Update on Water Project in Ndandini Kenya

Abstracted from WASRAG newsletter & Terry Umbach's blog.

This project is located in the village of Ndandini in eastern Kenya.  It began as a quest to find a sustainable source of safe water, and has expanded into an educational farming and drip irrigation program that is having enormous impact on the well-being of the community.

Terry and Jan Umbach have been working on fund raising for this project since September 2007 after they first visited Ndandini Village on the Yatta Plateau in eastern Kenya with a group of friends from Sechelt B.C. Canada.
 
Since then, this has become a Rotary project spearheaded by Rotarian Terry and the Sunshine Coast Rotary Club in Sechelt B.C. Canada along with donations and very welcome support from 25 Rotary Clubs around the world participating - from Spain and Denmark, to New Jersey USA, and several Canadian clubs from Saint John New Brunswick in the east to Vancouver Island on the west coast.

Ndandini is reached by first driving 4 hours from Nairobi on the main road to Kitui. The town of Kitui does have very basic hotel and restaurant facilities. However, you need to then travel a further 1 1/2 hours on dirt roads to the village of Ndandini which is a collection of individual mud huts with an estimated population of 1000 men, women and children. There is a very basic primary school in Ndandini with mud walls, rough planking desks, essentially no books and no sanitation or water.


The hope was that potable water would be found and that water for the village of Ndandini would be the important first step towards a better way of life for all the villagers and an end to the daily trudge for the women and children of up to 10KM each day to a dry river bed to dig by hand for water - dirty polluted water that all the animals and villagers share.
 
Before being able to raise funds from Rotary clubs and apply for a TRF matching grant, Terry had to travel to Kenya and personally visited many Rotary clubs before being able to convince any of them to become the host club. During those visits he also interviewed people who where involved with other NGO's and charities who could be possible local project managers and bring their experience to the project. Terry also visited potential project suppliers and secured preliminary quotes for project components.
 
With an excellent local project manager in place, and the development of a local village committee, this project grew from providing an excellent source of safe water, to providing a greenhouse and drip irrigation facility in the local primary school, providing food and income, and teaching self-sustaining farming methods that are transforming the community.
 
The Chairman of the Ndandini Water Management Committee, the headmaster of the primary school and his teachers are all well educated and understand the issues and because they speak English this allowed us to discuss ideas, issues and plans.