It Takes a Village . . .

Day 13

Locales: Magawako

Quote: “The water of the river flows on without waiting for the thirsty man.” ~ Kenyan Proverb

Tales from the Trail: On our first full day with our Water1st companions, I’m afraid I fell victim to some food-borne bug and was down for the count on Tuesday. Luckily, my husband, Dave, was still standing and able to join our crew. So he graciously offered to write a guest post for the day for which I am very grateful. So here is Dave’s account of the first day with Water1st, International, and our peek at the innovative new piped water systems it is supporting in Kenya:

Tuesday was our first day visiting Water1^st projects.  Water1st, based in Seattle, partners with local charities to install water systems in countries with great need.  That way, they can apply their expertise gained from installing such projects in other third world countries with the expertise of in-country charities who know how to get thingsdone where the projects are.  Their philosophy is to select a village install running water at every residence and school, prioritizing those with the most urgent need. While they obviously can’t bring water to an entire country, they have spent a great deal of time developing a model for making these systems work and last, and they hope that other villages and charities will see this and build more systems.

We learned some things that are fairly shocking to us Westerners.  Around the world, 26% of people do not have access to safely managed drinking water.  In Kenya, running water is the exception not the rule outside of large cities.    According to UNICEF, 41% of the Kenyan population does nothave access to safe drinking water and 29% do not have access to safe sanitation facilities.  And when there’s no running water, there can’t be flush toilets that safely dispose of human waste.  So the need is great.

We drove approximately 45 minutes to Magwako, a small village in the foothills above Lake Victoria.  The nearest river is about 1 mile down a hill meaning that women and children (mostly girls) have to walk down to the river every few days, fill up 5 gallon jerry cans, and carry them back up the hill.  The women also have to carry dirty clothes down to the river to wash them.  And the water in the rivers here looks brown and polluted.

Water1st and its Kenyan partner, KWAHO, worked with the community to design and install the water and sanitation system.  The first step was to have the community form a water committee to oversee and manage the project and the system.  Water1st supplied the funds to locate and drill a 160-meter deep well and a water tower, and the community supplied the labor to dig the trenches and lay the pipe.  The water committee also worked with individual residents to decide what facilities they needed and in what order.  The community will eventually pay for most of the system through small water use fees, but their policy is not to deny water to anyone who can’t pay.  I was surprised to learn that the Magwako water system is one of the first in Kenya to be installed and operated in this way.  

We first had a meeting with the water committee and about 20 other residents under a tent they had set up in the courtyard of the local church.  The water committee members were obviously very proud of the system and their role, and very thankful to Water1st for its assistance.  They talked about some of the difficulties they had faced such as the very rocky soil in this area.  They then told us something about their culture, which they are very proud of.  The members of this village come from the Luo tribe.  Luo’s were originally fishermen on the Nile river but at some point emigrated to the area surrounding Lake Victoria.  They told us that Luo’s are known for being skilled with languages – which they chalk up to eating lots of fish.  They told us that many of Kenya’s government leaders are Luo’s.  They also told us that Luo’s love to sing and dance.  Although they didn’t’ mention it, I have heard from other Luo’s that they are very proud of the fact that President Obama’s father was from the Luo tribe.  

We then visited the wellhead installed about 200 yards from the village and saw the solar panels that had been installed to run the pump.  Like many villages in Kenya, Magwako does not have electricity anywhere except at the school, so a solar system is a must.  Crowded around the pump equipment and the solar panels, the villagers who were going around with us broke into a spontaneous song!

We then walked up toward the water tower, passing by one of the trenches under construction.  The man digging in the ditch showed us how he was trying to either move or break up a 3 footdiameter rock that was right in the middle of the trench area.  It was tempting to jump down into the trench and help but I restrained myself.  I asked why they were doing all of this by hand, and the organizers told me that renting a backhoe or a ditch machine would have been prohibitively expensive and the villagers had volunteered to dig all of the pipe trenches by hand.This reinforced to me that a seemingly small problem like a 3 foot rock can be almost insurmountable if you can’t afford the equipment we take for granted.

The tower is right next to the local primary school.  As we passed by, the entire school came out into the courtyard to greet us and hear a few words.  The school was one of the first recipients of a water tap (which had just been turned on two weeks ago) and they are in the process of constructing three outhouses with the first flush toilets the school had ever had.  At the same time, the school is teaching a hygiene program.  We heard the first graders happily sing about flushing and hand washing – things they had not been able to do before the water system . After I and the rest of our group said hello and thanked them for their hospitality, I heard one of the younger children say “I wish my English were as good as his.”  I was tempted to point out that he was already on his third language at age 8 and I could barely speak two at age 66!

We then inspected the tank.  It is about 30 feet high and holds 59 cubic meters.  Its purpose is twofold – to create natural pressure so the only pump that is needed is the submersible well pump – and to insure a steady supply even when there isn’t sunlight to power the pump.  

After this we visited some homes.  The first home we saw was owned by an 85-year old woman.  She had been one of the first to receive a tap.  She told us it was a godsend because she could no longer carry water up the hill and so was forced to plead with others to carry water for her.  She proudly showed us the sink with a faucet inside her mud hut.  She was most proud of her outhouse.  She said that when she first used it two weeks ago, it as the first time in her life that she had sat on a toilet and flushed rather than squatting.  She told us that was a tremendous relief for an old lady with bad knees. She was so proud of her toilet that went into the outhouse and started to demonstrate it to us until the organizers stopped her!

We then visited a “homestead” of a type common in this part of Kenya.  This homestead consisted of five structures with mud walls and tin roofs.  All were controlled by a patriarch and the three main houses were for his three wives.  There was then a freestanding kitchen with three small charcoal burners and a fifth building where the older children from all three families slept.  This family was relatively well-to-do by local standards and their huts had poured cement floors and glass windows with painted wooden frames.  This family was the only one in the village that already had running water of sorts –a makeshift cistern that collected rainwater from hand-made gutters hung from the metal roofs of two of the huts.   We heard that wife # 1 – who is now 92 years old and too infirm to carry water -- was offered priority installation but turned it down saying that others had more need.  We learned that the first taps had started working only a few weeks ago, but that over the next few months all 142 dwellings in the village will have running water.

To end our trip, we proceeded back to the church courtyard for a lunch made for us by the women of the village, followed by more presentations.  One that was particularly moving was from a woman in her 30’s with a baby on her arm.  She said that she had been appointed to the water committee (which by decree from KWAHO had to be gender balanced) before her baby had been conceived, and had dug ditches while pregnant and starting a few weeks after the baby was born.  She said it was all worth it because her baby daughter would now be able to spend her whole life in a home with running water.   Another moving presentation was from an impeccably-dressed elderly lady who was on crutches.  She said that while she wasn’t the water committee, she had attended every meeting even though it took her an hour to crutch from her hut to the meeting place because it was so important for the village.  She also said it was incredibly meaningful to her that she no longer had to beg her neighbors to carry her water (and here that is in the literal sense).  

Here are some photos from today:

Singing around the wellhead, which is topped with a solar panel.

Trying to dig a water pipe ditch around a big rock.

A pile of rock fragments that have been broken up by hand.

The water tower.

The first outhouse installed in the village . . .

And it’s proud owner.

One of the first working taps with a jerrycan beneath it. Even though the system isn’t yet fully functional, the rest of the village can carry clean water from the nearest, working tap rather than carrying dirty water from the river.

The cistern system that was in place before the running water.  You can see one of the new taps to the right of the cistern by the yellow jerry can.  You can also see the windows with painted frames.

First graders reciting (in their third language English no less) “I squeeze, I get up and flush. I wash my hands, then I’m done”. Needing to teach this seemed strange until I thought about the fact that none of these children had ever had a flush toilet or a sink in their home until two weeks ago.

Thank you, Dave, for this wonderful guest post!