Delighted squeals ring across the Udabage Plantation – four boys are checking out the new showers. Before the installation of the communal open-air bathroom you could only bath in the nearby stream.

The showers are part of a Fair Trade water project benefitting 72 families, each tap serves six families and everybody can use the four showers. Every family pays a one-time amount of 100 Rs for the tap installation and a monthly charge of 20 Rs for using it. The water committee’s members collect the money and it’s their job to periodically control and maintain the taps and pipes – so the families are paying for the service the water committee has to provide.The Fair Trade committee’s members opines that a small financial contribution of the beneficiaries makes them think of the project as theirs and to handle it in a responsible manner. To have access to water directly in their homes the families have buy a water meter first (the costs of about 2,000 Rs can be paid off for two years). That’s the requirement for a seperate pipe. But it’s totally worth it and a huge change for the community where the one water source nearby went dry for two to three months every year and the people had to carry every single liter some 500 m from another spring.

The showers are located centrally near the dwelling houses and as near as possible to W. J. Christian’s workshop. He’s the man who can fix (almost) anything – from window frames to fans. But above all he sharpens the tappers’ cutting knives. When he was a baby, Mr. Christian contracted polio, his legs are crooked and wothout muscles, it’s very dificult for him to move around on all fours. But with his self-built motorised tricylce he gets everywhere he wants. And the water project increases his independency even more: from now on he’s able to bath himself without any help and one of the taps is installed just behind his house.