Why is Saja dry?

Saja is a small village in Njombe district of southern Tanzania. Access to water remains its biggest challenge. While many NGOs on the ground have long tried to solve the issue, some are beginning to question if change is possible without looking at the bigger picture.
By Saumava Mitra, Saja
The people of Saja have welcomed with open arms every new effort to bring change to their water taps – but to no avail. “Water is the main problem in Saja,” says resident Patiani Nginga.
The ground water level is too low for natural wells, and the village’s small river only flows seasonally. “Saja is the most difficult part of Njombe district in terms of access to water. We tried several times to drill manually there, but we’ve had no major successes. A few wells with rope pumps were also made, but these are almost an hour’s walk away. At the same river, the authorities have constructed a dam but it holds water for only a month or so,” says Rik Haanen, from Southern Highlands Participatory Organisation (SHIPO) which is working to develop the water sector in the area.
Zachariah Thobias is an engineer with Cooperazione Rurale in Africa e America Latina (ACRA). He has been working on the problem in Saja for some time now and has compiled a report on the water situation in the area. The ACRA report shows that though Saja is not the worst off in the ward, the villagers have serious problems during the two or three dry months.

To interfere or not
You get a sense from Haanen’s words that the efforts to improve the water situation are not going well. “People from villages that have difficulty getting water during the course of a year normally move to other areas. If we suppose the world has X billion dollars to spend on providing water to rural communities, then we can provide water to around one thousand dry areas like Saja. But with the same money we could provide ninety thousand rural areas where water is also a problem but creating the access to it is easier,” says Haanen.
Nevertheless, SHIPO has tried to get funds for placing water harvesting systems in Saja. “But I have begun to personally doubt if we – NGOs – should interfere in the natural movement of people. In the end you might see that all our efforts are wasted because the water will never be enough and people will anyway prefer to live in other areas,” says Haanen.
One billion euros
As a way to move forward, Daraja, a local NGO, encourages the people of Njombe to hold their government accountable for its policies. They have started a project to better the monitoring system of existing water points in the area. [related-articles]

The director of Daraja, Ben Taylor, points out that the international donor-funded Water Sector Development Program in Tanzania is one of the biggest in sub-Saharan Africa with a total of around one billion euros to be spent over six years.
“With this kind of money set aside already, there should not be any need to funnel more money into localised projects. We should just try to see that this massive fund actually translates into water and reaches the people as promised in policies, instead of trickling into unseen pockets,” says Taylor.
Miscast votes?
The ACRA report shows that all eight villages in the Saja ward have access only to shallow wells, as well as some old natural ones. The report also notes that most villages are not benefiting from a nearby national water project (Wanging’ombe National Water Scheme).
According to Ray “Baba” Emma, the owner of a tea-and-chips stand in Saja, this state of affairs is punishment for Saja village for overwhelmingly voting for the opposition party candidate in the last election.
Meanwhile, Saja stays dry.