Collecting Water

07AprApril 7, 2021

Not so long ago, William Aludo, EC’s Program Coordinator in Kenya, sent me photos of students from Miruya Primary School. This is the school where EC recently built a new classroom. The children were collecting water from a muddy river William called the “seasonal” Kaboro River.

Many young children standing at a muddy riverbank collecting water in yellow jerry cans — Water collection at the Kaboro River

The next batch of photos featured children walking along a dusty road with large jerry cans on their heads. These cans were filled with the water they had just collected.

Collecting Water

From a cultural standpoint, it isn’t so strange to see children carrying or collecting water in Kenya. Water is necessary to live, and most if not all of these children live in homes where there is no running water. The responsibility of collecting water is often left to children. But to our North American eyes, the sight of a young child scooping muddy water from a shallow river gives us pause.

Waterborne Illness

Waterborne diseases are the number one leading cause of death in Kenyan children under the age of five. Among the more popular solutions to the problem of unsafe drinking water are water filtration systems, rain harvesting systems, and borehole drilling.

Providing Clean Water

Everyone’s Child is committed to providing potable water at schools where we support students. In 2014, EC partnered with Christian Broadcasting Network to install a rain harvesting system at the Lord Ranjuera Primary School in Kampi Ya Moto, Kenya. Before the system was in place, children were getting water from a muddy river that was a two-mile walk from their village. The mortality rate in that area was also extremely high among young children.

A child collecting water from the river in Kampi Ya Moto

Today the red dust that dominated the area around this primary school has been replaced by a garden, and joy can be seen on the faces of all the children.

A garden at the Lord Ranjuera Primary School in Kampi Ya Moto

Students at the Lord Ranjuera Primary School in Kampi Ya Moto in 2019

How You Can Help

Explorations into the provision of clean water at the Miruya Primary School have begun. In the coming months we will be launching a campaign to raise funds for this effort. If you would like to add your support, please click here to make a secure donation. Our goal is to ensure that the children and staff at the Miruya Primary School will have clean drinking water by this time next year. Stay tuned for more updates on this project!

Blessings,
Ruth

Providing for Needs

12JunMay 19, 2020

The Needs

Providing for needs is constant in life. We have basic needs that deal with our survival as humans: water, food, and shelter. Then there are less-essential needs, such as designer jeans, computers and dirt bikes. What you have been blessed with in life defines your perspective on your own personal sense of needs and provision for those needs.

A Donation

A relative of mine recently decided to give a recurring donation to Everyone’s Child. I asked where the donation should be directed, and received the most amazing response, copied below:

“My goal was to donate enough to bring water to a school in a year…I went online to learn more and saw the need for water. It was something on my bucket list that has not been fulfilled. Here is my bucket list:

I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat:

I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink:

I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

Naked, and ye clothed me:

I was sick, and ye visited me:

I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”

providing for needs: two adults give a meal to a child in Kenya — EC Program Coordinators Susan Enoch and William Aludo providing a meal for a child in Kenya

Provision

I was in awe of my relatives’ ability to use Matthew 25:35-40 to identify a selfless list of objectives for life. These objectives were all about providing for needs. I wrote the following reply:

“Yours is a more than worthy bucket list. Thank you for sharing it with me. As to your dream of bringing water to a school in a year’s time, we are always on the lookout for that need. After walking to that muddy river in Kampi Ya Moto, Kenya it has become my personal quest.”

I was thirsty

I went on to say that the EC Board of Directors had just recently decided to provide a hand pump to a ministry in northern India. I mentioned that this ministry is providing for the needs of 85 children, but they have been faced with tremendous persecution, making it very difficult to support these children. They had asked us for help with a hand pump, nutritional care and educational supplies, so our first effort was to provide them with a hand pump and repair their bore well. This pump and repaired well will hopefully prevent the sickness and disease they have all been dealing with from drinking dirty river water.

I ended my email by saying how glad I was to be able to participate in this bucket list, made only more meaningful by the fact that I was proud to be related to this special person.

Providing for Needs

Providing for needs includes the act of caring for and about others. Sometimes that act is a prayer, other times it involves an action or a financial gift. Here at Everyone’s Child we appreciate contributions of all kinds.

Love is the defining expression in my relative’s bucket list. Please click here to give to someone who will greatly appreciate your gift of love.

Two Kenyan children walking arm in arm providing for needs — Walking to get water at the river in Kampi Ya Moto

everyone’s child: they belong to all of us

Water. Not enough, too much, then not enough again.

26JanMay 19, 2020

Collecting water from the river in Kampi

A dusty schoolyard shows in this child’s hair

Clean water at last!!

The tank & rain harvesting system

Water = Life ~ a garden begins.

Abundant smiles from kids in Kampi

The rain harvesting system

Water has been an issue in Kampi Ya Moto long before I knew this place existed. For years children in this area, many of them orphaned, have had the daily task of walking the hot and dusty two-mile trek to a river to collect water that was then used for drinking and cooking. I’ve been told that the water was usually boiled before it was consumed, but the mere fact that the mortality rate in this area was 50% or higher leads me to believe that boiling alone didn’t remove the incidence of water borne illnesses.

Kampi Ya Moto is an arid region of Kenya that literally translates to “Camp of Fire”. I used to walk to the river in this area with the children every time I visited their school. In a word, it’s repulsive. The water is brown, and the shore is filled with mud-pocked holes made by the hooves of the cows and other animals that share this water hole with members of the village.

For the past several years we have tried to have a borehole dug, but were met with obstacles at every turn. It’s been an uphill climb since we’ve started this process, from the purchasing of the land to the conducting of two geological studies (yes, that’s plural – the first one was lost along the way!), and ending with the unfortunate circumstance of hiring a company who claimed to be Living Waters International but made off with our hard won funds instead. In June 2013, Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) – our partners in this project, hired a company that drilled down 215 meters before experiencing “high borehole collapse”. At that point it was determined that the well was dry. After some research and deliberation a rain harvesting system was set up as an alternative, a spigot was installed outside the school and today the children are able to get clean drinking water whenever they are thirsty. This is a HUGE change for these kids, and the presence of the tank has revolutionized their school. During our visit last May I immediately noticed two big differences, first in the appearance of the children – they met us with smiles and waves, despite the relentless heat. The second thing I noticed was that there was a small garden started outside the school. This was a novelty, as prior to this time nothing planted there would have survived the trip up through the soil much less the searing temperatures at the surface.

By last May the 10,000-liter water tank had been in place for over a year, so the teachers and students had been through both the rainy and the dry seasons that dominate that region of Kenya. At that point in the year they hadn’t run out of water, but the previous year they had watched the tank overflow during the rainy season, only to be used up during the months of hot, dry days that followed. The frustration of having more than enough water for a few months and then not enough throughout the remainder of the year, meaning that children would once again have to make the trek to the river for muddy water helped us make the decision to install a second 10,000-liter tank this year. It’s a fairly straightforward process to purchase and install the tank, but one that requires funding, oversight and faith in the people in charge. This is just one of the major projects EC is embarking on in 2016. Stay tuned for more updates!