A Year Later: Machemo Community

A year ago, generous donors helped rehabilitate a well with the Machemo Community in Western Kenya. Because of these gifts and contributions from our monthly donors, partners can visit project sites throughout the year, strengthening relationships with communities and evaluating the actual water project. These consistent visits allow us to learn vital lessons and hear amazing stories – we’re excited to share this one from our partner, Paul Weringa, with you.

Women and children have found relief from the time and energy wasted fetching water - and it wasn't even clean water. This well used to just be a hole in the ground, but since the building of a well pad and installation of an AfriDev pump, water is safe and clean for drinking.

Families are now healthy and able to do other activities. Women have enough time to take care of their children, cook, and work on the farm. Children go to school every day of the week, unlike when most of their time was spent in hospitals for treatment.

We met Judith Mato, the caretaker of the well, to interview about how having clean water has impacted her and her community throughout the last year. "Our children used to have diarrhea that came as a result of drinking water from the open well. This took away all of our little money and spent on the medical bills. Today, we are healthy and continue to enjoy the clean water from the rehabilitated well and our children attend school without issues," she shared.

Judith speaking with Paul about the successes and challenges they've experienced over the past year.

She continued talking about how having water has made work on her farm easier: "Being farmers, we also have cattle at our homes. For a long time it has been a challenge to find water for the cattle. This affected the production of milk. Since the project was fitted with a pump, it has become easier to pump water and give to the cattle. Our cattle are now healthy and the production of milk is satisfying."

Women and children here complained of chest and back pains often, since the only way to fetch water was by lowering and raising a bucket. Since the pump was fitted on the well, it’s become easier to fetch water and the people experience no more pain.

The only challenge here is that many people are still not willing to contribute fees for their well, which would be used for maintenance. They have the idea that water should be free, but the well is really providing a service that needs to be maintained to ensure sustainability. Our team continues to engage with them on this through our quarterly monitoring visits and other trainings.

The Water Project and our partners are committed to consistent monitoring of each water source. Our monitoring and evaluation program, made possible by monthly donors, allows us to visit communities up to 4 times a year. Read more about our program and how you can help.