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build simple foot bridges.
Well safety is difficult. Small children will investigate wells, or try and jump over them or even forget they are there when they play.
Most urban wells do not have a surrounding wall, although these are easy to build with a couple of hundred bricks and a bucket of cement, nor are they properly capped with a decent lid that a small child cannot move.
And even when they are capped, it is sometimes difficult and highly inconvenient to keep that heavy lid on except when an adult is actually drawing water; just think of the hassle whenever someone needs a few buckets and has to keep going to the well to get another.
That is why people should build walls.
But the result of no wall or no lid, and both are needed, is that children die.
The other problem is rivers, more common in rural areas but Harare has its share with the Mukuvisi.
By March, most rivers are flowing well, especially this year.
It is all very well for safety experts to suggest people should not cross a flowing river, but if the nearest bridge is 10km away, or even 1km away, and dinner is across the river then people will take chances.
Few realise that even a shallow river can have a fast strong flow and rocks that have been wet for a while will be very slippery with algae growth.
Adults can lose their footing in these conditions, let alone children who are light enough to be swept away and then drown. Yet foot bridges are simple and cheap to build and could save a lot of lives and make life a whole lot easier for many rural communities.
Good hard surface fords would allow livestock to be moved and for people, in groups, to wade across.
We would like to suggest that some appropriate engineer designs a set of simple bridges, using materials that are readily available in most communities such as gumtree poles, wire and nails. Tools and construction skills should be those possessed by most village carpenters or handymen.
Such designs could be made widely available and should not cost very much, especially if the timber is available in a community woodlot.
A few dollars for hardware and a modest fee for the carpenter should mean such a life-saving footbridge could be built for less than US$100.
Councils and donor agencies specialising in micro projects could provide much of that, but a few villages might well combine and find the cash themselves if they know what to do and if the results will turn a long walk or dangerous wade into a simple walk with dry feet.
As we have noted before a dozen such footbridges in Harare would make life infinitely easier for tens of thousands of people who have to cross the poorly bridged Mukuvisi splitting the city in half, or even some of the smaller rivers like the Marimba or lower Chiripagura.
Drivers tend not to notice the bother, since they can easily go a few kilometres to the nearest bridge, but their children notice when they have to wade to school or clamber over dangerous rocks or along slippery pipelines.
Too many decisions are made by car drivers, rather than the majority.
At the same time we need to drum home water safety to everyone.
Teaching people to swim can help, but no one can swim in a well and you have to be a strong swimmer to cope with a fast flowing river. And with so many of those dying being small children, the safety campaign has to concentrate on their families. Wells must not be left unprotected, even for a minute. Children must never cross a river without an adult.
These are simple rules, but they have to be followed fanatically; just one lapse and someone could die.
And if simple technology, simple footbridges and simple well walls, were more available then the dangers would be so much less.
Online Reporter