Today was another full day. We started the day off by visiting the Kamgamba medical centre that has benefited from a water collection tank, funded by AWF. Rain water is collected and stored in a 1000L tank. The water can be accessed as needed from a tap at the base of the tank. The clean water is used for washing hands and hygiene and may be boiled for drinking water.
Next we headed back to Kyangra, the community that we visited yesterday, to see their fruit drying project. Fruit such as bananas, pineapples and papayas are washed and cut up. They are then put in the dryers to be dried by the sun over the next 2 or 3 days. The community can then sell the dry fruit for a profit. The fruit is organic and therefore they cannot use harsh soap to wash the fruit, their hands or the drying racks. They can only use the clean water from the well. If it were not for the well provided by AWF through Africare, the community would not be able to participate in this income generating project.
Next we visited Nyaburiza medical centre that had also benefited from a water collection tank funded by AWF. Here we were welcomed by the community and a local school sang welcome songs to us.
After lunch we visited a protected spring in Nyingozi, and saw how the run off water from the spring was used to grow a vegetable garden. The community again welcomed us with singing. Then Rob, Lynelle and I filled water containers with clean spring water and carried the water to huts a few minutes away. Lynelle and I just carried the 10L containers (that children use to carry water, but are still quite heavy) while Rob carried the 20L (44lb) of water that women would carry on his head up to the huts!
