Providing water relief to slum communities in Kampala

It is a cool evening on the slopes of Naguru Hill in Kampala. The winds are blowing across Upper Naguru zone found in Nakawa Division Kampala city, carrying with it a soothing breeze in this upscale suburb of the city.
Two children are playing beside a swimming pool in one of the fenced off residential houses.

I am standing at the higher ground so I can see the inside of their house below. Soon the winds gather pace, forming big dark clouds causing the children to run inside of the house before a downpour.
About an hour later when the heaven water taps are finally tightened, the children return to the compound, playing. It is like nothing has happened. About 500 metres away from this posh residence, however, on the lower side of Naguru in Binyonyi zone, the rains have caused a completely different situation.

Moses Oling and his wife Florence Oyella stare at the filth containing rotten garbage and fecal matter deposited in their compound by the runoff waters from the hill slope in their Binyonyi zone residence.
“It is because in this area there is open dumping of waste, including open defecation,” Adrine Tumwesigye, field officer, A Rocha Uganda offers an explanation.
The organisation has for the last seven years been working with households in a number of slums such as this to improve sanitation and access to clean and safe water.

Most households here do not have pit latrines. Where pit latrines exist – they are open holes with polythene bags as wall covers – one is shared by 10 or more households.
The pit latrines easily fill and because there is no space to dig another, rains are greeted with such relief – time to free some space in the pit latrines by opening them to the free flowing water.

In between
Oling’s house, a two-bedroomed house, is at the edge of slow-flowing Lugogo valley water channel that carries a mixture of rotten garbage, sewage and fecal matter. The stench is strong and disturbing, especially in the rainy season.
Suleiman Waliggo, 45, his wife Faisi Waliggo, 38, and their nine children, live in a house that is on one side bordered by an open dumping area and on another a drainage channel.

This is in Kasasiro Kilombe Zone A, Luzira Butabika parish, Nakawa Division. Like the name, Kasasiro suggests – in Luganda Kasasiro means garbage – this slum is littered with garbage.
Waliggo and Oling’s lives mirror those of the inhabitants of the various slums in Kampala. While slums are associated with a wealth of problems, the unhygienic conditions, Tumwesigye reveals, immensely affect the access to clean and safe water.

“Water, it is often said, is life but that is not necessarily the case here,” she says, adding, “Water for domestic consumption here threatens people’s health.”
Boiling water may be the most common method of ensuring safe water for consumption but limited incomes among slum dwellers mean hard choices.
“I used to boil water but it would take a lot of charcoal and money which I hardly earn. Instead of boiling water, I decided to use charcoal for cooking food for my children,” says Oyella. She was aware contaminated water could be unhealthy to her children, but, “what could I do?” she laments.

With the proportion of urban population living in slums in Uganda estimated at 60.1 per cent, according to State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013, this no doubt puts a big population in danger.
Tap water coverage in the city is at 81 per cent, according to the National Water and Sewerages Corporation and a 20 litre jerrycan of water cost between Shs50 and Shs200, people in the slums resort to getting water for domestic use from springs because such water is free.

Consuming waste
Sam Okia, the chairman of Binyonyi Zone, says with only one water tap in the area, the spring in the slum serves about 80 per cent of the 1,300 households. Yet these springs get contaminated by, among others human, fecal matter.
“That is basically drinking human waste,” remarks Sara Kaweesa, national director, A Rocha Uganda. Protection of the spring wells has gone a long way in promoting access to clean and safe water.

Tumwesigye explains that the spring wells are rehabilitated by digging around the fountains, filling the area around the springs with stones and are covered with clay and polythene and then top soils. Clay being impermeable and polythene help to prevent contamination of the springs from the surface.
The area around is fenced off leaving only the point where water is drawn through an extended pipe.
Fencing off prevents human activity like defecating at the springs. Open defecation is not uncommon in slums. Running water is also diverted from either side so runoff does not sink into the springs. This has been done in five spring wells in the slums of Namungoona, Kasasiro and Binyonyi.

Well protection, however, is not sufficient to tackle the problem of water safety, even when some organisations have gone ahead to train churches as local institutions to intervene.
Under A Rocha Uganda’s tutelage for instance, Oasis of Grace Ministries, a Pentecostal church in Nateete has since mobilised its believers to clean up drainage channels in their area and teach locals basic sanitation practices.

Biosand Water Filter
A more concrete method, the Biosand Water Filter (BSF) has also been adapted.
According to the Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (CAWST), a Canadian water and sanitation knowledge and skills development organisation, a BSF container can be made of concrete or plastic and is filled with layers of specially selected and prepared sand and gravel.
The filter removes about 30 to70 per cent of the pathogens through mechanical trapping and adsorption. The bio layer increases the treatment efficiency up to 99 per cent removal of pathogens.

The use of BSFs is an approach, Kaweesa says achieves several purposes. She explains: “People get clean and safe water which has economic implication that families do not spend money on treating illnesses, but also limiting use of charcoal means reducing on tree cutting, which is a climate change mitigation measure.”
More than 1,000 BSFs have been constructed for households in Namungoona, Nateete, Binyonyi and Kasasiro slums.
“I filter a 20 litre jerrycan and for two days I am not worried of drinking water for my family,” Waliggo, who has one, says. Waliggo does not have a fridge in her two-roomed house, but her 4-year-old daughter calls a BSF in one corner of their sitting room “mummy’s fridge.”

All rounder
According to Paul Kimera, a director at Technology for Tomorrow, a company involved in training people how to construct and use BSFs, a BSF can be used with any water source such as rainwater, deep groundwater, shallow groundwater, rivers, lakes or other surface water.
“Consistently use the same source water to ensure the highest treatment efficiency, for over time, the bio layer becomes adapted to a certain amount of contamination from the source water.

If source water with a different level and type of contamination is used, the bio layer may not be able to consume all of the pathogens. It may take the bio layer several days to adapt to the new source water, level of contamination, and nutrients,” he tips.
With interventions such as these the path towards safe water in slums may be clearly marked.

Operation of a BSF

• A BSF has five sections;
• The reservoir layer at the top is where water is poured
• The standing water zone keeps the sand wet letting oxygen pass to the bio layer
• The bio layer removes the pathogens, below which is a non biological zone that contains no living organisms.
• The lowest layer at the bottom is the gravel zone made of 1 inch particles of gravel that filters the water
• A pipe through which water runs to the collection object.
• After installation, water is filtered through up to 30 days before water is filtered for consumption.

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