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The big nurse strode up to the car and greeted the driver by banging her fist against his. I was surprised. Instead of the long, intimate meeting of two sweaty, microbe-rich palms in an ordinary handshake, it was a fleeting contact between two dry, bony surfaces.

Even Watsomba district, far away in the rolling hills of eastern Zimbabwe, knows the anti-cholera handshake they use in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital and the epicentre of a devastating cholera epidemic.

But the danger is potentially close by, said Sister Mercy Maodzwa – only 20 kilometres (13 miles) away at a squatters’ camp on the Mutare river, fouled by sewage and the detritus of gold panners.

Letter from the Editor

The global financial crisis means charities are struggling as never before to raise funds and meet a sudden surge in demand for their services

Multimedia

• Video: Corinne Bailey Rae on why she supports Pump Aid

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BACKGROUND

• Arrival of elephant pump trumpets a great day

• Green shoots of recovery

• Support three charities in our Christmas Appeal

• Who cares? I do

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Multimedia

• Graphic: how the Elephant Pump works

• Pump Aid website

“There was a cholera outbreak there last year but one. People fetch water from the river. It can happen again any time,” she said.

But where we are now is Govingo, a small village with a constant traffic of women with buckets balanced on their heads to collect water from one of several Elephant pumps in the area, sealed from the outside, so that little or no dirt blows in. The pumps are raised well above ground – so no mud or pathogens brought in by the feet of people and animals seep in – and pumped from the outside by a large metal handle, so no dirty hands touch the rope that passes through the water in the well.

“The first thing I ask people who come to the clinic with diarrhoea is whether they use an open well. We don’t have diarrhoea in this area because the pumps’ water is protected. Those who don’t have the pumps, they get diarrhoea.”

At Govingo well, Mavis Chimteng-ise shouted at her son for playing with the water as it came out the pump. “We can feel sure about our water,” she said. “We know our water is safe.”

About 100 metres away was another pump, a large robust-looking machine with a long, heavy diagonal handle sticking out from its head. It is a Bush pump, designed by Harare’s Blair Research Laboratory, renowned for its innovations of simplicity and strength in water and sanitation technology. Thousands of Bush pumps were bought by the Government to bring clean water to rural settlements all over the country, and they have been used and copied all over Africa.

It was installed in 1990, but like many others around the county, stopped working after ten years.

“It’s a great design and it’s very strong, but it costs ten times more to build and install than the Elephant pump,” said Amos Chitungo, Zimbabwe director of Pump Aid, one of the charities chosen by The Times for its Christmas appeal.

“Spare parts are difficult to find and are expensive. They need specialised technicians to repair them, and specialised tools. There are supposed to be official ‘pump minders’ in every district, but they move on.”

Govingo got its Elephant pump in 2005, and when the rope and washers in the mechanism wore out last year, said Douglas Makomva, the community’s pump mechanic, it took 30 minutes to change, and it has been fine since.

Poverty-stricken rural communities like those in Watsomba can function on inexpensive technology without a lot of help, which Zimbabwe’s Government is incapable of providing. Pump Aid’s aim is to find the cheapest, functional and adaptable materials for the Elephant pump.

In a blistering hot corrugated iron workshop in the city of Mutare 80 kilometres south of here, David Katiyo, the Pump Aid technician, is trying out cheap locally manufactured sisal rope to replace the nylon rope that raises the water from the bottom of the well.

Soon after he joined three years ago, Mr Katiyo built from scrap metal a simple plastic injection mould device to make the washers that hold the water on its way up to the outlet pipe. For material, he melts down “scuds”, plastic bottles for traditional beer, or empty cement bags of woven plastic.

He has also devised a new rope guide, the mechanism at the bottom of the well that feeds the rope and washers into the upward pipe of the Elephant pump to replace the expensive stainless steel version in use now. Mr Katiyo’s looks like an elaborate wire toy they sell to tourists in township markets, but it has only two moving parts, of short lengths of scrap plastic pipe that can be replaced for next to nothing when they wear out.

Steven Makunike, 55, was one of Pump Aid’s first beneficiaries, in 1996, after trials were conducted on his 22-hectare (54 acres) smallholding in Watsomba. Fourteen metres deep, the well has been watering neat rows of 125 apple trees, several kinds of vegetables and maize that he sells locally. His huts’ thatch is trimmed, there is a lawn in the courtyard and shrubs and flowers.

Before the Elephant pump, he and his family of eight children had to hoist water out of the open well and carry buckets to water the crops. “It was very laborious,” he said. Turning the pump handle was much easier and more efficient but still they had to carry buckets. Then he built a reservoir from which he ran a hose. His next project is to put in underground pipes to water the fruit trees.

“Since 1996 I haven’t changed the rope and the washers once, and I use the pump all the time,” he said. He smiled the smile of a satisfied perfectionist.