ONE - A Face Behind The Numbers

Growing up in a village in Angola, Fatima had to spend up to four hours every day collecting water from the river. It was a dangerous trek. One year, seven of Fatima’s friends were attacked by crocodiles.

But the girls carried a much bigger danger back with them to the village. The water was polluted and spread disease. As a result, when Fatima herself was not sick, she had to spend many hours each week caring for sick brothers and sisters, and when she grew older, for her own sick children.

In 1999, Fatima’s first child died after repeated illness with diarrhea. “Isabel was always sick, she could just never get strong,” says Fatima, hugging her second child, 13-month-old Fernando. “By the time Isabel was Fernando’s age she had been sick a dozen times. But, this boy has never once had diarrhea. Not once.”

In 2000 the Angolan Government and UNICEF teamed up to lay a pipeline from the river to the community where Fatima lived. Latrines, washbasins, taps and showers were then built, together with a filtering system to ensure every drop of water was drinkable. As a result, diarrhea rates dropped almost to zero, child deaths plummeted, and many girls (who no longer had to spend hours every day carrying water) entered school for the first time. A community water and sanitation committee now maintains the system and teaches hygiene to the rest of the community.

Unfortunately, Fatima’s village remains the exception rather than the rule in Angola. Almost three decades of war have left millions of people without clean water or basic sanitation. A huge task remains: drilling boreholes across the country, constructing major pipelines, establishing a national sanitation education campaign, and providing water to schools.

Clean water is an inviolable right, not a privilege. - Carol Bellamy, Former Executive Director, UNICEF

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