A better life for a thirsty village in Kenya

Related pages: Kenya country profile | Millennium Development Goal 1: Poverty

Esther Akales, 50, lives at Katorongot village in Nadapal located about 8km from Lodwar, Turkana District, in northern Kenya. She has five children, two of whom are in boarding school. Her husband is a trader in Lodwar.

When she heard that the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which DFID provides funding to, was planning to construct a water kiosk at her village, she offered to help dig the trenches for laying the pipes. Joseph Wahome, an IRC water engineer, found her in a group of 14 women digging the trenches. “Ejoka!” he responded to the women’s traditional Turkana greeting.

None of the village men are on hand to help lay the pipes. “The men do not fetch water, so they feel the pipeline will only help us women. They have gone to trade in Lodwar or to graze the livestock,” says Akales, whose husband owns 10 goats. “But even if they do not help us, we know that their animals will drink this water.”

But, with IRC's help, progress was made. In 2007, the pipeline covers around 6km and serves several villages. Before the pump was connected to a school in her village, Akales used to walk about 3km every morning to fetch water from a river. In the dry season, the journey sometimes took longer. She would balance a 20-litre jerrican on her head and carry a 5-litre kibuyu (jerrican) in the right hand. The water was barely enough for drinking, cooking, washing.

Now, she says, there is a great change in the village. “We used to walk long distances to get water. There were also many cases of diarrhoea, amoebiasis and typhoid. I think our health is more vibrant now that we use tap water. Since the water is nearer, we have more free time to weave baskets,” she says.

At the nearby primary school, Bill Johnson, 11, plays hide-and-seek with fellow pupils. When he gets thirsty, he runs to a tap in the compound and takes a drink. “We used to fetch water from a dam about 3km away. Teachers used to wake us up early to go and fetch water in jerricans. Boys would go and wash there and the girls would carry some back to school. It was a lot of hard work.”

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Rehabilitation of water supply

The Nadapal pipeline is one of three connected to the main tank, which is located on a small hill to enable water to flow by gravity to the required destination. The water comes from a borehole about 2km away. A smaller borehole at school dug by the Catholic Church supplements its supply.

“We recently inherited the borehole left by UNICEF in the late 1980s. The pump had broken down and the people could no longer get water from the borehole which is about 40 feet deep,” said Kelly Williams, an IRC official working in Turkana District.

For about Sh650,000, IRC bought a new pump and rehabilitated the old one at about Sh415,000. The machines, which work alternately, pump water to the main tank.

David Esorua, the chairman of Nadapal water users association, says villagers are ecstatic about the water project. “There are about 10,000 people who depend on this water directly. In December when the dry season is at its worst, people migrate from Loima hills to this place and the number swells to about 20,000,” he says.

IRC plans to hand over the water pumps, kiosks and tanks to the local water users association as soon as the kiosks are complete. It will also train the villagers on how to detect leaks and how to repair the pumps. Other women’s groups in surrounding villages have also volunteered to dig the trenches for pipes to take water closer to their homes.

And when IRC installs a 24,000 cubic metre tank recently donated by the Red Cross, more villages will be able to get water, and the women are willing to dig the line for pipes even if the men stay away.

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Key facts

• The IRC, with support from DFID, has undertaken an emergency response program for water intervention serving the District, beginning in March 2006. The main activities of this program are hand pump repair, infrastructure installation and rehabilitation, supply of fuel for generators, support of water trucking with fuel, pump testing, water quality monitoring, and assessments for long term interventions.
• Kenya is one of the poorest countries in Africa with more than 52% of the population living below the poverty line.
• Six in 10 Kenyans now have access to water from an improved source (Kenya Bureau of Statistics 2004) 

17 March, 2007

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