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Visits
to previous Projects
Some projects have been more successful than others due to a number
of factors as you will see from the following.
Oloolarroi
Nursery school still operating but is in sad state of repair.
Still problems due
to lack of water.
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 picture on the right at the top.
Ngatu
  The Church is being looked after and the
Rotary Doctor was in attendance at the time of our visit. See
picture on the left.
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 on the
right.
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.
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.
Ilmau School
The School is flourishing with all 9 classes well attended.
There are 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.
  
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We had been given a number of donations that helped to fund
installation of plastic water tanks at six (6) small schools in the
bush.
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Oldupai
A small
school of only 3 classes about 60km from Isinya.
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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.
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Nalepo
Isinya
A Nursery school held in a
church building with baby and nursery classes.
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Oiti
A well
attended Primary School that is extremely short of
classrooms.
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Nalepo
Bisil
A small
Nursery School about 6 miles from the great north road
at Bisil.
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Ilmolian Primary School
A
larger school about 20km north east of Bisil.
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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 3423.83
South and 37 degrees 0017.05 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.
The
proposed position for the wall.
This project will be started as soon as the other is finished.
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.
Roger Milton. Project
Director |
