Nedbank Foundation has done it again! The Foundation added a further 600 Hippo water rollers to their 2011 sponsorship of the Hippo Water Roller Project.
This time the communities of the towns of Lusikisiki and Flagstaff in the Ingquza Hill Municipality in the Eastern Cape took ownership of the rollers.
The handover was held on 21 November 2011 and local residents of 12 villages in the area attended the joyous occasion.
News Coverage:
The New Age - Eastern Cape, 22 Nov 2011
For Noncedile Tshawe, 53, from Cabekwane location in Goso village in Lusikisiki, water has been an ongoing struggle. She has to fetch her daily requirements from the river for her family of seven.
Tshawe said she walked an hour to the river and back just to get water using a 20-litre bucket, which she carried on her head. The road between the river and Cabekwane location was mountainous and forested, said Tshawe.
"I need 60 litres of water every day and I had to walk six hours a day to get water," said Tshawe.
"I am so glad that I will only go once to the river and skip other days. These rollers are so huge we will have more water," said Tshawe.
Among the roller recipients was Nolizwi Sibakwa, a Grade 11 pupil from Cabekwane, who has had to raise her siblings since Grade 2.
She has to travel more than 1km every day to fetch water for washing and cooking. "I am so grateful for the roller. We have struggled," said Sibakwa.
Noncedile Tshawe from Goso Rural village, about 10kms away from Lusikisiki town, said she has walked about an hour down the terrain mountain to fetch water in the river daily with a 20 litre bucket full of water for many years. She is a person who likes her garden to always be green as she plants vegetables, but long distances to fetch water for vegetables at the streams makes her work hard.
"When I come home from the river I sit down to rest because the river is too far from our area. We have no taps of water and we are still relying on streams for water," said Tshawe after she received a hippo water roller from Ned Bank (sic) to fetch water at the river on Thursday.
She said when it is raining and wet it is difficult to descend down the mountain to the river to fetch water, but she hopes that hippo water roller will make her hard daily journey easy.
She said her family is relying to her to fetch water for drinking because her children are still young and they won't manage to carry heavy bucket of water far from their home. She hopes that water rollers will make their life easy and they will push it down to the mountain to fetch water.
"I am very happy to get such water hippo roller after I battled many years carrying water on my head from down from the mountain," said Nozamile Dinge.
