Kajiado District Development Trust

UK Charity Registration No: 1064837

A UK Charity Funding Water, Education & Health Projects in Southern Kenya

Having decided that it would be a waste of time and funds to visit last year, due to the troubles, it was good to get back and resume our work.

My wife Irene accompanied me this year, at her own expense of course, and was a great help as cook, laundress and cleaner in addition to doing great work on our visits to the schools.

Our intentions on this trip were to visit as many of our old projects as possible so that we could report on their progress, to identify locations for three (3) large river catchments and find six (6) schools in the bush that needed plastic water tanks.

Oloolarroi

Nursery school still operating but is in sad state of repair.  Still problems due to lack of water.

Ngatu

The Church is being looked after and the Rotary Doctor was in attendance at the time of our visit.  See picture below.

Unfortunately due to the drought the locals have cut down all the trees to make and sell charcoal and are removing the sand from the riverbed to sell at 500ksh per load which is sold to contractors at 15,000.

The place will probably become a dustbowl!!  See picture below.

Koora and Losenyai

Due to the Teachers strike operating whilst we were there we were unable to get much information but the Schools looked well cared for.

Oloilalei

This community is in the middle of the Kaputei plain and suffering badly from the drought.  All 4 of the large water catchments are dry and consequently most of the community has moved away.  See pictures below

Iluanat

Unfortunately the local community are not cleaning the silt and sand that has built up behind the walls and have not installed the pipes that would carry the overflow water to the large tank that we built.

This is a problem that is hard to overcome as the Maasai are not fond of manual labour.  See pictures below.

Ilmau School

The School is flourishing with all 9 classes well attended.

There were two new trained teachers, both ladies, one of whom is living in one of the new Teachers houses. The other is Mary Sein who was responsible for our choosing the site.  She has been applying for this posting for some years now as her home is close by.  She is thrilled to be at the school and hopes to improve the teaching standards.

We bought a variety of sports equipment with the money collected by Pyrford Primary School and the children loved it.

We bought footballs, volleyballs and nets, netballs and nets, a cricket set, skipping ropes, hoops, a discus and plastic cones in addition to exercise books and chalks.

Oldupai

A small school of only 3 classes about 60km from Isinya.

Kirkouria

A Primary school that has so many children and so few classrooms that they have 150 children in the morning and a second sitting of 150 in the afternoon. We put the tank on the new Nursery class.

Nalepo Isinya

A Nursery school held in a church building with baby and nursery classes.

Oiti

A well attended Primary School that is extremely short of classrooms.

Nalepo Bisil

A small Nursery School about 6 miles from the great north road at Bisil.

Ilmolian Primary School

A larger school about 20km north east of Bisil.

As we have been concentrating on a number of large specific projects for particular donors we had not been making full use of the money collected through our regular monthly donors.

We decided to put this right and as the area is suffering from yet another drought it was thought that river catchments would be the ideal projects to look at.

Large walls across stony river beds can retain enormous amounts of water if placed in the right position and we pinpointed two such places.

The first is at Empuyiankat where the seasonal river is wide, rocky and slow flowing.

The wall will be 2m high, 2m thick and about 70 m long. The project is a joint effort between us, who provided 500 bags of cement and 70 tons of sand, an Italian organisation called “A Drop for Life” who are paying for the construction and the local community who are collecting the rocks and providing the perimeter fence. This project is almost completed as I write this report.

You can see this site on Google Earth at GPS 1 degree 34’23.83’’ South and 37 degrees 00’17.05’’ East.  They used to build a temporary wall of mud and rocks which was washed away regularly. The total budget for this project is about £8,000 and should produce from 40 to 50 Million litres of clean water solely for human consumption.

The second will be constructed at Loiankalani where there is a gradual sloping pasture that funnels into a rocky gully ending in a waterfall when there is heavy rain.  The exit before the fall is part blocked by a large boulder which we hope to incorporate into the wall.The wall will be 4m high 3m thick and about 20 metres in length.  The project should cost about the same as at Empuyankat and the same partnership will be funding the work on the same cost sharing basis.  Once again it is estimated that in excess of 50m litres of water will be harnessed. This project will be started as soon as the other is finished.

                       The proposed position for the wall.                     The catchment area

We are looking for another location in the Bisil area which will bring our total expenditure to around £12k and should provide over 120 million litres of clean water in a good rainy season.

This equates to about 45pence per 100 gallons of water.  Not bad value !!!!!

Considering that these systems require very little maintenance they are very good value.

We also met with people at the British High Commission to discuss our projects and they were very enthusiastic about them, said we were doing a great job and gave us a list of all the U.K. companies in Kenya.

We have to give them a proposal for a project and they said they may consider helping.  But not to hold out too much hope.

Overall it was a very successful trip and I hope we can follow it up with success in raising money for many more river catchments.