Getting water becomes easier and fun in South African rural villages

John Murphy / BALTIMORE SUN  10jan01

KGAUTSWANE, South Africa -- For as long as residents of this mountain village can remember, the task of fetching water each morning to wash and cook has been time-consuming work.

They wake before dawn, hike up to nine miles to the closest stream and return with a 40-pound bucket of water balanced on their heads. If they need more water for cooking dinner, they have to repeat the journey in the evening.

Here, high in South Africa's Drakensberg Mountains, where public water and sewage systems do not exist, the chore of finding and carrying water is a fact of life.

Like more than 10 million other people in South Africa without access to running water, residents of Kgautswane can spend up to 12 hours a day on this one task.

"You walk and rest and walk. It takes time, and you get a headache," says Clara Masinga, who hauls water to her home to water her garden, make tea and do the dishes.

It's a painful routine, in most cases left to women and girls, that leaves them little time or energy to devote to family life or schoolwork or to develop skills that could help pull their communities out of poverty.

But a new invention -- surprising in its simplicity -- is beginning to change lives in these rural communities. It's called the Hippo Water Roller, a 90-liter plastic barrel that, tipped on its side, can be pushed or pulled long distances with so little effort a child can do it.

The invention doesn't bring the water any closer, but it halves the time spent transporting it. The barrel holds nearly five times the amount of water a person can balance on her head.

So Masinga now needs to fetch water only every other day: With the Hippo Water Roller, she can carry more water each trip. And the boys in the village, once reluctant to do what was perceived to be girls' work, have been drawn to the new technology.

"The boys like to push the Hippo Roller, and I get to rest," says Masinga, who uses her extra time to run a preschool program for children in her village and to volunteer at the community center.

"It has a huge impact on the community," says Grant Gibbs, co-owner of Development Consultants International, the South Africa-based company marketing the new product.

Kgautswane is a dusty village of cinder-block huts with few jobs. In the two years since the Hippo Roller was introduced, some villagers have expanded gardens on their property, thanks to the relative ease of bringing water home.

Others use a Hippo Roller as a washing machine, dropping detergent and laundry in with the water and letting children push it through the village.

The Hippo Roller has been heralded by the South African Bureau of Standards Design Institute for providing a simple, low-cost solution to a big problem in rural areas. But the invention also has caught the eye of an unexpected market -- yacht owners looking for a simple way to load water onto their boats.

"It's about as far from high-tech as you can get," says Louis Groenwold, Gibbs' business partner.

The Hippo Rollers cost about $50 each, but in most cases the villagers pay little or nothing for them.

Gibbs and Groenwold seek donations from individuals and companies to pay for manufacturing the water trolleys. In return, corporations such as British Petroleum, Coca-Cola and the Anglo-American mining conglomerate win the right to publicize their good deeds.

Making fresh water accessible is the inspiration behind a second labor-saving invention gaining popularity: the Roundabout Playpump, the creation of a South African inventor who eight years ago had the idea of joining a schoolyard merry-go-round with a mechanical water pump.

His merry-go-round-powered pump required no electricity or fuel of any other kind -- just children playing.

A great idea, everyone agreed, but it failed to take off. The problem was cost. Each Playpump cost $4,000. But for just $1,400, a village could buy a simple hand pump. Most community leaders and aid agencies found it difficult to cover the extra expense.

Enter Trevor G. Field, an advertising executive from Johannesburg. He believed the Playpump offered a brilliant way to advertise in rural areas of South Africa while providing communities with dependable water sources, plus places for children to play.

Field's company gives the Playpump to communities free and pays for it by selling ad space on the pumps' water storage towers.

The ad space is selling well, Field says, because companies have struggled to reach the rural market.

With no television or newspapers and only limited radio broadcasting in rural areas, companies find it hard to market new products there. The Playpump solves the problem by placing advertisers in touch with the rural consumers with the most buying power: women.

"In a rural situation, the women are the decision-makers when it comes to purchasing things. The men go to the mine and send money back. So they have incredible purchasing power," Field says. And women and girls are the members of the community who often must fetch water.

Unlike billboards, which often are vandalized, the Playpump is a place where ads are seen every day by members of the community. For companies trying to market products in rural areas, the water towers are the perfect place to make a good impression.

"In KwaZulu Natal (Province), there are 8 million people living in a rural environment," Field says. "They may not have that much money to spend, but when they buy a box of coffee or tea -- that's 8 million more boxes to sell."

Field is taking the power of advertising one step further. He has proposed using a portion of the advertising space on each Playpump to help educate the rural population about AIDS prevention.

His idea already has won the support of the World Bank, which has given him a $230,000 grant to build 40 Playpumps with AIDS-prevention messages.

"We can make an impression on the younger girls and kids to have safe sex and use condoms," Field says. "We can go a long way to fighting this disease."

The Playpump has benefited people in urban areas, too. In the Daveyton Township, east of Johannesburg, a community center was struggling to get a water hookup for a planned community garden.

Township officials wanted to charge the Thabong Institution $4,000 to bring water there -- a price the nonprofit group could not afford.

Field installed a Playpump in the schoolyard. Now, during recess, the water flows as quickly as the children play. The water supports a small farm that has provided 18 people with jobs and free food for students.

Says Crosby Thobela, director of the institute, "This project has brought life to our community."