Volunteering begins

Teizeen:

This is our third day into our first official week of volunteering with SANA International, an NGO that does water and sanitation projects in western Kenya. The general set-up is that SANA provides the technical assistance, designs and constructs the infrastructure, trains and educates the community, who are then responsible for continued operation and maintenance of the water supply and/or sanitation system.

This week, we are being oriented to SANA’s different projects. There is on in a rural area, called Paga, where SANA has designed and constructed a water supply system designed to serve 20,000 people. There is an intake from Lake Victoria and a large underground sand filtration complex. A pump house then pumps water from the lake to an elevated tank about 3 km away, where it is doused with chlorine and then distributed to kiosks. Kiosks are open during the day, and sell water to customers for 1 shilling per 20-litre jerrican (75 Shillings = $1.00). This is a tremendous improvement in terms of water access – prior to the project, women would collect water from the lake, which is of low quality, and carry it back and forth. However, the system is currently not running: someone in the community sabotaged the electric cable that keeps the pump running, and 200 out of 270 of the laid pipes in the distribution system were stolen in the last month. There seems to be some antagonistic behavior within the community.

The system is supposed to be run by the community like a business (they sell water and revenues cover the operating and maintenance costs of the system). However, there seem to be some divisions (perhaps political ones) within the community and some who may be against the project. SANA is hoping to brainstorm ideas with Ryan and me to see how we can create a more sound management system with the correct checks and balances to make this run effectively. The idea is to hand all the management responsibilities back to SANA and then slowly phase the community back in.

We are also going to visit two schools tomorrow, where SANA has proposed to construct a rain catchment system to collect rainwater and having water available for the students on site. We may help in the technical assessment and design of this sytem while we are here.