Rwanda: The story of Karugondo women and a water project

After exactly 79 kilometres drive north of the City of Kigali, I arrive at Karugondo, a village in Ngeruka sector, Eastern Province of Rwanda.

It is hot here. The sun is blazing at 25°C. But the mix of green trees, bananas and maize, and red-brown soil gives the environment a refreshing scenery.

Smoke from houses near the road spoil the clear view of the sky as one enjoys fresh air under pine trees. There is no littered garbage here. There is simply a culture of cleanliness that flows from their head of state to the locals in the village. In fact, the following day (Saturday) is Umuganda, a national clean-up day when each person in Rwanda is expected to clean every corner of their surrounding from 8am to 12pm.

It feels like the people here, on this Friday, are already ahead of time.

The journey to this rural semi-arid area in Bugesera District, where some residents are farmers and others agro-pastoralists, is equally thrilling.

For most of the time as my female chauffeur drove me and my translator through the city, I just refused to blink. I did not want to miss a thing. The feeling was similar as we branched off to KK 15 Road and passed through Myariro to reach Ngeruka.

From smooth pothole-free, palm-lined roads to trees with red flowers and orange flowering plants smiling at you from the roadside, it is simply unfair not to appreciate them with at least an oblivious gaze.

But don’t be tempted to drive in a freestyle show. There are cameras hidden under or behind those beautiful flowers and green palm trees.

Once, you drive beyond the stipulated 60 kilometres per hour, the camera captures the image of your vehicle, processes the tickets of the violation and penalty and off you find a text message on your phone with a fine of Rwf25,000 (Ksh2,826), which increases to Rwf35,000 (Ksh3,956) if not paid within two days.

Now from the rather cooler city—when we drove away it was 21°C—to this umudugudu (village in Kinyarwanda), I meet women who are changing their socio-economic lifestyle. They are welcoming.

The only nightmare I’m facing is the language barrier. At least I’ve learnt to request a cab by saying “kuja kamata mimi hapa”. It’s as broken as that, but I’m properly communicating in this East African nation. They mainly speak Kinyarwanda and French. Few speak English and others, including a unique version of Kiswahili.

“Welcome,” Donatha Uzamukunda says in Kinyarwanda as she ushers us to her homestead.

I sit on the outdoor concrete floor of her semi-permanent house facing her kitchen.

Between the two houses is piped water and a meter locked under a brown metal box.

“There is plenty of water 24 hours,” she says as she walks into her house to get two mid-calf rectangular stools for me and her.

We sit. It is time for the interview.

Since February 2022, Ms Uzamukunda has had less stressful days. She has been more relaxed and healthier, and, in fact, is on the door to exiting the poverty bracket.

With water on her doorstep, she has eight cool hours to spend in her new business of selling bananas, tomatoes and cassava.

Before, she would wake up at 5am, walk to Lake Cyohoha, which marks the boundary between Rwanda and Burundi, and return at 9am.

She had a choice to get water from a public water tap situated in Ngeruka, just five minutes away from her homestead.

She, however, couldn’t because of lack of money. To fill a 20-litre jerrycan, she had to part with FRw20 (Sh2.26) and she needed at least five to meet the daily water needs of her family of nine.

Before her business, which she started two months ago after receiving a FRw120,000 (Sh13,564) grant from a charity organisation, she was a casual farm worker. The job was unavailable during the dry season. Her husband does the same job.

During the rainy season, she would secure herself a job for five consecutive days, earning a daily wage of between FRw800 (Sh90) and FRw1,000 (Sh113), an income that was all spent on food. Nothing left to put aside for the future use.

And it was a gamble between going to fetch water or find the casual work. If we went out to look for the job after 6am, she wouldn’t find it because by 7am, the employers would have already selected their number and had them on their farms working.

And if she went to the lake after 6am, she would collect only dirty water, which had been messed up by the many people collecting it all at the same time. So, she had to forgo trips to the lake to find work. And in the days she went for water, she did only two trips, carrying a 20-litre container on each.

Today, from her business, when she buys merchandise worth FRw20,000 (Sh2,260), Ms Uzamukunda earns a profit of FRw5,000 (Sh565). She saves FRw300 (Sh34) per week.

Broad smile

“I am so happy and confident that the future of my children is guaranteed because I can now save. My savings are growing each week,” she says in Kinyarwanda, but I can read her joy from the broad smile on her face.

She says the water was installed courtesy of a private entity and a non-governmental organisation.

Mugisha Leodomir, Rwanda government’s social economic and development officer for Ngeruka sector, says the water project, as well as issuance of credit, was implemented through a collaboration between a local bank and a charity organisation.

And Ms Uzamukunda is one of the 11 households that have benefitted. The water was piped free of charge but is metered, and so they have to pay for its consumption.

She says in March, she paid FRw700 (Sh79), adding that it’s an amount she afforded without a struggle as she had made enough profits to cover the utility bill.

According to Water and Sanitation Corporation, a State entity established to manage water and sanitation services in Rwanda, RFw720 (Sh81.39) exclusive of value added tax) tariff apply for consumers utilising six to 20,000 litres of water.

Presently, Ms Uzamukunda wakes up at 6am and sleeps at 7pm unlike before when she finished her chores at 8pm.

Raising family

One other thing she is so happy about is that she can now afford meat for her family, which sells at FRw2,800 (Sh316) a kilogramme and she would need two kilogrammes at any given time for meal.

“My children are no longer eating just boiled cassava or beans. They are happy that I now serve them food prepared with cooking oil,” she says, smiling.

But easy access to water is not an absolute cure for all problems faced by women here. Take the example of Bagirinka Belthride, who is raising a family of eight. Her husband is a herder and she has no business.

All she depends on is the casual farm work, which at the moment is non-existent as the wealthier farmers around have all weeded their farms at the onset of the rains in March.

Her only hope for now is that the farmers would soon harvest beans, so she would buy from them and sell. And she will raise capital from the farms should she get a job. Usually, she earns between FRw800 (Sh90) and FRw1,000 (Sh113) after working from 7am to noon.

“In March, we had a water bill of FRw1,600 (Sh181), which we paid without much strain as I had worked. Now, we have a bill of FRw600 (Sh68) and I don’t know how we are going to clear it as we spending all my husband’s earning on food,” she expresses her distress.

While Ms Belthride is cracking her head to find a formula for her dilemma, her neighbour, Gikundiro Epiphanie, who is just across a banana fence, is flying away so fast.

All these three women share one factor—they either wasted eight hours fetching water or lost money in hiring a water carrier to deliver water from the public tap in the days they were too tired to go for it. This was especially after working for five hours on the farms. It would cost them FRw150 (Sh17) for the delivery of one jerrycan of 20 litres, a cost too high for their pockets.

The hours they wasted are part of the 12.5 billion hours that women and girls across the globe spend every day doing unpaid work, going by an Oxfam International report titled Time to care unpaid and underpaid care work and the global inequality crisis, 2020.

In total, the hours lost are equivalent to $10.8 trillion that would go into economies if women were enabled to free these hours and invest them in paid activities.

For Ms Epiphanie, who has three children aged nine years and 18 months, and requires 20 gallons each week, it was a costly venture.

“I would go for three days without cooking, not because I did not have food, but because I lacked water. I was afraid of leaving my young children behind for too long,” she shares as she breastfeeds her son.

Her husband is employed as a herder in Bugesera District. Sometimes he sends money, sometimes he does not. She says she would only depend on farm work to feed herself and her children, but being a new mother with other young children, the burden of water was too heavy on her.

However, her life took a turn for the better in February.

“I am not troubled about water anymore,” she opens up.

“I can take care of my children while at the same time doing my business from my house.”

She sells tomatoes, peanuts, onions and silver cyprinid among other groceries, earning a profit of between FRw500 (Sh57) and FRw1,000 (Sh113) daily.

She is in three savings groups. Every week, in two of them, she saves FRw500 (Sh57) each, and FRw300 (Sh34) in the other.

Already, she has bought a she-goat for FRw30,000 (Sh3,391).

Like her neighbour, Ms Uzamukunda is over the moon that she can not only afford cooking oil but also rice for her children.

“I am so optimistic about my future and the future of my children. I was worried that they would soon waste away because of the intermittent cooking,” she observes while throwing her eyes at her 18-month-old son, who has just started to whimper behind her shop, a table put across her front door and her wares laid out.

Changing lives

Mr Leodomir says their national government intends to replicate the project across the country as it has proved successful in changing the lives of women and their families.

"We are sensitising the people to live in clusters as this makes it easier for the government to provide piped water and electricity,” he says.

Well, in Kenya, more than 830 miles away from Rwanda, Maendeleo Ya Wanawake Organisation (MYWO) is implementing a water harvesting initiative that shares in the vision of the Karugondo project.

By 2024, MYWO hopes one million women will have acquired 10,000-litre tanks for harvesting rainwater for domestic and farm use.

“We have partnered with Equity Bank to provide women with the credit to buy the tanks,” MYWO chairperson Rahab Muiu said during a March 2022 media breakfast meeting at a Nairobi hotel.

The bank also trains beneficiaries in financial literacy, entrepreneurship, digital literacy, and business development, she said.

She said women in 22 counties have bought 10,000 tanks so far. They store huge volumes of water during the rainy season, eliminating the burden of searching for water for hours from distant areas.

“We have seen the lives of women in Kajiado improve,” she said.

“The economic status of the women has improved. They now have time to engage in economic activities.”

Water harvesting is a strategy that has also worked in India, enhancing the resilience of women to the impacts of climate change.

Bhungroo, for instance, is an innovation that has been adopted by women in Gujarat.

It is a rainwater harvesting technique that stores excess rainfall underground, making it more accessible for farming, as it pumps it out for use during dry spells, explains Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) in its 2020 case study report on the initiative.

It indicates that the massive underground reservoir can hold as much as 40 million litres of rainwater, harvested for about 10 days in a year. And it can supply water for about seven months. Naireeta Services, an India-based local social enterprise, introduced the innovation to the women.

“Giving women ownership rights over technology and building their technical skills to install, manage and monitor the Bhungroo system eventually helped them to gain rights over land,” states CDKN.

But for now, something has for sure changed in the lives of the Rwandan women as summarised by Ms Uzamukunda: “I can take a bath any time. I can wash the utensils well and have enough time to clean my house, making it a comfortable place to live in for my family.”

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