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Case Studies
Quiet Living Farm – NW0080
Donor: ONE Water & The Co-operative
Location: Skuinsdrift Village, Groot Marico North West Province, South Africa
Date installed: 20 January 2007
Close to the Botswana border is a region the local Batswana people call ‘Madikwe’ for its red running water. The irony is that the water does not run all that often. The Groot Marico River only flows after the rains once a year. When it does rain, it carries all the red loamy soil in its current rendering it undrinkable.
Clean drinking water for the area is in short supply so when Jeanne Du Toit, came across a broken hand pump on the farm, she immediately set about getting the borehole tested for a PlayPump® water system.
Cattle farming and agriculture are the main economic activities in the region where only the hardiest crops like tobacco, chillies, sunflowers and corn will grow – but not without water.
For the six hopeful farmers that bought the Quiet Living Farm through the help of the government’s land redistribution program, they believed the government would provide the seeds, the borehole and the skills needed to help them become established and economically independent. Unfortunately, the support has been slow in coming. As another planting season comes and goes, the farmers wait patiently for the government to fulfil the promise.
For more than twenty years, Arno Faul has lived and worked in the area as a community worker. “In 1996, when the new government closed down the Rural Foundation it left over 200 projects stranded. It was only after a German youth volunteer had seen the void left first hand, that we received a commitment from the German South African Youth Association to help get our project back on track. We called it the Madikwe Rural Development Programme.”
Since then, Faul has established a community food garden and succeeded in having the entire community on the farm voluntarily tested for HIV / AIDS. “Without the PlayPump” says Faul, “the health of this community would be far worse and the residents of Quiet Living Farm would have to walk up to three kilometres to fetch water from a neighbouring farm.”
Lerato Mogapi is a 12-year old girl that lives on the farm and attends school three kilometres away.
Lerato’s mother has been ill for many years and cannot walk. Lerato’s father works on the platinum mines over 100 kilometres away and only comes home on the weekends. This leaves Lerato to not only takes care of her 3-year old brother when she returns from school but often to also prepare the evening meal.
She remembers having to walk very far to collect water when the hand pump on the farm finally broke down. Now that a PlayPump® has been installed she no longer has to spend three hours of her day fetching the 100 litres of water needed for her family and has been able to spend more time on her school work.
"My family does not own a wheel barrow, so I carry one 25 litre bucket at a time on my head. The PlayPump® is very close to my house, so now I can play with my friends on the merry go round and still have time for my homework. English is my favourite subject now!” says Lerato.
In this desperately poor community, where the only jobs available are causal labour on bigger farms, Lerato’s renewed commitment to school offers her a chance at a brighter future. “I am going to be a nurse when I finish school and come back and help my community.”
Written by: Kristina Gubic
Lerato Mogapi, aged 12.
“If it was not for the PlayPump, we would have had to abandon our farm a long time ago.” Mpho Montjyo
