This blog is dedicated to our Journalists for Rainwater Harvesting. They will report on examples of rainwater harvesting in their own countries and communities, helping us raise the profile of rainwater harvesting - both locally and globally.

Thursday 16 August 2012

Rain Harvest will solve water scarcity in Uganda- Businge


Many call her a traditional woman because she still believes that every family should harvest water when it is rain season for future use. 

A practice, she learnt from her grandmother, Grace Businge says that it is shame people in Uganda to decry the scarcity of water, while God bless  us with the most rain patterns in the world.

Grace has placed a tank in each and every house to tap water

She has place tanks in every house that has a facility to tap water including the roofs of her pig, poultry houses and latrine to stock water for future purposes.

“Right from my childhood I knew that harvesting rain water can save time, women and children who trek long distance in search of water during the dry seasons,” she says.

Businge, 49, a resident of Nsoro I, Kitereza ward, Kijura town council in Kabarole district says that the prolonged drought has not affected her because she stocks water and use it to irrigate her crops while others are crying.

Businge has no kind words for women who have abandoned the practice of harvesting water in the name of modernity. 

She says that if women were harvesting water, Uganda would not have had the food crisis and increase in prices would not surface.

“I was hearing people crying that food is becoming expensive but my family was not affected because I has enough millet, beans, maize, dry yams, cassava, obutuzi (mushrooms), and others things in stock. All my crops are green as you can them because I had to irrigate them,” she says.

Businge also save the money she would have spent on water bills and she constructed an underground tank of 50,000 litres to tap rain water.

 “Harvesting water is very important for every family; it’s a cheap way of getting clean water. It also save them from searching for water during dry season like now we are experiencing,” she adds.


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