‘Mantsali Phakoana
For children living in Lesotho’s remote villages, schooling is a daily struggle.
Many live in areas or attend schools with no access to clean water, sanitation facilities, safe roads or foot bridges, thus making it difficult to get to school.
Lack of these facilities is having a devastating impact on the children’s rights to education and good health.
According to World Vision Lesotho, 80 percent of the rural population in Lesotho still collects drinking water from unprotected sources.
According to the non-governmental organisation (NGO), the majority of them travel more than 30 minutes to collect the unsafe water.
Moreover, 66.2 percent of the rural population lack access to improved sanitation facilities, while 33.8 percent of rural families continue to rely on open defecation.
This is a cause for concern.
Remote areas in Leribe, Berea and Qacha’s Nek districts to mention a few, are still threatened by lack of clean water, infrastructure and sanitation facilities.
Pupils attending Mokhachane, Bela-Bela, Lebakeng and Matsikhoaneng primary schools in the three districts respectfully, are hit hard by these challenges. Children and women walk long distance to fetch water, which is contaminated because they share it with animals.
In Lesotho, primary schooling up to Grade 7 has been free since 2000. It was only in May 2010 that attendance at primary school was made compulsory.
Despite the free education policy, most children struggle to stay in school. Many walk about two hours to school each day and by the time they arrive, they are hungry and thirsty and are unable to concentrate. Some of them show up without proper uniforms, coats or shoes required to stay warm and healthy.
The lack of resources to maintain the infrastructure leaves some schools’ classrooms often dilapidated with caved in roofs, broken windows, no heating and no desks. Most of these challenges mostly are seen in government and church schools.
A parent to two boys in grade 3 and 6 at Mokhachane primary, ‘Marethabile Maichu (43) narrates the hardships children have to go through for their education.
Maichu says there are no pit latrines at the school and as a result, pupils are forced to relieve themselves in the open. This has been the situation since the school was founded in the 60s.
She further indicates that there are no water taps in the yard and in the village of Ha-Matona, where the school is based, making it impossible for them to drink, wash hands or dishes before or after eating, even after using the toilet.
The pupils are advised to bring their own bottles of water from home. This, Maichu points out, has always been a challenge especially for children from far villages who have to carry heavy bottles of water.
She further states that another option for children to access water is for them to walk almost 30 minutes to the well. But still, the water at the well is unsafe because it is unprotected and shared with livestock.
The well dries up in winter, especially after the sun has risen. This means both women and children are forced to wake up in the early morning hours to fetch water before it dries up.
“The sight of young girls queuing up for water as early as 5:00am, especially in winter when it is dry and water quantity from well is limited, would make you feel sorry for them. Most of these children are staying with their grannies so they have no choice but to wake up that early so that when they come back from the well, they prepare for school.
“If they do not wake up at that time, they will definitely go a whole day without water. The water itself is not clean because the well is unprotected. What makes it worse is that we drink from the same well with cattle. Sometimes we see small worms in the water, but we still drink it because we are in desperate need of it.
“That area is a disaster. I am not going to talk much about the lack of classrooms and very bad roads because we can still live without them. They do make our lives difficult though. But when it comes to lack of clean water and toilets, it is really a disaster,” she explains.
Maichu also states that only a few families in the village where the school is based can afford pit latrines. Most rely on open defecation, which is not even safe for women and girls.
Sharing the same sentiments, community councillor for Bela-Bela Electoral Division (ED) in Koeneng community council, Thabo Maboee, says villagers around the area are also faced with a similar challenge.
He noted that lack of clean water and sanitation facilities have compromised women and girls’ privacy and put them in danger of becoming victims of rape or worse, ritual murder.
Villagers from Ha-Kopi, Ha Matooane, Likhutlong, and Morapamiseng, Maboee says, still have to walk at least three kilometres to fetch unclean water from unprotected sources.
He says NGOs like World Vision Lesotho have tried to break the cycle by drilling a borehole tap at ‘Malebesana and that has reduced the work burden for villagers.
Some of the water sources are hidden within the forests and another one is in a deep donga, very far from villages.
“For girls, the situation is worse. When they get home from school around 2pm, they do not have time to play with other children but they have to go and fetch water.
“The water sources and their locations put the girls’ lives in danger of being raped or killed,” Maboee noted.
Most villagers from Morapamiseng do not have pit latrines, he added.
However, he believes that decentralisation of local government councils could be the answer to most of the community challenges including lack of clean water and infrastructure.
Maboee says if the local councils’ powers could be increased, lack of village development would be a thing of the past.
This is because the councils are at the grassroots along with communities and therefore know and witness their day-to-day struggles and needs.
Infrastructure crises are also threatening to hamper children’s performance at school. The aforementioned schools are among those that have not been performing well for a long time.
Bela-Bela primary principal, Amelia Nkhahle, says lack of footbridges has made it difficult for children from the villages across the Bela-Bela River to attend classes well, especially when it rains heavily.
Nkhahle further notes that lack of access to water is another challenge faced by the school with an enrolment of 400 pupils. The water crisis, she says, lessens on rainy days because they harvest water with the school’s storage tank.
Nkhahle also revealed that the people who are hired to feed the pupils are forced to buy water from the few households that have water taps since the public taps are dysfunctional.
All these challenges have a serious impact on pupils’ performance which in turn affects the reputation of the school.
According to the principal, pupils take a maximum of two weeks without attending classes during rainy days. Some pupils sometimes end up dropping out altogether due to being behind with lessons.
Nkhahle says lack of safe water can throw even the best performing students off balance while they deal with stomach pains and diarrhoea.
At the moment, she says, pupils do not wash hands before and after eating, and after using the pit latrines because there is no water in the school yard.
“Most of the children here hang their lunch boxes on windows of their classrooms after eating, and use them again the next day without washing them. They just wipe them with a hand or a jersey and proceed to the kitchen.
“We have tried to ask for help from both government and NGOs without success. Water is life, where there is no water there is no hygiene,” she stresses.
In an effort to implement goal 6 of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) -achieving universal access to safe and affordable drinking water for all – the ministry of education and training with support from the African Caribbean Pacific countries, the European Union and the UN-habitat recently installed water tanks in some schools.
The schools which benefited from this initiative include: ‘Makong Primary School, Ke Tšepile Primary School, Kananelo School of the Deaf, Liraooeleng Primary School, Matholeng Primary School, Mesitsaneng Primary school, Thaba-Nts’o Primary School, Mosaqane Primary School, Loti Primary School and Mokhotlong High School.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) report that 2.1 billion people around the world go through the day without access to clean, safe water in their homes for cooking, washing, or bathing whenever they need.
The task of providing water for households falls disproportionately to women and girls, especially in the rural areas, they say. “Water is a human right, critical survival and development. A sufficient supply of biologically and chemically safe water is necessary for drinking and personal hygiene to prevent diarrhoea, trachoma, intestinal, worm infections, stunted growth among children and numerous other deleterious outcomes from chemical contaminants like arsenic and lead,” the organisations add.
