Meet Loreen

The Gift of Transformation, The Gift of Clean Water for Women

Have you ever felt transformed by something? Maybe it was a new car that could finally get you from point A to point B without worrying if a warning signal was gonna show up on your dash. Or maybe you finally got that job that could be a huge next-step in your career.

When we met Loreen Nimwesiga back 13 years ago, she was burdened by the water accessibility issue in Uganda. She would walk about 1.5 kilometers to a stream, seven times a day. This water was boiled before drinking, but it still made her sick. She still feels the weight of that jerry can every day with the ache in her chest. It’s a reminder of life before clean water.

That was before you came along and helped transform her life. In 2008, Acts for Water built a Gravity Flow System in Loreen’s community of Nyakyera (“knee-ah- chair-ah”).

Years later, we visited her in the small shop she now owns selling clothes, bread, tea, and kitchenwares. She holds her newborn boy, Austin, who is dressed in a pastel yellow jumper. He’s just three months old. When 4-year-old Able runs in, Loreen says, “This is my girl! My girl is here!” and smiles.

As we are talking with Loreen, admiring her shop and her beautiful children, she puts her hand on her chest. “I feel some pain,” she says. When she was young, she would lift a heavy jerry can up onto her chest, then onto her head. This was up to forty pounds of water.

“There was one time I bathed in a ditch,” she says, reflecting on a low point in her life before clean water. “Even to wash clothes it was a tug-of-war. I had to take clothes to the bore hole. It was very difficult.” But she brightens.

“Now I can wash them here, at home. It’s very easy. Now I can bathe more than once a day.”

One of the tap stands sits right across the road from her shop, where she and her children collect clean water every day. It means no more long walks to water. And no more lifting a heavy jerry can onto her chest.

Before clean water came, Loreen was a housewife. Her days consisted of digging, washing clothes, all of the typical tasks, including the many long walks for water. She didn’t have her own business, as she was busy from dawn until dusk. It is remarkable what opportunities can open up when access to clean water is given to women.

“Since water was near, it helped me to do other activities,” she says, explaining how she opened her shop, something she’d been wanting to do for  long time. “It was my dream,” she says.

Loreen’s been operating her shop for six years now. “Do you have more dreams?” we ask. “Yes, I have! They are many. One is to enlarge my business, because this one is still small. That is the first dream.”

“I have many dreams for my children. I want to put them in a good school. I want to take Able far, to a nice school,” she says.

“My children are going to grow much more than I. For them, they are fetching water near here. They are lucky.” Sometimes they just walk to the tap across the street with a cup and drink what they need. No jerry can required Loreen’s story is one of many in Nyakyera.

Her friends and neighbours have seen a transformation take place in their community, with electricity and other services arriving.

It’s a modern village now, a place of hope and opportunity, and it all started with clean and accessible water system.