The Water Project: Kenya - Shihingo Community, Inzuka Spring

A day in Shihingo Village starts early in the morning at around 6:00 am when the community members wake up for chores. These range from preparing breakfast, preparing kids to go to school, fetching water from the spring, and going to the farm for plowing, weeding, or harvesting because farming is the backbone of this community. Most household chores in this community are done by the women.

The culture here limits men from other household chores like washing utensils or cooking in the presence of a woman. That means women and young children are those going out to find the water their families need.

Their main source of water is an open water source called Inzuka Spring. The water here bubbles up from the ground and is exposed to all kinds of contamination.

Animals are free to come and go, and the water is even worse after the rain washes contaminants down the banks and into the water. Community members also dunk their containers directly into the water – they are able to hold a container under the surface until about half full and then use a smaller jug to fill the rest of the larger container.

This dirty water is not only dangerous to drink, but is time-consuming to fetch, too.

After water is carried back home, it is poured into a larger 50- to 100-liter barrel to be used for drinking, cooking, and cleaning throughout the rest of the day.

Some 240 people living in this part of Shihingo Village rely on the dirty water from Inzuka Spring.

What we can do:

“Sanitation and hygiene here is wanting. Most of the community members lack essential facilities like pit latrines, dish racks for utensils, and compost pits for dumping refuse,” said Mr. Musirwa.

“We will be so grateful if you assist us to protect this spring and the package of sanitation platforms will improve sanitation and hygiene in our community.”

Spring Protection

Protecting the spring will ensure that the water is safe, adequate and secure. Construction will keep surface runoff and other contaminants out of the water. With the community’s high involvement in the process, there should be a good sense of responsibility and ownership for the new clean water source.

Fetching water is predominantly a female role, done by both women and young girls. Protecting the spring and offering training and support will, therefore, help empower the female members of the community by giving them more time and efforts to engage and invest in income-generating activities.

Training

Community members will attend hygiene and sanitation training for at least two days. This training will ensure participants have the knowledge they need about healthy practices and their importance. The facilitator plans to use Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation (PHAST), Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), group discussions, handouts, and demonstrations at the spring. One of the most important topics we plan to cover is the handling, storage, and treatment of water. Having a clean water source will be extremely helpful, but it is useless if water gets contaminated by the time it’s consumed.

Training will also result in the formation of a committee that will oversee operations and maintenance at the spring. They will enforce proper behavior around the spring and delegate tasks that will help preserve the site, such as building a fence and digging proper drainage. The fence will keep out destructive animals, and the drainage will keep the area’s mosquito population at a minimum.

Sanitation Platforms

At least half of the community members in Shihingo Village have pit latrines made of different materials like twigs, mud, and iron sheets. These pit latrines are in bad states; cleanliness is not regular because the base of these pits are made from wooden logs and washing them regularly with water causes them to rot.

On the final day of training, participants will select 5 families that should most benefit from new latrine floors.

Training will also inform the community and selected families on what they need to contribute to make this project a success. They must mobilize locally available materials, such as bricks, clean sand, hardcore, and ballast. The 5 families chosen for sanitation platforms must prepare by sinking a pit for the sanitation platforms to be placed over. All community members must work together to make sure that accommodations and food are always provided for the work teams.

Project Updates

09/12/2019: Shihingo Community, Inzuka Spring Project Complete!

Shihingo Community now has access to clean water! Inzuka Spring has been transformed into a flowing source of water thanks to your donation. We protected the spring, provided 5 sanitation platforms to different households in the community, and we trained the community on improved sanitation and hygiene practices.

Spring Protection

Community members provided all locally available construction materials, including bricks, wheelbarrows of clean sand, stones, and fencing poles. In this special spring protection, the lead artisan, Alphonce Musirwa, was a local from Shihingo and therefore required no special accommodations to stay in the community. His neighbors did, however, provide all of his meals while he worked.

The Process

Women and men lent their strength to Alphonce to help him with the manual labor. The spring area was excavated to create space for setting the foundation of thick plastic tarp, wire mesh, and concrete. After the base had been set, both wing walls and the headwall were set in place using brickwork. The discharge pipe was fixed low in place through the headwall to direct the water from the reservoir to the drawing area.

Excavation begins

As the wing walls and headwall were curing, the stairs were set and ceramic tiles were fixed directly below the discharge pipe. This protects the concrete from the erosive force of the falling water and beautifies the spring. The process of plastering the headwall and wing walls on both sides reinforces the brickwork and prevents water from the reservoir from seeping through the walls and allows pressure to build in the collection box to push water up through the discharge pipe.

The source area was filled up with clean stones and sand and covered with a thick plastic tarp to prevent potential sources of contamination. It took about 2 weeks of patience for the concrete to dry.

Teamwork helps complete the staircase

Alphonce and those who assisted him experienced several challenges during the construction of this spring, but none that were not overcome. After excavation works were almost done, it rained heavily, disrupting them from work. The rain took almost an hour to subside, they then resumed work later trying to finish and cast the foundation slab only for Alphonce to realize that it was too late for them to cast the foundation slab and the weather of the day was not favorable. They had to stop work so that they could resume the following day.

On the second day, to their surprise, the drainage channel they had so diligently dug out had caved in. This was like beginning the excavation work all over again. Alphonce was a bit worried about this, but his fellow community members turned up in large numbers to assist him. It took them almost a half a day to complete the drainage channel and cast the foundation slab. From that day forward, the work went on smoothly with only a few other rainstorms presenting a challenge.

As soon as the protected spring was ready, people got the okay from our field officers to begin fetching clean water. We met them there to celebrate this momentous occasion.

“The new water point is so attractive and this water point now discharges clean water that from the look of an eye, there is no need of treating it before consumption,” said Arnol Muse, an older leader within the community.

“I am in charge of [the] chlorine dispenser [at the spring] and I hope those who have been having allergic [reactions from] consuming water treated with chlorine will no longer have any challenge.”

The newly completed spring has solved so many challenges that the community members have been facing. The fact that the spring is located in a fairly rolling terrain has been a challenge to its water users. Whenever it rained, running water would deposit all kinds of contamination into the spring, thus making the community members prone to waterborne and water-related diseases.

For community members here, this project has meant that their prayers have finally been answered. Before the protection, for people to draw water in the spring they had to carry a small container for filling their bigger container by scooping the water into it. But now, things have changed for the better. Limited time is spent drawing water, and that water is safer and cleaner.

Field Officer Jonathan (left) with community members including Alphonce (right)

Sanitation Platforms

All 5 sanitation platforms have been installed. These 5 families are happy about this milestone of having a private latrine of their own and are optimistic that people will no longer leave waste outdoors. We are continuing to encourage families to finish building walls and roofs over their new latrine floors.

New sanitation platform owners

New Knowledge

Alphonce the same lead artisan who helped protect Inzuka Spring was tasked with organizing the hygiene and sanitation training. He gave us the community’s preferred date for training, for he was very much aware of the community calendar when it comes to planting season and other big events.

Some 14 people attended training, evenly split between women and men. We were originally expecting more than 20 people to attend training, but because there was a funeral in that community other members had gone to assist the bereaved family and thus could not attend.

Community member (left) and facilitator (right) lead an activity

On that day, it dawned bright and early in the morning but toward 9:00 am the weather changed and became gloomy, making the environment cold. This did not affect our training, however, because it did not last long with our smaller audience. We held our training under trees’ shade outside Mr. Atanas’ homestead. The venue was conducive for learning and every participant was able to sit comfortably.

We covered several topics including leadership and governance; operation and maintenance of the spring; healthcare; family planning; immunizations; and the prevention and spread of disease. We also covered water treatment methods, personal care like handwashing, environmental hygiene, hygiene promotion, and many other things.

Community member answers a question

The participants showed active participation throughout the training by asking questions and responding to issues our facilitators raised. The women showed themselves to be more informed on issues related to hygiene and family planning, but the men were not left out because some of them were community health volunteers who also advocate for hygiene and family planning at the community level.

Spring operation and maintenance training

While covering the best practices for operation and maintenance of the spring, the facilitator and the participants discussed the different possibilities of things that might affect the spring’s functioning, cause reduced discharge, and possibly contaminate the water even though the spring has been protected. What made this topic special was when participants realized that planting certain species like eucalyptus trees around the water source would reduce discharge speed. They also learned to understand that washing their clothes at the water source using different detergents could contaminate the water too.

Handwashing practice

In our discussion on personal hygiene, participants learned the correct way of doing things such as proper handwashing using soap and running water, rather than using standing water in a basin. We also covered toothbrushing, explaining how teeth should be brushed in a gentle, circular manner to avoid injuring the gums. This topic became memorable when participants learned that tooth health and tooth decay can be caused by not just sugary foods but also foods high in starch if left on teeth for some time before brushing with the recommended toothpaste.

Participation from all ages

“Today’s training is like a wake-up alarm to us,” said Adelight Itambo, a local farmer.

“Much [improvement] on sanitation and hygiene practices is still needed from us, [but] lucky enough we have learned a lot which will change our lives. For me [and] my family, we have been all washing our hands in a basin without using running water, [and] it’s true that others have [been] washing their hands with dirty water.”

Thank you for making all of this possible!

The Water Project : 25-kenya19123-completed-spring

08/08/2019: Shihingo Community, Inzuka Spring Project Underway!

Dirty water from Inzuka Spring is making people in Shihingo Community sick. Thanks to your generosity, we’re working to install a clean water point and much more.

Get to know this community through the narrative and pictures we’ve posted, and read about this water, sanitation and hygiene project. We look forward to reaching out with news of success!