Ating Tuo Community Primary School

Ating Tuo is a very remote, super needy community school that had been getting its water from the muddy, hand dug, shallow, well. The school has no actual buildings and so the kids study under trees. Sometimes when the wind is strong the blackboard falls over and hits either the teachers or sometimes the students.

At the school we met a young girl named Gillian Akullo. Who at the time was 13 years old and in 5th grade. She told us she had been having bloody diarrhea and itching all the time. which sounded to us like the symptoms of Bilharzia worms, which can be deadly if not treated. She told us her Mother had the same problem. It seemed logical that if they both had the worms then so did all of the local community that was using the same water hole as their source of drinking water. We offered to pay for her to go to the clinic and get tested and treated. They found that she definitely had worms and also a urinary tract infection, so they treated her with some medicine.

We decided to take the test results to the sub-county health officials to see if they would come de-worm the children at this school. Now that there is a new borehole well, and they have clean water to drink and bilharzia will not be a problem anymore. Their well has an enormous yield – 10,000 liters per hour. They now have plenty of clean water and the school and surrounding community are very happy and much healthier.