An On-The-Ground Look At The Water Crisis In Tanzania + How To Help

I was assigned to a project funded by PLAN International designed to ensure people had proper sanitation, hygiene, and access to safe and clean water in the Bahi district—about 50 kilometers from Dodoma City.

According to the national statistics when I started in 2017, over 75% of households in the Bahi district lacked access to basic latrines and clean drinking water. As a result, the district had the highest number of people suffering from Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH)–related diseases in Dodoma.

I worked in a few different villages in Bahi throughout my volunteering, but Mbabala was my host village where I spent the most time.

My life at Mbabala motivated me to dedicate my life to helping solve the water crisis at large.

A village with no electricity, the most common sources of drinking water in Mbabala were unprotected wells. During the dry season, half of the households there experienced water scarcity. When these households did have access to water, it was often dirty. Community members didn’t have a way to filter it properly, so they often relied on straining it through a cloth.

Living in those conditions was really difficult for me, and I wondered how those people could have survived on that kind of sanitation for all those years.

I walked away from that experience passionate about improving Tanzanian communities’ access to basic sanitation facilities, safe and clean water, and hand-washing stations. Today, the situation in Bahi is slightly improving: As of 2018, 48% of people in the region had access to clean water.

This article was originally published by mindbodygreen.com. Read the original article here.

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