New water pump for school children in Gambia

The West African country of Gambia is widely regarded by UN organisations as the poorest country in the world, with an average annual income of approximately £200. It is a country of contrasts – Europeans jet in to stay at high class hotels whilst many of the locals live in abject poverty.

Sanchaba Sulay Jobe Lower Basic School makes no charges to any of its pupils and is attended by over 1,250 children, up to the age of 12. This is far more than the facilities are able to provide for and so half the children attend in the morning and the other half in the afternoon. Even so, whilst no one is turned away, there is usually a shortage most days of about 50 desks.

Many of the staff are volunteers, including the six cooks, although the school does try to give them a small sum to help them eke out a meagre existence. This determination by locals to help the children receive an education simply underlines their belief in the importance of school as the means for children to lift themselves out of poverty.

The school had invested a lot of time, financial resource and effort in ensuring they had sufficient water for the children. However, successive years of poor rainfall meant the water table had fallen and they could no longer provide even basic drinking water, let alone water for cooking or watering the crops used for food.

The school provided at least one meal a day to all of its pupils – for most this was the only meal they would have. Water for cooking had to be carried from a water tap some distance away and the crops just withered and died. We were asked by the school to provide a new bore hole, deeper than used previously, to make sure that the children would have water to drink and the school water for growing and cooking the crops.

The Leeds Investment Surveyor’s Charity Golf Day raised £6,500, enough to pay for the bore hole, and the work took nine weeks to complete. The bore hole is 24 metres deep with a water table of 4 metres. It is lined with concrete rings for stability and capped with a concrete cover.

The water pump is now connected to an electric generator that pumps water up to three new water tanks, each with a capacity of 2,000 litres. The water tanks are connected to the existing stand pipes and taps in the kitchen, washroom, garden and toilets. We have also run a special pipeline to a new stand pipe outside of the school gates so the local community can also benefit from the new bore hole. As you can see from these photographs there is no hiding the joy on the children’s and the community’s faces now they have a plentiful supply of water.

To try and put this in perspective, about 2,000 school children and local people use the water. It has cost just over £3 per person to provide them with clean drinking water for the foreseeable future.

Well done to everyone who participated in the fund-raising. You have brought much joy and happiness to many, many people.

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