About 80% of the beneficiaries who received hippo water rollers in Otjiwarongo's informal settlement last year have started backyard gardens.

Besides just the benefits of no longer having to carry water containers on their heads, the Ombili residents, who benefited from the donation of hippo water rollers in March last year, have started their own gardens.

This, they say, is due to the fact that fetching water is no longer a challenge as they can roll their 25-litre containers back and forth.

Aletta Cloete, who supports herself with a crutch when walking, says she no longer struggles to go to the community tap.

"I feel very lucky; I am so happy. This has really become easy for us. The hippo rollers are our legs. They are like our cars, because even if they have water, you don't feel the heaviness. I have a garden, and I've planted everything—tomatoes and everything else—in that garden. With the roller, we can go get our own water."

Cloete also has beetroots, onions, mutete, and spinach in her garden.

Another hippo roller, Josef Mandume, says he can now provide food for his family with a garden that he also put up at his house.

"Like us, we are far from the water point; even though we had a wheelbarrow, it was still difficult to go get water, but this roller carries a lot of water; it helps us a lot, and I am so excited that we now have tomatoes, spinach, and a lot of other things."

Others have also started making bricks to replace the corrugated iron that their houses are made of.

"Like the blocks you can see there, out of that excitement of hippo rollers, I can get water easily, and I don't want them to stop here; the hippo rollers must roll up to the village," says Immanuel Tjilombe, a beneficiary of Hippo Water Roller.

The donor, Ignatius Davids, says rolling out the programme to other villages is the idea, but the plan is first to cater for the Otjozondjupa Region.

"Hippo rollers are so expensive that the communities will not be able to afford them, so that is where the NGOs should come in, where faith-based organisations should come in, and where businesses should come in so that they can acquire hippo rollers for their specific town for the targeted individuals to be able to give them."

Each hippo roller costs about N$3,500 and Davids has opened a tuckshop at his place to help acquire funds for the next bunch of hippo rollers to be donated in nearby towns.

He says he has raised N$120,000 on a mission to have enough for 200 hippo rollers.