Desa Kloangpopot, NTT

December 2004, Maumere District on Flores Island (NTT). Five adjacent desa have been identified for the one-year desa siaga program. One of the criteria selected was locating the Sikka Sub-District. Sikka's head of the Community Empowerment Office, Cypri Da Costa, says all government departments are strongly supportive of the program.

Desa Kloangpopot is 30 km and 1 1/2 hours from Maumere in the mountains behind Kota Maumere. Our four-wheel drive travelled at 5-10 km/ hour for the last 20 kilometers.

Happy mothers, healthy babies; their bidan in the background.

Kloangpopot is considered a "wealthy" community. Major crops are vanilla (one of the country's best exports), coffee and chocolate.

The new Kapala Desa, a single woman* sworn in only recently, says both men and women of the village are keen to help pregnant women and ensure safe deliveries, but they don't know how and need more information. They are already talking about how to raise village funds for women in childbirth and identifying a group of blood donors.

If you can walk, you fetch water. A 24 kilometre round trip everyday for the whole village.	Family members bringing back water, a 24km round trip.

But, she says, her people are too concerned about their water supply to commit their energies fully. The rain was due more than 4 weeks ago and her village has no permanent water supply.

Every afternoon, every able member of the village, including children and the elderly, walk 12 bumpy, hilly kms to the tiny water supply they share with two adjacent villages. All washing is done between a tumble of huge boulders, all drinking water collected in another puddle upstream, then carried 12 kms slowly back.

Steep terrain makes farming, walking to the water supply and
emergency access to health services difficult.

Lack of water makes antenatal classes and safe delivery challenging; how do they clean and sterilise? Most men don't go with their wives to classes as they are farming; many women are late if the queue at the water supply takes too long.

The community facilitator will soon return from training and begin community meetings to work out a village improvement program. Already some issues are clear.

* Currently there are six women kepala desa in Flores, three of them in Sikka district.

Desa Kloangpopot, population 2,491; male 1,185, female is 1,306. Number of households, 531, with 278 couples of child-bearing age. Average 40 births a year. Contraception mostly by injection. No maternal or newborn deaths this year, one stillborn last year. 75 women pregnant in 2004, 39 deliveries, 26 assisted by health provider but 13 by TBAs only, because the bidan is often far away, via difficult roads.

Five dukun/ TBAs, three of them trained. Four posyandu, one for each sub-village (each posyandu should have five kader, but there are only nine at the moment).

Just one water supply. Every afternoon Nenek - and more than 4,000 others - collect water here.	Bathing and washing water for more than 4,000 people.