Kenya 2014 - By James Haughton

Well I’m coming to the end of another trip to visit projects here in Kenya. It has been a useful trip. It is easy in the UK to lose track of how things work over here and the challenges that local people face. Life is very difficult for people here but there is genuine hope and heaps of potential.

What’s “Africa”? Its 1 billion people, 53 countries and maybe 3,000 languages. It’s impossible to simplify about one nation, made up of many tribes such as Kenya, and generalising about a continent is plain dangerous. Each community and tribe has its own dynamics and social systems. It was really hammered home this trip how important it is that our Field Officers originate from those contexts in which we work with the locally elected water committees. This is a direction in which we have been moving over the past few years.

While I’m on the topic of generalisations just type “African child” into google images and compare it to “European child”. It’s sad for me to see the results of the former search with every other image a child in tears or a victim of disaster or famine. I do not deny the suffering of many, but rather it is the representation of hopelessness that pervades our conceptions of “Africa” that irritates me.

One thing that humbled me this trip was meeting so many Head Teachers that provided free places (no free schooling in Kenya) to orphaned and destitute children. Such charity has a very detrimental effect on the economy of the school but nonetheless this is a society that does what it can to help its neighbour.
It’s surprising even to me know how a water project at a school can have unanticipated benefits. Increasingly access to clean water attracts new students, encourages children to board instead of walking kilometres a day and thus increases the budget of the schools to reinvest in staff. At Rotik school in Ndanai region I spoke to the deputy head about his water supply and was taken aback at his estimate of how much the school pays a week for the transport of water, £51, when the average salary of one of his staff a week was just £10.

What’s worse is that the donkey fetched water from a spring 2 miles away contains unsafe levels of bacteria and contaminants. But it’s deemed worth 5 teachers’ salaries a week because it is essential to the existence of the school and education in that district.

I am optimistic about the future of Kenya and of Africa as a continent. By cooperation with those who know what needs fixing in their communities we can open up opportunities, beyond the immediate health benefits of clean water, to remove barriers and aid the development of stronger schools and local economies.

First Kenya visit of 2014 - By Ben Skelton

I’m about to travel out to Kenya to spend three weeks working with Dig Deep’s locally based staff. Here’s what we’ll be getting up to.

As soon as I land in Nairobi we’ll be meeting with local supporters and partners to plan our next round of school education project. Why is a water charity getting involved in education you might well ask?

Well, we know that making sure kids are washing their hands with soap at critical times and using toilet facilities can be just as important for health as making sure they have access to a clean water supply. However, teaching kids to do this is no easy task, especially if your school has only just got access to clean water and toilets.

This is why we are providing training for teachers in rural Kenya in the very best ways of getting these messages across to their students – often through using the power of fun, interactive games to help kids figure out the solutions themselves.

After these meetings in Nairobi its off to the rural communities where our projects take place. We’ll be monitoring the progress of a whole host of different projects – from a large scale deep well which will soon be providing water to a whole community, to simple interventions in schools involving hygienically capturing rainwater and building simple toilet blocks.

In doing this we will be working in partnership with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community groups who live and work in the communities we serve. Working with these partners is vital to the success of our projects. Not only do their staff and volunteers speak the local language(s) and understand their communities, they also bring other specialist knowledge to the table.

Just to give you an example, one of these partnerships is with the Olare Orok Motorogi Trust (OOMT) who work on the periphery of the Masai Mara. The vision of OOMT is to ensure the long-term conservation of the Maasai Mara ecosystem through empowering periphery communities to gain significant and tangible benefits from conservation.

Over the last three years we have worked with OOMT to support and improve existing community water projects and install rainwater harvesting in schools. OOMT are able to advise us on the best locations for new water projects to reduce human wildlife conflict by ensuring that herdsmen no longer have to take their cattle to water sources that are in areas inhabited by endangered animals such as lions and elephants.

Right, I need to get packing - we’ll be sending out video updates over the next few weeks so stay tuned!

Here's to 2014 - By Anna Banyard

Coming home for Christmas, me realising its really cheese and crumpets that fills that little hole in my heart, and patting pets and smooth roads, young person’s rail cards and Dad’s signature casserole (and of course family and friends) is over for another year! Winter in the UK is brutally chilly compared to the equatorial sun of Kenya but for me there’s nothing like the feeling of that familiar sofa at Mum’s and when you step on the fallen pine needles around the tree trying to turn off the fairy lights. Some good rest time almost over, nearly time to get back to Kenya to crack on.

I always find that it’s at the beginning of January where you’re encouraged to look forward to what you imagine the fresh New Year to hold, and a lot of my New Year excitement is for Dig Deep in 2014.

2014 will see the progression of partnerships between communities, NGOs and government bodies, it will see cooperation, mutual respect and team work, and it will see focus groups, baseline surveys and capacity building. It will see water, sanitation and hygiene improvements in schools and communities in remote areas of Kenya.

Schools and communities will benefit from the installation of the most sustainable and appropriate water and sanitation solutions for them, which they have identified, discussed, chosen and worked towards. Pupils will participate in hygiene promotion game days, where the objective is to receive strictly positive messages teaching good hygienic practises for staying healthy and strictly to have fun while doing it. Communities will be invited to attend festivals in their villages, people dressed up as giant bars of dancing soap with entertainment all day in the name of outreach, to explain and demonstrate water filtration technologies and how they are available to people if they believe that it would improve their current way of living. Communities will no longer be limited to drink water that makes them suffer water related diseases, or long collection times, or high cost, or low quality or high risk or low supply. I am looking forward to listening to the voices of the villagers and assisting them to develop solutions to some of their water, sanitation and hygiene challenges.

Here’s to the New Year being better than we can imagine. *clink*