Carrying water before class
Rainwater tanks and girls' latrines at forty-five schools in Zomba. Attendance rose for boys first — until the latrine blocks opened.
The walk for water in Zomba starts before school and finishes after it, and it is mostly girls who walk. Forty-five schools got 50,000-litre rainwater tanks so that the walk could stop — a pipe to the kitchen and the garden, a tap that does not run dry in October.
Attendance rose in the first year, but not evenly. Boys' attendance improved faster than girls', and the termly audit showed why: the tanks solved the water chore, while the latrine situation still kept girls home during their periods. The latrine blocks were in the budget for year two.
“We ordered the tanks first and the latrines second, because the budget said so. The attendance data told us we had it backwards.”
"We ordered the tanks first and the latrines second, because the budget said so," writes Tomas Ferreira, programs director. "The attendance data told us we had it backwards. We moved the latrine schedule forward and the girls' completion rate crossed eighty-nine percent in the second year — still under our ninety percent target, and we say so on the program page."
The tanks need owners as much as roofs need gutters. Each school has a two-person tank committee, trained and given a toolkit, and the maintenance reserve pays for filters and first-line repairs. Forty-one of forty-five tanks were functional at the last inspection; the four failures were all the same gutter brand, which has since been swapped on every site.