Making Time to Make a Living

Photo by Kat Burnside/CRS

KALINAWAN, Philippines — Analiza Litohon puts on a good spread for her family: string beans, cabbage, sweet potatoes, cassava, eggplant, black beans, spring onions. All of it she grows in her own vegetable garden next to the home she shares with her husband, Julito, and their three young children, ages 1 to 4.

Analiza often grows enough produce to sell some to her neighbors, along with extra tilapia she raises in a fishpond. Julito also farms the family cornfield.

Their life sounds pretty ordinary, until you consider that just six months ago, there was no garden. There were no vegetables for the children to eat. There was no fishpond in the yard.

That's because here in the small tribal village of Kalinawan, perched in the steep, remote highlands of Mindanao's Bukidnon province, access to clean drinking water is pretty extraordinary.

Analiza used to make three trips a day, she says, each time hauling home five gallons of water in a plastic container on her head. This was just enough to meet her family's basic needs for cooking, drinking and washing. Little time or water was left over to develop a garden or fishpond. Now in Kalinawan stands an enormous water tank, a durable cement and wire- reinforced reservoir that stores up to 1,320 gallons of clean drinking water. The tank feeds six common washtubs and two standing faucets, enough for all 40 households in the village to tap.

Providing Clean, Safe Water

Before Catholic Relief Services and partners constructed an innovative water system here in December 2006, villagers had to hike more than a mile uphill to fetch water from a mountain creek. A round-trip took a good hour on foot. Providing one basic health necessity — access to clean, safe water — has given residents of Kalinawan the means to build small but secure livelihoods.