of the ten representatives elected by local people to serve on the body, work full time for the project. They include technicians in charge of maintaining the pump and the pipe network, and a fee collector. The service costs just 500 Yemeni Ryals (€2) per family per month.
“We now hope that water supply will no longer prevent the development of the local community”, concludes Dia’s representative in Yemen, Jérôme Conilleau.
Further east, in the hilly district of Al-Wazeeyah, ECHO has funded a similar water network serving 19 remote villages. Overall, 7,000 people are now receiving clean drinking water every day. With Yemen’s rapidly expanding population, this figure will reach 12,000 in 15 years time.
Sébastien Carliez
ECHO Regional Information Officer - Amman
ECHO Regional Information Officer - Amman
