Kotido Catholic Diocese is in the north east of Uganda. The Karimojong people who inhabit this isolated area have a reputation of being warlike and in our terms uncivilized. The men and boys spend their time herding their cattle whilst roaming in their search for grazing land and water. The women and girls stay at home, raise the children, cultivate sorghum, build and maintain the homestead, and collect water. The environment is harsh, semi desert. On the occasions that it does rain it is torrential.

Recently there was a cholera epidemic in Kotido District, Uganda, for reasons that should not happen in 2010. Over five hundred people were infected and many died.

The main reason for the outbreak was lack of safe water. During torrential rain excrement was washed from open toilets outside the village into the pond from which people traditionally draw water. Most women in this region have to walk at least one mile, and often much further, to reach a borehole. Imagine the effect of not just the walk in hot sun to the borehole but the carrying of that water back - not just on womenfolk but on old women and young girls. And that is a daily task. Understandably, if there is a pond nearby, albeit polluted, with no awareness of the danger the women and girls will collect water from the pond and not walk to the borehole far away.

SPICMA has already funded a total of thirty boreholes in the Diocese in 2008/9 but in an area about half the size of Wales with 650,000 souls, many more boreholes are needed and with your continued assistance SPICMA hopes to achieve this.

Your generosity is helping an entire community to have clean water and to be healthy