URGENT – Water Connections project in Laindatang – A deep borehole, two healthy sanitary facilities and two/three 6,750-litre water tanks.

Laindatang in East Sumba in Indonesia is a village without clean water, toilets, or sanitary facilities. It is a place of extreme poverty, so we categorize this action as red or urgent.

People only wash once a month, are sick and don’t have enough to eat and drink. All children are underweight, and so are adults. We must act for these hundreds of people and give them access to drinking water. The physically most robust people (those who have the strength to fetch water) have an average of two litres of non-edible water per day per person for everything: cooking, eating, drinking, bathing, bathing newborn babies, watering livestock, and going to the toilet. Therefore, you have to choose.

East Sumba in Indonesia is the region where we have been operating since 2019 as part of medical, social and educational projects. It is the region most affected by malnutrition and poverty in Asia. Where we work in ultra-rural areas, 90% of families do not have access to clean water, sanitation facilities or electricity.

Laindatang, Mbatakapidu Village, has no road leading to it. However, we have been working on it for a year. It takes two to three hours off-road to get there. Thanks to our Truck for Life, a medicalized 4×4 truck, and thanks to it, we can regularly go to this village to carry out this feasibility study. A project that aims to provide access to clean water and sanitation facilities to these poor families living in extreme conditions. From our base camp at Rumah Kambera, Laindang is 25 km, about 10 km of rutted dirt and stone roads through hills and fields. The terrain is rough, steep and slippery when it rains. Only adapted vehicles can access this region.

The problem of this impoverished village is linked to water points, which are almost non-existent or very far away. Families suffer from malnutrition, chronic respiratory and joint diseases, diarrhoea and other illnesses related to the consumption of unsafe water and the absence of sanitation facilities and toilets.

Infant mortality is also high, and we are working hard to save lives here through medical programs such as access to primary medical care in ultra-rural areas. To our knowledge, these families have never had sanitary facilities. Peeing and pooping are done behind a tree with all the health problems. It should also be noted that these families do not receive any help besides what we give them. In particular, no government help.

The community has always maximized the use of rainwater for cooking, eating, and drinking water. Washing or doing laundry is done simultaneously: People wash their bodies with detergents directly at the water source. Due to the lack of water, the villagers wash only once a month or, at best, every two weeks.
More information about what were are doing with the #waterconnections all around.

When their rainwater reserves are exhausted, most women and young girls have to walk for hours – between five and ten kilometres – to find water: They often leave in the evening to return home in the morning with only a few litres of water, which they carry in five-litre jerry cans. The nearest water source is on a hill and not accessible for transporting animals such as horses or water buffaloes. Thus, children aged five and women must carry their jerry cans on their heads and at arm’s length when possible.

The village is made up of several groups of houses. Nearly 200 people live here, are everywhere here, a majority of children. They currently have two or three rainwater storage tanks of different sizes, 3000 – 5000 litres, very worn, with rusty irons inside. They need to be healthier reservoirs, and storing water here is dangerous.

These reservoirs are intended to store rainwater during the rainy season (which only lasts two months here). But during the dry season, everything is empty. The villagers themselves built these water tanks. The rainwater that flows there comes from the roofs, so it is dirty. Water storage is a huge problem here as Malaria is intense and mainly affects children under five, pregnant women and the chronically ill. That is to say, almost everyone here!

On this subject, our medical teams are constantly confronted with cases of Malaria, and we lack antimalarial drugs. Mortality is very high here due to Malaria. Stagnant water from old cisterns is a critical transmission factor besides the fact that this rainwater is undrinkable, unhealthy and hazardous to health.

To overcome the lack of water, buying water brought here by a 5,000-liter tanker is possible. These trucks need help to reach the village and the groups of houses to fill the tanks. Once there, the vehicle will also have lost a lot of water, around 1/3 of the 5,000 litres. The cost of a tank truck here is three times more expensive than elsewhere. Linked to the fact that access is challenging.