For 45-year-old Rebecca Nyagok, the simple act of fetching water used to be a daily risk. Like many women in Rubkona County of Unity state, the mother of six was forced to trek three to four hours to River Namu because local water points had collapsed. The journey exposed them to severe dangers.
“Some of the women who go and fetch water from the river became victims of rape by the soldiers,” Rebecca said, describing their horrifying daily journeys.
Even when they returned safely, she says the “the river water is dirty and contaminated which always causes bloody diarrhea and stomach pain.”
But the narrative has changed. A renewed sense of hope has returned to the villages after the rehabilitation of 26 boreholes by Tearfund under the project titled “Building Resilient Communities.”
This restoration has brought safety and health back to thousands of people who, for years, were forced to rely on broken, abandoned, or contaminated water sources.
For residents like Rebecca, the repaired borehole in her village means a return to dignity, as they no longer have to travel for hours to look for water.
“After Tearfund rehabilitated our village’s borehole, it really created happiness within us in the community, now at least we have access to clean water, and we women no longer go to the river,” she said.
Now that they have a clean water source, the community is taking active steps to ensure it remains functional.
“We at the community level have formed a water management committee and we are following the rules that were set to manage the water as well as pay a monthly fee for maintenance of the borehole in case it gets broken,” Rebecca added.
The rehabilitation was launched in May 2024. Akudi Rose, WASH Project Officer for Tearfund, explains that the project focused primarily on peacebuilding, Food Security and Livelihoods (FSL), and WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene). They only had a budget for borehole rehabilitation rather than drilling new ones.
To determine where the restoration was needed most, Akudi said they worked closely with local authorities to identify the areas.
“When we arrived at the project location, we did the launch, together with the Ministry of Water, Housing and Sanitation. We involved the pump mechanics who are under the ministry. We had an assessment of all the boreholes in the county to find out how many are functional and how many are not functional,” Akudi explained.
The assessment revealed that out of 71 non-functional boreholes, only 40 were slated for rehabilitation in the whole of Rubkona county. “However, we ended up rehabilitating only 26 due to budget constraints,” she said.
While the restoration of these water points is celebrated by the community, the needs in the county remain overwhelming due to severe flooding and displacement.
Akudi states that due to flooding, five payams remain submerged and inaccessible, altering their original plan to distribute aid across eight payams.
This, she said, has forced the population to congregate in Internally Displaced Person (IDP) settings in the three accessible highlands, placing the 26 rehabilitated boreholes under immense pressure.
“When you look at the number of people concentrating in one borehole, it’s not meeting the sphere standard. Because of the sphere standard, one borehole is only supposed to serve 500 individuals,” Akudi stated.. Currently, a single borehole is serving more than 2,000 households.
“There are few people on the highland who still drink from contaminated sources like flood water,” Akudi reveals. “That is why we are crying to the donors to avail more funding for drilling, so we can rescue the lives of people who still lack access to clean water.”
Despite the challenges, community members continue to praise Tearfund and the Coalition for Humanity for prioritizing areas that had been overlooked in previous interventions.
Residents emphasized that access to clean water does more than quench thirst; it strengthens social harmony, reduces conflict over scarce resources, and supports local economic activities such as agriculture.
For now, the 26 functional boreholes stand as a symbol of resilience. As Rubkona County recovers from the long-term impacts of conflict and flooding, residents like Rebecca finally have a foundation upon which to build a healthier future.
