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Jakarta Post

Where wells amount to life

Source: People in Buton and Muna regencies use well water for washing clothes, bathing, cooking and drinking due to the lack of sources of clean water

Nurni Sulaiman (The Jakarta Post)
Buton, Southeast Sulawesi
Wed, May 15, 2013

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Where wells amount to life

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span class="inline inline-none">Source: People in Buton and Muna regencies use well water for washing clothes, bathing, cooking and drinking due to the lack of sources of clean water.

Aridness is common in Buton and Muna island regencies, as well as neighboring areas in Southeast Sulawesi, making it difficult for locals to find clean water for daily consumption.

'€œIt'€™s a dilemma for Buton and Muna residents. We face aridity in the dry season and floods in the rainy season. But in both seasons clean water remains hard to get,'€ said Augustinus La Idaru, secretary of Lakapera village in Gu district, recently.

For clean water, local villagers, including children and older women, must walk more than 10 kilometers to public wells that retain water during droughts. There are few such water sources that meet the collective needs of local village residents.

One of the wells, which is used by people from several villages, is the Kulitiri well, where the long queue of water collectors, according to Perintis village head La Kaosi Simon, can last until 3:00 a.m. Located in Kulitiri village between Lakapera village in Buton and Makantona village in South Tongkuno district in Muna, the well is almost two meters in diameter with an 80-centimeter-high concrete rim for safety.

Loaded: The women of certain Buton villages must take water from wells and carry it home.
Loaded: The women of certain Buton villages must take water from wells and carry it home.'€œThis well has lately received renovation aid to reinforce and heighten its rim so that its water won'€™t be contaminated by detergents and other waste. Its cleanliness should be maintained as this source is the only one here that supplys water in the dry season. It'€™s our life,'€ said Simon, concurrently facilitator of Caritas Makassar, a charitable agency of the Archbishopric of Makassar that is providing the aid.

'€œFive wells were provided with renovation aid and two others were dug by local communities on a self-help basis in 2011 and 2012. They'€™ve carried out replanting around the wells for nature conservation and water reserves to prevent the sources from being exhausted,'€ Simon said.

Over 2,000 people in the border areas between Muna and Buton use the water from these wells and only these wells.

La Idaru said other aid had come from the National Community Empowerment Program (PNPM) for four wells, but they were small and frequently dried up, forcing villagers to return to Kulitiri'€™s well, which never dries up. '€œFor the future, we hope to receive aid for the building of water collection basins around Kulitiri so that the well water can be distributed through pipes. This requires at least Rp 200 million [US$20,600],'€ he said.

Simon said clean water was also derived from rainwater collected in drums given by Caritas Makassar. With no regional drinking water company'€™s (PDAM) piping, locals built their own distribution channels, but as the rainwater got muddy and smelly during rainy days and flows frequently halted, they abandoned their pipes and turned to wells.

Meanwhile, not all the well water is safe for drinking due to its fairly high lime content. '€œIt turns whitish when boiled. We'€™re told that it contains a lot of lime,'€ said Waori, 50, a local well water consumer.

In Kulitiri, while two girls were washing clothes three youths were going by motorbike back and forth, carrying cans of water. '€œThey'€™re getting drinking water,'€ said Irma, one of the girls.

The people of Buton and Muna generally make a living as cashew farmers, alongside vegetable growers and a small number of manual workers in Bau-bau in Buton and other cities in Indonesia, as well as working as migrant workers in Malaysia.

'€œThe last time we had no clean water was in the 1970s. In the 1980s, droughts frequently occurred, resulting from excessive deforestation at the time. Now we have to face seasonal aridity as a consequence,'€ said Simon.

'€œWe used to drink water from dabi dabi [a species of bamboo], now these trees are rarely found,'€ said Lakapera secretary La Idaru.
At work: Irma, 10, and Isnawati, two siblings from Bantea village, wash their clothes at a well because there is no regional drinking water company (PDAM) in their village.
At work: Irma, 10, and Isnawati, two siblings from Bantea village, wash their clothes at a well because there is no regional drinking water company (PDAM) in their village.

Emanuel K. Parapak, a Catholic priest heading Caritas Makassar (Camar) that covers the areas from Buton to Toraja, said the aid program for the Buton community was under the category of urgent need.

'€œLocal people need clean water badly for consumption, prompting Camar to assist their well development and supply drums to contain rainwater,'€ he said.

The hospitality of the people of Buton to visitors to the island and the beauty of its sea and nearby islets makes it often likened to a '€œparadise on earth'€. But sadly, the natural beauty is not coupled with adequate infrastructure, making the place perhaps more akin to hell.

Severely damaged roads scattered with large stones will rock car passengers. Moreover, old cars from the 1990s still dominate the regency'€™s public transportation.

'€œAfter visiting the area several times, the road conditions have remained, without significant change,'€ said Joseph Christopher, Caritas Indonesia program manager hailing from Jakarta and touring the regency.

In fact, along the way from Buton to Muna, a vast expanse of deep blue sea offered a lovely but bumpy
spectacle.

'€œFor decades, the roads in my village home here have never been repaired. I wonder when the government is going to heed our needs,'€ said Syaharah, a Muna worker now living in Penang, Malaysia.

'€” Photos by JP/Nurni Sulaiman

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