Emganwini Secondary School in Bulawayo

At Emganwini Secondary School  in Bulawayo, water is helping keep orphaned students in the classroom.

The Zimbabwe school opened on Feb. 2, 2006, at a time when the country was sinking in spiraling inflation and in the grips of a political crisis that would become increasingly violent as the 2008 elections drew closer.

"I think you can appreciate that (the school) was born at the wrong time, no?” said headmaster Pharo Dube when Oxfam Canada visited the school grounds in 2010. “When there was nothing. No single textbook, no desk, nothing. We were just told, go and open a school and get things moving.”

Three years later, the school has gone from 270 pupils to more than 800. Yet out of 10 classrooms, only six are finished. In four classrooms, children sit on the floor. One classroom is without a roof. A block of three classrooms are without windows, even as the cold season approaches.

About 40 per cent of the school’s students have lost one or both parents to HIV. Some walk more than 10 km to get to the school.

"We have so many challenges, but we still believe we can go on moving,” Dube said.

Zimbabwe’s schools aren’t being supported because donors assume the government has resumed its civic responsibilities, yet there’s no money for salaries or school maintenance. “We know that the government is broke. We don’t know what’s going to happen. The school is not running properly because we don’t have money. We are trying to see what we can do for those pupils because there are some without food, without shoes and so on. “

The school first received a 5,000L tank from Oxfam Canada partner Churches in Bulawayo when the school opened. One of the buildings was outfitted with the equipment needed to harvest the heavy rains that fall during the rainy season.

“If there is no water, there is no schooling,” Dube said. With 800 pupils, they need water for the toilets, for drinking and for the school’s agricultural course. As we speak, students in their uniforms and knee socks work in a large garden behind the school, hauling heavy watering cans of water from the borehole to the garden, dousing fledgling plants in much-needed water.

The school now has three tanks, two holding 5,000 litre and one holding 10,000 litre. Still, it’s not enough. Bulawayo is typically dry and a drought has left a serious situation and the prospect of water rationing.

The water tanks aren’t just about the day-to-day functions of the school. The water is key to projects that help the orphans raise enough to pay their school fees. Dube and his fellow teachers have set up some market projects for them, including a vegetable garden and a chicken coop. Both projects are meant to be maintained by the orphaned students, but they’re currently left hauling water from the borehole to the gardens.

“Not all orphans are well. Some of them we know they’re HIV-positive,” Dube said. Many of them can’t handle the physical strain. “Those orphans cannot move that distance to the borehole; they need the water to be closer to the garden.”

This is why Oxfam Canada has given $2,000 to buy an electric pump that will bring water to the tanks, which are much closer to the gardens.

Water is crucial, that much is clear.  “We need as many tanks as possible because they are serving a purpose,” Dube said. Many students aren’t even drinking the water available at their homes, since much of it comes from boreholes and with water levels dipping so low, the taste is virtually unpalatable.

Parents are now copying the school: they’ve learned to harvest rain and are purchasing their own personal tanks.

“At least we laugh. We motivate ourselves. We are getting nothing, times are difficult, but you must think about the people. If you move forward, you must think about these innocent souls. Once you think about them, you forget everything around you,” he said.

“We start small. Look at these tanks: they are now the envy of everybody here. We started with one tank and we were unsure of what we were doing, but now we see such connectivity.”