CEED didn’t set out with a Clean Water Initiative in Africa in our minds. We started with a Coffee Farm that we planned to grow into a self sustaining enterprise. The Coffee Farm did reach sustainability, but perhaps more importantly, it showed us the dire need for clean water in Uganda. 

After a few seasons of growing coffee we saw a trend developing over time. We were seeing an inexplicably high turn over in the workers. It took time to find out what was going wrong, because the problem was so commonplace for those who lived there that they didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Our farm workers were missing weeks of work due to water born illnesses like Typhoid and Cholera. 

Those are words that mean very little to those of us who grew up in the modern, western world. Those illnesses are little more than a note in our history books. But for the people of Uganda they are as prevalent and immediate as the common cold is to us. 

These illnesses are linked to contaminated water. Villagers all across Western Uganda find their water in ponds, streams and swamps. They share the watering holes with livestock, frogs, snakes and monkeys. 

During the dry season they have to walk for miles to find water, or pay exorbitant prices for bottled water. Women and children bear the burden of finding water. For children this means missing school and facing the dangers of the African bush. The women spend hours of their day bathing this precious resource leaving little time for household chores. May will be subjected to domestic violence when their husbands become dissatisfied with their work. And then the water they bring home is contaminated. Their children die of water born illnesses. And adults cannot go to work in the fields, they cannot grow food. And what little money they may have saved up goes to the expensive medical treatments for these illnesses. Its a cycle of poverty and it all comes back to water.