We left Surkhet early the next morning and climbed higher into the hills… We passed lots of villages along the way, getting further spread out as the road narrowed. The scenery was incredible, with more and more rolling hills and rice terraces round each corner. Our jeep bumped and jostled over the rocky paths as we approached the site of the visit – Lamidamar.
We walked for around ten minutes down a track to the start of the village. The houses were a little closer together than in Dhaneri and the land was greener and less arid. There are 132 households in Lamidamar and the surrounding area – the majority of which are classed as poor or very poor and they are very spread out within the ward, which was one of the biggest challenges when implementing the project here. This project site was classed as completed in September 2011, and I was interested to see the differences, if any to that of an ongoing project. In the time that the project was completed, there were 25 tap stands constructed and 100 improved latrine constructions – as well as training for 5 sanitation masons and 5 water supply caretakers, mainly women. There were also 25 community health volunteers trained.
As we reached the meeting point, children gathered around us, playing and laughing. Goats and dogs wandered around us too. We were greeted with a huge welcome by a big group of women from the village, who again gave us garlands and placed the red ‘tikka’ on our foreheads. About seven or eight women offered this to each one of us, and I was completely covered in flowers by the time they had finished! We were shown into the school office building, and sat down to hear their story…
The first thing that I noticed was that the room was almost entirely made up of women and children – with just one elderly man sitting to one side. Most of the men from Lamidamar go to India to work to send money home as there is not much employment opportunity nearby, and only return home once a year. Chairperson of the water users committee in Lamidamar is a lady called Guara Majhi. Guara is a softly spoken, dignified and clearly well respected chair. She told us that before the taps were installed that the women in the community used to waste hours going to collect water and that there was a high incidence of sickness, particularly amongst the children. There was also a high rate of open defecation in the bushes and trees of the village.
She emphasises to us more than once that collecting water, and managing the communities hygiene and sanitation always falls to women, particularly here in Lamidamar. As water is a women’s issue, it was up to the women to sort it out, she tells us. Proudly, she then tells us that time spent fetching water per day reduced from 40 minutes to just 10.
We asked Guara how she had come to be chairperson of the users committee. She told us that at the start, she wasn’t confident that she could do it, but that all of the other villagers encouraged her as they knew she had the drive and the influence to make the project a success. Firstly, she went and met local politicians to explain the conditions the village was currently living with and told them that there was much more sickness and suffering than in other places nearby. When this didn’t yield any results, Guara told us that she had heard that NEWAH, WaterAid’s rural partner had helped another community nearby so she got in touch with them. Following this, a plan was put into place to firstly make a community commitment to the project, and then begin to educate key members about health and hygiene.
After Guara has finished speaking, we also heard from Rana who is the head teacher at the local school, who also seems thrilled and excited by the progress in Lamidamar. Previously, there had been no toilets at all at the school, meaning that children had to go to the toilet in the trees behind the school. It was an extremely hot day in Lamidamar, pushing 30 degrees and we had been told it was to get much hotter through the summer. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the health risks to children going to the toilet in the open behind the school, especially in the heat of the summer. Rana tells us proudly that the school now has four latrines and its own tap stand. She says that children’s behaviour is changing, as they are now aware of safe hygiene and sanitation practices, and that attendance has dramatically improved for a number of reasons – children are no longer needed to help their mothers collect water, they are healthier and do not miss school because they are suffering the effects of drinking unsafe water, and older girls are able to go to school throughout the whole month without fear, embarrassment or risks to their health.
We left the building and wandered past a few of the new tapstands, each sparkling clean and each shown to us with pride. The whole village just seemed to be bursting with excitement about the situation and eager to join in and show us more. We walked down the hill to Guara’s house where we saw her goats, cow shed and an immaculately clean drying rack full of pots and utensils. She carefully washed two large cucumbers and then cut them up and offered them around to us.
After this, it was time for us to make our way back to the jeep. With a hearty round of goodbyes, I thought about what we had just seen as we started out along the bumpy track… What a positive, tenacious, courageous group of women. With WaterAid’s help, they had shown me that coming together as a community to advocate and mobilise change is really possible. I’d not seen the project site before completion obviously, but it seemed that this community really had pulled together to realise an incredible achievement. WaterAid works to encourage communities to take ownership of their water and sanitation issues, and this to me seemed the perfect example of why we do what we do….
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