Genius of the simple
Gourds drying in the sun (Photo: Mike Freedman, Flickr)
If one looks at statistics for the suppression of COVID-19, Timor-Leste is a world leader with only 24 cases and no deaths as of June this year. There are several factors to this success: community awareness and respect for the virus, strong leadership, but significant help has come from a simple invention called the tippy tap.
The Salvation Army’s, Doctor Jim Watt, conceived the idea for the tippy tap in Chiweshe, Zimbabwe, in the late 1970s. Gourds are in plentiful supply there and are commonly used as water and produce carriers, due to their hard shell and useful size.
Dr Watt’s transformative idea was to cut two holes in a gourd – one at the top and one at the tip of the neck. Essentially creating a watering can-like device. The gourd is then suspended by a string hanging off a few sticks, so it can be tipped, allowing the water to put out of the long, thin neck's natural watering spout shape.
The original device was called a ‘mukombe’, the Shona word for ‘cup’, but it soon became known around the world as the ‘tippy tap’.
It was a breakthrough because, until then, hand-washing was typically done in bowls of water, which become contaminated after regular use, and spread disease.
As well as being unhygienic, an average bowl wash uses an estimated 500 mls of water. The flow-rate of the tippy tap means the average wash uses only around 50 mls. With a typical gourd able to hold approximately two litres of water, this meant one gourd provided an enormous 40 washes. A transformative change in water-scarce arid lands. What’s more, the falling wastewater may be directed to a plant placed directly below the gourd, or onto a gravel pit, so reducing the potential for mosquitos to breed in pooled water.
But not every community has ready access to gourds, so these can be replaced with any object that will hold water and can be suspended for tipping, such as a water bottle with a handle. This makes the tippy tap an ideal and versatile invention – and remarkably cheap, if not free. As well as being made using existing items, the design was commercialised for broader distribution in 2013 by the Harare-based Prodorite company who created injection-moulded replica gourds out of polystyrene. However, for most instances, purchasing equipment is not necessary at all.
As an article in Forbes by Andrew Wright titled ‘What Helped This Asian Country To Keep Covid-19 Deaths At Zero?’ noted, hand-washing frequency in Timor-Leste has skyrocketed in recent years, thanks to education by organisations such as World Neighbours, and the installation of more tippy taps. Dr Watt’s inspired idea to improve sanitation for remote and arid communities has saved countless lives since the 1970s, but has come into its own during the COVID-19 pandemic.
See the instructional video.