This gift in action
Alice Keji lives in a rural community in South Sudan. Today she is an Oxfam-trained water caretaker, who helps look after the community's borehole.
She explains the benefits of having an Oxfam-supported borehole nearby.
During the dry season you had to go miles to get water. You’d have to go three times a day to have enough for cooking, bathing the children and drinking. It could take three hours."
Now, because women don't have to spend so long fetching water, they have more time for their families. People can keep themselves clean and everyone has drinking water that doesn’t make them ill.
"We have been crying here for water for many years. Then we heard that there was an organisation who were willing to help us – that's how Oxfam came and told us what we wanted to hear, and they drilled our borehole."
This positive response is reflected by other residents: "Previously, there was a lot of sickness and diarrhoea because of dirty water. Now everyone can drink water without worrying about getting sick. I have seen a very great difference since this borehole was drilled. Families now get to eat twice a day, because before women used to be all day searching for water. Women also have more time to do other things – cultivating, looking after the children, cooking. And we can wash our clothes and ourselves. Before you would not have found us looking so well…with clean clothes and everything."