4 minute read
WATER CHANGES EVERYTHING: The Ripple Effect in Nkoansiyo
It’s a story that’s been a decade in the making.
Elizabeth starts her day before dawn, making milky chai for her daughter Aviela as she prepares for school. Solomon, Aviela’s little brother, is four, and fast asleep. Aviela, who is nearly 11, pulls on her uniform and gathers her books. Before she leaves the house, Elizabeth ties her shoes and straightens her collar. Nkoansiyo Primary is just down the road, Aviela joins her classmates for the walk.
Next, Elizabeth prepares her husband’s lunch – she will be away all day, building rainwater harvesting systems, while he stays at home with Solomon and their livestock. The kitchen she cooks in is part of an old structure. Their new home was built with her Save the Rain income. She picks greens from her greenhouse and draws water from her tank. Her cattle and goats provide milk. She farms corn and beans to feed her family. Elizabeth is both the breadwinner and the breadmaker.
She has been building rainwater harvesting systems since we first arrived in Nkoansiyo in 2015. She is a member of Anna’s team, a group of women whose day job it is to deliver transformation through strength, love, and the medium of water. Each tank they build is a bridge from scarcity to abundance – bridging that gap enables their own rise to greater abundance. They are a testament to the exponential power that is unleashed when the natural forces of women and water are combined.
When we arrived in Nkoansiyo, our work brought us into people’s homes and into their lives. Building tanks builds trust. Disabled children who had been hidden in shame and secrecy came to light for the first time. We had already constructed a 150,000-liter system at the school, so we added ramps and wheelchairs to pave the way for their education. As a result, Aviela and her peers unlearned the stigma that traditionally surrounds disability. She was among the students who celebrated the graduation of Nkoansiyo Primary’s first disabled students last year. Each of those graduates now attends secondary school on a scholarship provided by Save the Rain.
As we approach 20 years of Save the Rain, we’ve been thinking about generational change. Elizabeth’s story speaks to the ways that can manifest. If you were to plot the tale of her days, 2015 would stand out as a clear pivot point – a watermark, if you will. This moment’s change meant that Aviela stepped into a different life than her mother’s.
Aviela has never known what it is to walk for water – and she never will. Hers is a world where ‘water’ and ‘enough’ are synonymous. Her concept of ‘mother’ is a woman who embodies power, provides for the family, and is respected by her community for her strength and her work to bring about transformation.
It’s a story that’s been nearly a decade in the making. Since its pivotal starting point, Elizabeth and the women of Save the Rain have built hundreds of domestic tanks in Nkoansiyo alone, and thousands more across the other communities we serve. Multiply the transformation that rippled out from Elizabeth across tens of thousands of daughters, and you begin to see what generational change means to us.
This vantage point yields a poignant perspective on legacy. The headmaster of Nkoansiyo Primary once told us that Save the Rain will be remembered forever – but that is the opposite of our intention. If scarcity is what brought us here, we want sufficiency, plenitude, and thriving abundance to wash that memory away.
Change can be immediate and obvious, and slower and more subtly powerful. Elizabeth has subverted the dynamic of water whose scarcity once enslaved, to a medium through which she channels abundance.
For Aviela, though, it’s not just about never wanting water; it’s about being born into the safety of being able to take that for granted. We will know we’ve been successful if, in years to come, no one remembers our name. Aviela is among the first harbingers of that success.
