Water access is a struggle for those living in the rural areas of Zimbabwe, especially in our region of interest, Hwange West, which can be extremely dry and arid.  Villagers often have to walk many kilometres to get drinking water, which then has to be carried back to the homestead, traditionally in a 10 litre bucket on the head, by women and girls.  The Jafuta Foundation is trialling an innovative design, the hippo roller, which allows up to 5x the capacity of a normal bucket to be rolled along the ground, either in front or behind.

The effort to push or pull the roller is equal to carrying a bucket but the quantity is substantially higher.  Using the hippo roller improves health and hygiene as well as saving time, which means education, household tasks and food production receive more attention.

So far we have distributed 2 rollers to see how they are received in the communities.  One of these families reports making 4 trips to collect water for 2 days instead of the 12 when they were using the bucket.  That's a 75% saving in time and energy.

In our areas of interest, we aim to allocate one to each school that does not have direct access to water.