feature WaterAid “Now we have enough water, the community’s lives have improved. People have gardens and they can water their animals. We are living happily.” Josephine In Basbedo village, Burkina Faso, West Africa, 40-year-old Josephine has gone into business for the very first time.
Combined with working with the government to guarantee long-term investment in infrastructure and training, this approach could transform lives across the subSahelian region. For Josephine, it’s the new well that’s made the biggest difference to her family’s life, providing a reliable source of the water she needs to complete the brewing process, which involves mixing red millet with water and yeast to create beer. “I take water from the well to brew my beer, to wash our clothes and for all our other cleaning activities,” “It’s not far from here – we just cross the road and it’s on the other side. It helps us a lot. If we didn’t have the well I wouldn’t be able to do what I am doing.”
“We had crops before, but it wasn’t enough … Then one night I thought of what I could do to make things different. That’s when I started to make beer.”
A brand new business Josephine who lives with her husband, Andre, and their four children, set up her beer-brewing business in 2013, after WaterAid began a pilot project in Basbedo. Like other communities in sub-Sahelian Burkina Faso, the people face a dry season that can last for up to eight months of the year, with soaring temperatures making rivers evaporate and groundwater levels drop. Every year these brutal conditions force families into a desperate search for water, or face unimaginable decisions that are all too frequently a matter of life or death. “We only had one borehole before. There were queues and even serious fights there, … People used to suffer a lot.” “Making beer means I can take care of my children” Like many parents in Burkina Faso – where almost three million people lack access to safe water and around 12,000 children under five die from dirty water and poor sanitation every year – Josephine’s motivation to supplement her family’s income is rooted in personal tragedy. “I have seven children but three died, … The ones who died sometimes had pains in their stomach and pain in their body. “At that time, I didn’t have the money to take them to the clinic. But since I started making beer, I can get my own money to spend myself. I can buy medicine and take my children to the doctor.”
A pioneering approach The results of the work carried out by WaterAid in Basbedo, and two other villages where the pilot project took place, were so extraordinary that in spring 2015, WaterAid launched Project Sahel: Water 365 appeal, with the goal of implementing this pioneering approach in a total of 14 drought-prone communities in Burkina Faso. This means not only investing in infrastructure and improving access to water, but also training local people to become fully-fledged water experts, so they can monitor rainfall and water levels and help their communities make the decisions that will ensure they have access to water every day of the year.
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For more information on the Project Sahel: Water 365 appeal visit: www.wateraid.org/uk/donate/project-sahel-365/water365-org Support our pioneering new Project Sahel 365 appeal today and we’ll transform life in drought-prone communities in Burkina Faso by:
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building boreholes for drinking water, and hand-dug wells for animals, gardening and washing helping local people to become water experts, who can monitor and manage their supply, so they have enough clean water every day of the year constructing sand dams, which collect water and raise groundwater levels.
