While working at Chikumbuso, our team filled any small amount of downtime by playing on the school’s play pump, a merry-go-round-like apparatus which pumps 5 liters of water into a storage tank every full rotation. The children at Chikumbuso love it! With wide smiles and squeals of laughter, they hang upside down and every which way as it spins.
Today, our group had the privilege of meeting the finance director for Water Solutions, the organization responsible for the installations of Play Pumps in Zambia. The director gave us a more in depth presentation of the pumps and their organization. Water Solutions works closely with USAID to target communities in Zambia in need of fresh water. In today’s presentation we saw two pumps. The first was a solar powered pump in a rural area called Chongwe, and the second was the first play pump ever installed 5 years ago at a school very similar to Chikumbuso. We learned that a play pump, at $10,000, is half cost to install as a solar powered pump. The solar powered pump, however, better serves an entire community, because of the large amount of water it collects. On average, a typical household in Zambia will use up to 100 liters of water a day. This pump, fitted with a solar panel that generates 480 watts and 180 volts of energy, collects water constantly into a 2,000 liter tank. People will walk up to 2 kilometers to the pump for their daily water supply.
Both types of pumps respond efficiently to the same need for clean water but with varying solutions appropriate to a community’s context. It is incredible to be in a space and among people who seem to be working successfully together towards a common goal. I feel grateful to witness such simple but ingenious solutions to significant needs.
Chrtstine Hutchinson,
is an art teacher at the Luke Moore Academy in DC.