The great lesson for students in arid Karamoja — at least, as they understand it — is that water is a very scarce and precious commodity to come by.
“Sometimes we don’t bathe,” says 16-year-old Christine Lowanyang, a primary six pupil of Matany primary school in Napak district, Karamoja sub-region.
Mondays and Fridays are very difficult days to fetch water at the area’s only borehole, she said. If you’re not yet in the queue by 5:30am, you’re most likely to go without water.
But being in the queue is no guarantee the pupils will get water because they share the borehole with locals from the three neighbouring villages.
Ten-year-old Irene Asio (P4) says once the locals (elders) come, they throw away the children’s jerry cans.
Worse still, the aquifer is too far and the borehole is “too hard” to pump. It takes nearly 10 minutes for the water to start flowing and about an hour for it to dry up again. While there is another borehole in the area – about two or three kilometres away, pupils say it’s quite far and very isolated and exposes them to sexual abuse, murder, kidnapping and human trafficking.
“That other borehole is too far. And we fear to go there because there are murderers who cut off people’s heads,” Asio said.
While her story may sound like a 10-year-old’s imagination, it was indeed corroborated by Matany primary school head teacher, Norah Anyait. She said in the recent past, some three locals who had gone to fetch water at the farthest borehole got murdered. The cases were reported to police who deployed for some time but left afterwards.
“We give them [pupils] an allowance to start classes past 9am. We understand that they spend a long time at the borehole. And moreover, we prioritize cooking their meals because they can’t learn without food; so, we have to first fetch water for the kitchen,” she said.
The school has 477 pupils, 135 of them in the boarding section. She said most girls in the upper classes have left the school. There’s a lot of absenteeism (about 40 per cent) especially when girls are in their periods, she said.
Fifteen of the 54 schools in Napak are extremely water- stressed and the available water sources are operating at just 70 per cent functionality, according to Joyce Nakoya, the district education officer, Napak district.
“We recently had a scenario where all children got infected with UTI (urinary tract infection) because of poor hygiene and lack of water,” Nakoya said.
UNICEF, KOICA intervention
Last week, a $10m (about Shs 37 billion) water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in Karamoja schools programme was launched by representatives of the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and Unicef.
The programme is to ensure that all schools in the eight districts of Karamoja – Abim, Amudat, Kaabong, Kotido, Moroto, Napak, Nakapiripirit and Nabilatuk – by 2023, meet the country’s WASH in Schools standards set by the ministry of Education and Sports in 2017.
Among the set standards is; 1.5 litres of safe drinking water per day for every learner and member of staff, separate latrines for girls and boys as well as children with disabilities, hand washing facility for every 40 students, and waste and solid management systems for every school.
“Meeting the national WASH in Schools standards is critical to children staying in school, performing well in school and keeping healthy,” said Dr Doreen Mulenga, Unicef’s representative in Uganda.
“As an example, the practice of handwashing with soap and clean water can reduce diarrhea by around 40% among children – something that is urgently required, considering that diarrhea is presently the third largest killer of young children in Uganda with around 30 children dying from it every day across the country.”
It is envisaged that by the end of the programme, all selected schools will have latrines, a solar-powered water system and hand washing facilities.
fkisakye@observer.ug