The Water Project: Kenya - Luyeshe Community

Project Status

Project Type: Protected Spring

Regional Program: Western Kenya WaSH Program

Impact: 500 Served

Project Phase: Installed - Mar 2018

Functionality Status: Functional

Last Checkup: 09/19/2018

Project Features

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This project is a part of our shared program with Western Water and Sanitation Forum (WEWASAFO). Our team is pleased to directly share the below report (edited for clarity, as needed).

Welcome to the Community

The people from Luyeshe Village wake up very early in the morning to work on their farms and prepare their children to go to school. The community keeps dairy cattle and grows maize, sugarcane, ground nuts, bananas and vegetables. Some members of the community are involved in making bricks to earn extra income, since there are many construction projects going on in the area. Because of these activities, the people are better able to educate their children and provide for their own needs.

There are around 700 people from 100 different households living in Luyeshe. (Editor’s Note: While this many people may have access on any given day, we believe a single water source can only support a population of 350-500 people. That’s why we continue to work with communities until they have clean water that is both adequate and accessible. To learn more, click here.)

Water Situation

One of the main water sources in Luyeshe Community is Simwa Spring. Underground water bubbles up into the waterhole, and jerrycans and other plastic containers must be dunked in the water to collect it. Surface runoff from storms runs into the waterhole, carrying with it anything and everything that is on the ground uphill.

For these reasons, its users contract waterborne diseases such as typhoid, diarrhea, amoebiasis, stomachache and malaria. One resident further stated that the spring is contaminated because some people urinate nearby.

“During the dry seasons all other people come to draw water from the unprotected spring. This brings congestion at the spring. In addition, the containers that the people use to draw water from the unprotected spring contribute to contamination,” said Mrs. Loice Simwa, a leader of the community.

Sanitation Situation

Less than half of the households here have pit latrines which are made of wood floors, polyethylene or mud walls, banana leaf roofs and doors made of old bedsheets or old iron sheeting. They are often rickety structures that offer little privacy, and become unsafe after years of use. The wood floors cannot be easily cleaned and end up decaying to the point of collapsing – oftentimes while in use. The fear of this happening often causes many potential users to seek privacy amongst bushes or behind buildings instead.

Some households have dish racks and clotheslines, although most are of a rudimentary nature. Many people heap up their solid garbage and allow it to decompose in their kitchen gardens. Few know about composting, and none of the households have hand-washing stations.

This is about to change!

Plans: Hygiene and Sanitation Training

Community members will participate in a 2-day hygiene and sanitation training.

This training will ensure participants are no longer ignorant about healthy practices and their importance. The facilitator plans to use PHAST (Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation), CLTS (Community-Led Total Sanitation), ABCD (Asset-Based Community Development), group discussions, handouts and demonstrations at the spring. The training objectives specific to this community include: To empower the community to be able to protect, preserve and manage water resources in the community; To mobilize the community to attain “open-defecation-free” status; To enable people to practice good environmental hygiene and ultimately to enable the community to continually have access to safe, adequate and clean water.

Plans: Sanitation Platforms

On the final day of training, the Luyeshe Village members will select five of their families to benefit from new latrines. The five families must prepare by sinking a 2’ x 3’ pit over which our concrete sanitation platforms will be placed. When that new floor is installed, they will build a superstructure over it according to their means. Selecting five of the neediest families will help decrease open defecation, protecting the entire community from this dangerous contamination.

Plans: Spring Protection

The spring was identified during one of our routine monitoring visits to Matsakha Primary School, which benefited from 30,000-liter rainwater collection tank. We visited the spring for ourselves and found it viable for protection because it has a good discharge rate, serves more than 350 people, and does not dry up at all during the year.

The community will provide local materials such as: ballast, bricks, hardcore, clean sand and poles for fencing. Community members will participate in spring construction by providing unskilled labour to fence off the spring and plant the grass around it, supervise and monitor the progress of the construction work, and feed and house our artisan.

This community is ready for a new chapter of life that will begin once Simwa Spring is protected to provide adequate clean water.

Project Updates

03/12/2018: Luyeshe Community Project Complete

Simwa Spring in Luyeshe Community, Kenya is now a protected, clean source of water thanks to your donation. The spring is protected from contamination, five sanitation platforms have been provided for the community, and training has been given in sanitation and hygiene. Imagine the changes that all of these resources are going to bring for these residents! You made it happen! Now, want to do a bit more? Join our team of monthly donors and help us maintain this spring protection and many other projects.

Project Result: New Knowledge

Mr. Ezekiel Simwa was excited to work with us to plan hygiene and sanitation training, and he offered to host the entire event. We gathered under the shade of a tree on his homestead because there were too many participants to fit in his home. It was also nice to take the group over to the spring as it was under construction. There, the artisan could explain more about how spring protection works and what community members can do to manage and maintain their clean water point.

Participants received new notebooks and pens so they could record what they learned.

All 21 participants were great listeners who boldly asked questions for clarification. The field officer clearly communicated the areas of needed improvement for Luyeshe, which included the following and more:

– Hand-washing and personal hygiene

– Handling water and food hygienically

– Safe waste disposal

– Water treatment

Hand-washing demonstration

Mr. Simwa said, “I lack words to express my happiness and thankfulness to you people. Indeed God will reward you for the good work you have done to us and other community members in Kakamega County by ensuring that they get safe, clean water not only for drinking but also for domestic chores.”

Project Result: Sanitation Platforms

All five sanitation platforms have been installed. These five families are happy about this milestone of having a private latrine all their own, and are optimistic that there will be much less open defecation. We are continuing to encourage families to finish building walls and roofs over their new latrine floors.

Project Result: Spring Protection

Community members provided all locally available construction materials, e.g bricks, wheelbarrows of clean sand, wheelbarrows of ballast, fencing poles and hard core (crushed rock and gravel). Accommodation meals were provided for the artisan, and we asked a few people to volunteer their time and strength to help the artisan with manual labor.

The spring area was excavated to create space for setting the foundation of polyethylene, 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 head wall to direct the water from the reservoir to the drawing area.

Excavation

As the wing walls and head wall were curing, the stairs were set and the tiles were fixed directly below the discharge pipe. This reduces the erosive force of the falling water and beautifies the spring. The process of plastering the head wall 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.

Lastly, the base of the spring was plastered and the collection box was cleaned. The source area was filled up with clean hardcore and covered with a polyethylene membrane to eliminate any potential sources of contamination.

The only challenge to this process was filling in behind the discharge pipe. The artisan ran out of materials when backfilling, and the community scrambled to find enough rocks and other materials for him to complete the task.

But thanks to the artisan and community members’ perseverance, Simwa Spring has been transformed into a source of flowing, clean water. Purity Lumbasi was one of the first ladies there. “We are grateful for the good work you did to us. The waterborne diseases that had been rampant in the area will be things of the past. Now we are sure to save at least some money for our children, as opposed to before when we used what little we had for medication,” she shared.

The Water Project : 26-kenya4857-clean-water

01/15/2018: Luyeshe Community Project Underway

Luyeshe Community will soon have a clean, safe source of water thanks to your donation. Community members have been drinking contaminated water from Simwa Spring, and often suffer physical illnesses after doing so. Our partner conducted a survey of the area and deemed it necessary to protect the spring, build new sanitation platforms (safe, easy-to-clean concrete floors for latrines), and conduct sanitation and hygiene training. Thanks to your generosity, waterborne disease will no longer be a challenge for the families drinking the spring’s water. We look forward to sharing more details with you as they come! But for now, please take some time to check out the report containing community information, pictures, and maps.

The Water Project : 2-kenya4857-jecinta-filling-her-jerrycan

Project Type

In many communities, natural springs exist as water flows from cracks in rocky ground or the side of a hill. Springs provide reliable water but that doesn’t mean safe. When left open they become contaminated by surface contamination, animal and human waste and rain runoff. The solution is to protect the source. First, you excavate around the exact source area of the spring. Then, you build a protective reservoir for water flow, which leads to a concrete spring box and collection area. Safe water typically flows year-round and there is very limited ongoing maintenance needed!