Normally roundabouts are free moving, the fact that it’s doing work means that it doesn’t function as a child’s plaything because it doesn’t turn properly. So kids didn’t want to use it (though if they had, it apparently would have taken more hours of continuous play than were feasible to pump enough water for use). They ended up paying kids to “play” on it, but mostly it was adults - women - who were forced to use it, except it took more effort than a standard pump, broke more readily and couldn’t be fixed. Someone should have caught it before they spent any real money on it, but I do rather suspect that the “good enough for Africa” sentiment had, to some degree, an influence on preventing that from happening, as you say. Though the money being spent on plastic catchers makes me think that there’s an inherent appeal in superficially well designed but facile solutions to abstract, distant problems. People don’t want to think about it.
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