Nexnet

British shoppers have enhanced the lives of ONE MILLION of the poorest people in the world simply by buying Thirsty Planet bottled water. For every sale of Thirsty Planet, a fixed donation goes to the British-based charity, Pump Aid, which installs sustainable and cost-effective water pumps in rural communities in Malawi and Zimbabwe. And in just over a year, Thirsty Planet has raised enough money to fund 2,000 pumps, giving clean water for life to a million people.

 

The one millionth person to benefit from the Thirsty Planet/Pump Aid partnership is Zunisha Jane, a 35-year-old housewife from the rural Chiradzulu district of Malawi, where a Pump Aid Elephant pump is about to be installed. 

 

Like mothers everywhere she’s on the go all day. From Monday to Friday she’s on her own caring for her three lively boys aged 7, 8 and 12, and their baby brother, six-month-old Aduesai. Her husband has to travel to work in the town of Blantyre, coming home at weekends. Zunisha’s chores are much the same as mums’ in the UK - getting the kids to school on time, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, washing clothes, tending the vegetable garden and looking after the family’s animals.

 

The food she cooks may be unfamiliar to British families – the staple food in Malawi is nsima, a polenta-like dish made from maize flour. But the biggest difference between her life and her counterparts’ in the west is the four or five journeys she has to make each day to her only source of water - a dirty, disease-ridden, unprotected well some two kilometres from her home.

 

Zunisha has to walk on rough tracks through the bush with the sun beating down, carrying a heavy 20-litre bucket of water on her head four or five times a day.

 

Before she can use the water for cooking or drinking she must boil it up - if she’s got any firewood or paraffin for her small stove - to kill the bugs which could make the children seriously ill or even kill them. If she can’t boil the water she has to take a gamble and risk killing her boys with cholera or dysentary. There’s no alternative.

 

Zunisha remembers being very sick with cholera many times when she was a little girl. A generation on her children are often ill, and the cost of getting treatment at the clinic puts a strain on the household purse. And it’s not just the children who are suffering. Zunisha’s friend and neighbour died a couple of weeks ago after drinking contaminated water.

 

Zunisha beams with excitement when she imagines life with a clean and disease-free water supply just a stroll away from her house. “Life will be much easier,” she says. “My boys won’t be sick so they won’t miss out on school. I want them to get a good education as I’d like them all to be doctors. We’ll also be able to use the water to irrigate our garden so I’ll be able to grow more vegetables and we’ll eat more healthily.

 

“Tomatoes, that’s what I’m really looking forward to growing. I love tomatoes. I might even be able to sell some, which will help with the household budget and help to pay the school fees,” she says.

 

In consultation with the community in Zunisha’s village, a team from Pump Aid has established the perfect spot to dig a well. Once the digging is complete it will take just four hours to make and install the Elephant pump, with villagers and Pump Aid staff working side by side at every step of the construction.

 

Based on a 2,000-year-old Chinese design, the pump is made from easily-available components such as discarded plastic and plant fibres. A pump committee made up of local people is being trained to repair it, so they’re not reliant on expensive spare parts or an engineer if things go wrong. The cost of producing each pump is a mere £250. A pump can serve a community of 500 people, so it costs 50p to help someone live a longer and healthier life and get them on the first step out of poverty by providing them with the basic human right of clean water.

 

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