Major water project underway

A major project has started to pipe clean water from the mountain down to various areas of Chizinja village, bordering Satemwa Estates.

Chizinja has approximately 4000 members.  At present they have boreholes fro drinking water in some areas (2 supplied by the Fairtarde Joint Body) but many people are still taking water from the streams and other unprotected water sources.

The JB - in partnership with village Headwoman, Mai Chizinja, village committees, Thyolo Ministry of Irrigation Department and Irrigation Officers – have already started the preliminary stages of feasibility studies and topographic surveys.  The team have found a water source high up close to the peak of the mountain.  It is a natural spring producing significant enough quantities of water.

Earlier attempts to find water failed because the river banks are too eroded and the water is not clean due to people excreting in it further upstream.  Natural springs and sources further down the mountain were also discounted because they are already a source of water supplies for other villages and farmers.

A major concern with drawing water from so high up the mountain is the tragic deforestation that has taken part over the last 10 years.  What was a huge rainforest is now gone, replaced by smallholders growing Maize and bananas.  This means that various streams and water sources are drying up in dry months and flooding in the rain seasons.  Part of the water project will, therefore, require working very closely with the villagers to sensitise them to the importance of reforestation in the area above the spring.  The area is, in part, already protected because there are 2 very large snakes living above the spring, preventing encroachers from other villagers planting that high.

Connex Banda and Rose Singhano, JB water project committee members, remarked “we walked all around the area and thought ‘ this is good because there are more trees and we have found water’ but that was because nobody had told us then about the huge snakes!  We were lucky, but we also think these snakes could protect our water!”