The desperate water situation across the diocese manifests itself in different ways:-

The situation Geoff found at his link school in Chebukutumi in 2007 is typical. Even the 100m deep borehole serving the whole village dried up and the desperately thirsty children were forced to travel several kilometres to collect water from the contaminated Malakisi River where they could not resist drinking it once they arrived. It was this situation and the lack of water at the school for 4 months which inspired Geoff as an engineer to offer some help which led to the installation of the first water storage tank fed from the school roofs.

Then followed a well at Mapela and a preliminary water survey carried out by the Bungoma diocese. It was at Mapela that Geoff had the good fortune to meet up with Noah Lusaka, who had a diploma in environmental studies and was working for a charity in Nairobi developing the arid lands of East Africa. Noah proposed a pilot scheme of harvested water storage tanks at Mapela and this project was completed and inspected by Geoff and Diannah in 2009.

During their 2009 mission Geoff and Diannah carried out detailed water surveys at the 10 most needy parishes recording all the water sources and whether they were seasonal and protected. In nearly all cases the shallow wells, springs and streams dried up in the dry season and were contaminated. On their return they set in motion a programme to build a 30000 litre harvested water tank at each location and set up this charity to fund them under a partnership arrangement using local labour and materials with assistance and supervision from the Mapela Christian Women Group and funding from the UK charity Wilmslow Wells for Africa. To date, 26 harvested water storage tanks have now been built and many more are planned. The work of the charity continues to carry out further surveys, to build more water tanks and to sink new wells and protect springs to relieve the desperate water situation.

In the last few years another 3 wells have been sunk at Murembe, Namboani and Kambini fitted with hand pumps and 16 natural springs have now been protected.  In 2017 we constructed our standard spring protection scheme at Siuna Mukoya in Murembe parish and the video can be viewed here........Siuna Mukoya

The video below provides a full picture of the Mapela pilot scheme, the construction of the tanks and all the background information. The link to the right is an article on water harvesting featuring the Mapela pilot scheme which was published in the September 2010 issue of the quarterly magazine called BAOBAB of Noah's charity ALIN in Nairobi.