Approximately 56 households from Kagweda Village in ward 14 of Mutasa District; amongst them pregnant women, the sick, the elderly, even the educated spent 7 years travelling for about 2km to fetch safe/clean water from the borehole in a nearby village after theirs broke down. The burden was so much that the community ripped open the broken down borehole to access water.
It never dawned on them that the community itself has the capacity to repair and maintain the water point until the leadership was empowered through the C-WASH organized Training for Transformationās Community Based Management (CBM) component. Thus the community was mobilized to harness their meager financial resources for borehole repairs. The project provided a vehicle for the transportation of the tools, spares and District Maintenance Team (DDF).
It was discovered during the repairs that the borehole needed a replacement for the leather cups, which cost only $7. It took the community effort and the expertise of the DDF less than 4 hours to bring back the borehole to life after 7 years of down time. The borehole is now an oasis of life to 56 households from Kagweda village and 40 more from Kasikai village whose borehole has run dry.
The initiative and the success thereof, saw two more villages mobilizing and repairing two more boreholes which had been defunct for an average of 6 months. The success opened the minds of the communities who had thought borehole maintenance, repair and rehabilitation was a responsibility of the government and the donors. This triggering effect was magnified when the USAID visited the borehole in May 2016. The visit led the communities to realize the importance of their efforts in the provision of safe and clean water.
