{"id":248792,"date":"2026-11-04T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/?p=248792"},"modified":"2026-11-04T09:19:04","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T14:19:04","slug":"still-working-a-sand-dam-nine-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/2026\/11\/04\/still-working-a-sand-dam-nine-years-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Still Working: A Sand Dam, Nine Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is an installment in the \u2018Mostly Muscle Memory\u2019 blog series featuring the more senior members of our team<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June 2017, a group of farmers in Maluvyu Village, in eastern Kenya, finished building a concrete wall across a seasonal river. That October, they finished a well beside it and capped it with a hand pump. It was their first sand dam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The community helping with construction of the the sand damn<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That same year, I started at The Water Project. I didn’t know Maluvyu then. I was learning donor names, reading field reports, and trying to understand why anyone would build a dam across a river that ran dry for much of the year. Nine years later, that dam explains my job better than anything I could have written then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A dam that needs rain<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the day a sand dam is finished, it doesn’t hold much. It needs rain. Every rainy season, the river carries sand down and drops it behind the wall. Over time that sand stores water underground, raises the water table, and filters what the well beside it draws up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At the finished sand dam<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When clean water started flowing from the Maluvyu well in November 2017, the update to donors said the supply would keep getting more reliable as the dam matured. That was true of my first year, too. Most of what I did then didn’t look like much yet: a thank-you note, a phone call, a report sent to someone who had given once. I couldn’t see what any of it was building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From two hours to ten minutes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maluvyu didn\u2019t stop at one dam. The self-help group kept building, and by the end of 2019 they had finished more sand dams and wells further down the same river. Before that first dam, some families walked up to two hours each way to reach reliable water, then waited in line. Afterward, the walk took less than ten minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When our team went back a year after the first dam, they met Katheu Muema, a young girl in the community. She told them the long trek for water used to leave her exhausted, and that it had changed now that the well was close by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Katheu Muema<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One rainy season at a time<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early 2021, Mary Mutua described what one of the newer dams changed for her. She used to walk more than a mile and a half to wait at a scoop hole in the riverbed. Now she can leave food cooking on the stove, fetch water in a few minutes, and get back home. She started a vegetable garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mary Mutua<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That’s the part I wish I’d understood sooner. The well in Maluvyu didn’t get more reliable because of one big moment. It got more reliable one rainy season at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The relationships I’m most grateful for have grown the same way. Some of you gave for the first time around when I started. Some of you have given every month since, which is what pays for the return visits that let us find out how a girl like Katheu is getting on. Each call, each update, each year you stayed added a little more behind the wall. I can see it now in a way I couldn’t in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This September, our team checked on that first dam. Nine years after the people of Maluvyu built it, it\u2019s still working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Clean, safe, reliable water!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A sand dam is never really finished. It just keeps maturing, as long as the rain keeps coming. Nine years in, that’s how I think about this work and about all of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you for being part of it. If you’d like to read more about Maluvyu, the full story of the sand dam<\/a> is on our website, from construction to the visits that followed<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Written by: Maggie Evans<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donor Engagement Specialist<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Water Project<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Other blogs in the Mostly Muscle Memory<\/em> series:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Hardest Part of Fundraising Isn\u2019t What You Think<\/a><\/blockquote>