Wonyamoeh!

In our last piece, we learned that Mount Fako is more than just a mountain. It is a giant natural reservoir. It stores rainwater, filters it naturally, and quietly releases it through dozens of perennial springs that have supplied our communities for generations.

So that raises an obvious question.

If the water is here, why do so many of our communities still struggle to access safe drinking water?

It turns out that finding the water isn’t really the problem. Getting it to people is.

Many of our communities have grown a lot over the years. Water systems that worked well decades ago were built for much smaller populations. Today, the same catchments, storage tanks, and pipes are expected to serve far more people than they were ever designed for.

Some of these systems are simply getting old. Pipes have deteriorated. Others are broken. In some places, the technology used years ago no longer meets today’s needs.

Then there is the mountain itself.

Many of the spring sources are high up the mountain, deep in the forest. Building new catchments, laying pipelines, or even carrying out routine maintenance is not always easy.

Recent insecurity has made that work even harder. In some areas, maintaining existing systems or exploring new spring sources has become difficult.

There’s one more challenge.

A water system doesn’t look after itself. Communities have to work together to protect the springs, maintain the infrastructure, and manage the resource. Where that cooperation weakens, the system begins to weaken too.

The good news is that none of these challenges exist because Mount Fako has run out of water.

The water is still here.

The challenge is getting it to the people who need it.

That is the conversation that led us to the current project.

In the next piece, we’ll introduce the three perennial springs the project team studied and explain why they became the focus of Fako America’s current effort.