Searching for water: Long trek over

Sue Sprenkle

Chin jutted out and eyes slightly closed, Nduri Isandap bobs to the low, resonating music. The shrill a cappella chorus quickly gains momentum and volume. Layers of beaded necklaces clank in perfect rhythm with each bouncing dance step the women take.

In the center of the tight circle, Isandap lets out a yelp and jumps straight up, stiff as a board yet beautiful and regal. A smile slowly spreads across her weathered face, though her eyes remain sad.

It’s been a rough year. Recently her husband died, leaving her and six children to fend for themselves during one of the worst droughts in Kenya’s history. Without adequate water, most of their livestock died, and food is scarce. There hasn’t been much cause for celebration — until today.

Today, she dances in thanksgiving — water came to her desert village. Today, Isandap didn’t have to walk seven miles to the hand-dug well.

A project by Baptist Global Response (BGR), a Southern Baptist relief and development organization, brought water closer for 4,000 people. While that’s just a drop in the ocean compared to the World Health Organization’s estimates of 1 billion people without access to safe water, the difference it makes in Isandap’s village is significant. The closest hand-dug well is about two miles away. When it dries up — which happens every dry season — Isandap treks seven miles to a deeper well.

The burden of securing a daily water supply has become a daunting task for women and children in rural sub-Saharan Africa — threatening an ancient way of life.

When water is scarce
Isandap and her pastoralist clan live in gumdrop-shaped thatch huts scattered across the sandy plateau and herd animals to survive. Even in a good year, life is extremely precarious. Average daytime temperatures hover around 100 degrees.

Trying to beat the heat, Isandap grabs an old, 5-gallon jug and heads to the well just as the sun peeks over the horizon.

The arid lands of northern Kenya have been the hardest hit by the drought. In some villages, it has not rained in years. Isandap’s village is one of the lucky ones. Even if it’s only a sprinkle, rain dramatically changes the area. Tufts of green adorn the trees and bushes, brightening the normally brown landscape. But more importantly, the closest well — a 17-minute walk — has water. Just a week ago, it was bone dry.

“Even last week I walked to the other well. I left at 7 a.m. and returned home at 7 p.m.,” Isandap says, noting that when she goes to the far well, she can gather 5 gallons a day. “The lines were long because it was the only well with water. Some women spent the night there so they could keep their place in line.”

They manually lower makeshift buckets into the 30-foot well using homemade ropes. Isandap is eerily skinny, yet her arm muscles ripple as she repeats the process three times, filling her container with muddy, arsenic-laced water. She straps the 44-pound jug on her back and starts the arduous trek home.

In sub-Saharan Africa, UNICEF estimates 40 billion hours of labor are spent each year carrying water over long distances. The tragedy is that the water they work so hard to collect is often polluted and unsafe to drink.

Women trapped in this situation have little time for other activities, such as childcare, rest or other work. So when water gushes out of the nearby BGR water tanks, word spreads quickly.

The cost of clean water
An almost giddy atmosphere surrounds the water tanks. Women smile, laugh and tease. Mothers bathe their toddlers. Boys plop down in the mud; girls playfully splash each other.
The tanks and series of pipes connecting to the borehole miles away cost about $20,000, provided by the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund.

It takes about $6 of diesel to run the borehole long enough to fill all four tanks, which hold enough water for two days. The community plans to handle this expense on their own.
“That is how it is done here. When a boy goes off to school, the entire village collects money to support him,” says village elder Andrew Amalo. “… we pull our resources together.

Everyone shares. It is our way.”

The partnership between BGR and this village gives the community ownership of the project. They decide when water is needed most.

No one knows when the tanks will be filled again, so in less than an hour, Isandap and her children gather enough water for two days.
Isandap smiles, knowing she will no longer have to spend the night in long lines at the well.

There will be water here long after the wells dry up.

See more on this story at AfricaStories.org.

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E-mail writer Sue Sprenkle.
E-mail photographer Joann Bradberry.