Report: D5W10: Sere Olipi Primary School Well

Funded by the Walk4Water PGH, The Samburu Project will drill and install a shallow well equipped with a handpump in this community.

The children currently depend upon an unreliable water source, Sere Olipi Stream, located 1km from the school. Many children experience health issues due to waterborne diseases and lack of access to clean, safe drinking water.

Once the well is complete, the children can focus on their studies and stay in school as they will no longer be searching for water or getting sick from contaminated water.

The water will be used for drinking, washing clothes, cooking, bathing and farming.

The school management board will act as the water committee. They will hire a day and night guard and manage the well in terms of maintenance and repairs. They will communicate with TSP in the event that there is an issue with the well. A community fund will be established once the well is drilled in August 2011.

This is one of three wells we will drill in the Sere Olipi location which is a new project area for The Samburu Project. Though it is only 45km from Wamba, our headquarters, there are no roads that go directly between the two towns. It takes about 10 hours to walk from Wamba to Sere Olipi. By car it takes a couple of hours, assuming there are no unforeseen issues. There are a number of challenges for The Samburu Project in Sere Olipi which are best described in Lucas Lekwale's August 28th email below:

"Kristen...

I hope this finds you well. There are a number of challenges that we encountered while doing hydrological survey in Sere Olipi that I would like to bring to your attention. The challenges are as follows;

1. In 2006, Masaai Barefoot Technology (MBT) surveyed more than 6 wells in Sere Olipi. The community entry point was poor, only a few politically correct people were involved in site selection which the community was not happy about. The people involved selected sites in or near their homesteads. This project never kicked off despite community clearing bushes, making roads, collecting sand, hardcore and stones for building. The community felt exploited, cheated upon and empty.

Our challenge:
It was very difficult for me to convince the community on the integrity of our program because they had a bad experience with the MBT project. In fact, they were reluctant on our mobilization. It took a lot of energy and experience to finally make them understand.

Way forward:
This community needs more visits for mobilization/sensitization.

2. Bad Terrain - as seen in the pictures for Nairisha Community, it was very difficult for us to access this point using our 4-wheel drive cars. The road is bad and so is the bush.

Way Forward:
We need to go to this community early and make the roads passable and ready for drilling in mid-August.

3. New Area/Virgin for Shallow Wells - Sere Olipi is a new area for shallow wells and boreholes, therefore this concept is new to the community.

Way forward:
There is need to do more community meetings, educating them about the wells.

Recommendations:

There is a need to mobilize these communities early next month, latest on 5th for bush clearance, collection of sand and hardcore.

Have a series of community meetings in Sere Olipi and Archer's Post bringing on board women, administration, opinion leaders and all stakeholders prior to drilling. This will give us head start as well as advocate on what we do.

All my Love
Lucas"

After drilling 70.1 meters, no water was found. We had to declare it a dry well. This is always an extremely sad day for a community and The Samburu Project team. It is a risk that we always run and fortunately this has only been the 2nd time we have experienced this. We always do one extra site survey in the event of a dry well, so we hope to drill another well successfully in the name of Walk4WaterPGH.

Not Applicable