When we first bought our land in Africa we visited the site in the rainy season and could hear the trickling of a stream next to our site. Sadly that is the nearest we have got to running water so far.
In fact we live about 400m from the water main that supplies Freetown, unfortunately we are at least 100m above the pipeline and there are many problems with getting connected. The most concerning is that a house 50m below our land struggles with intermittent supply as the water pressure varies through the day.
If we wanted access to water we would need to negotiate with the Guma Valley Water Company which is well known for being one of the less proactive parastatals in Sierra Leone. Finding the right person to talk to to arrange connection would take weeks. Even if we get permission to connect we would only be at the start of our troubles.
In Freetown each individual is responsible for connecting his house supply to the mains and everywhere you go you see miles of blue PVC piping. Near the mains take off point there can be hundreds of such pipes snaking next to each other. These then gradually diverge to individual houses. Unfortunately whereever you see these pipes you see a trickle or stream of water as well. The problem is that where these pipes cross roads they get damaged by traffic and start to leak. Initially the pipes are buried under the road, but if the road is not tarmaced the surface gets washed away in the rains until the pipe surfaces. Soon after the passage of traffic will have flattened and burst the pipe.
Other problems occur when the residents who are not connected to the water supply tell their children to fetch water. They might make their way to the stand pipes and wait in line, on the other hand they can pick up one of these plastic pipes at a join, seperate the two parts and fill their bucket from there. Whether they bother to rejoin the pipes afterwards is moot. All the hapless owner of the pipe knows is suddenly he has no water supply. Tracing the leak along the hundreds of meters of pipe is a hit and miss affair.
Often the only thing that can be done is to replace the pipe in its entirety. One of my friends bought steel pipes to prevent the casual breakage of his water supply. However he then found that when the water was turned off for maintenence some enterprising individual stole lengths of pipe.
All in all connecting to the water main is a bit of a lottery when the pipework cannot be buried and concreted in position. Given the need to find approximately 800m of pipework I have resisted the temptation to go through the pain of connecting to the grid. It will happen one day but not yet.
So what do we do? Well initially we built some open above ground cisterns. These filled during the rainy season but only held about 10,000 litres. They also are prone to leaking. They have been filled in the past from water bowsers but currently the land is too rough for the bowsers to reach our land.
In fact most of the water required to build the house to date has been manually carried up to the land at 1000 Leones (approx 20p) for 25 litres. This has been a significant cost in both labour and money. While it provides useful income to local families we need a more permanent supply.
