Although accessible, the supply of running water in the Kitale area is not reliable: rapid population growth, urbanization, water misuse, and mismanagement have all left the infrastructure ill equipped and poorly maintained. As a result, water gets shut off regularly with no advance notice, sometimes for a few days. If this happens, and/or if families don’t have access to county water, they’re forced to manually collect water on a daily basis. 

Manually collecting water considerably shortens the time individuals have available to spend with their families, on child care, other household tasks, or even in leisure activities. For both boys and girls, water collection can take time away from their education and sometimes even prevent their attending school altogether.

In addition, collection of water can affect the health of the whole family, and particularly of children. When water is not available at home, even if it is collected from a safe source, the fact that it has to be transported and stored increases the risk of contamination.

At Neema’s current location, county water is used. But when the water gets shut off unexpectedly, our students are forced to walk 1.25 miles to the nearest water supply to collect water. But thankfully, Neema’s new property has its own borehole (well) for continued and reliable access to water for our Neema students and the surrounding community. Thanks to the generosity of donors, we were able to dig our own borehole last year.

Having its own well means Neema students will no longer be at the mercy of the county’s water source, and therefore, will no longer be forced to trek twice a day just to obtain the one thing that is essential for all of life. 

The time and energy saved will free up Neema’s young women to just be girls, living life with friends, developing relationships, taking care of their children, and giving their extra energy to go towards the things that really matter — skills training, counseling, and discipleship as they work towards independence and healing.

But additionally, our new borehole is already a reliable water source for Neema’s neighbors in the surrounding community. We anticipate that upon opening of our campus later this year, our borehole will provide water for more than 500 adults and children. When water is not immediately available and needs to be collected, it’s often women and girls who do the collecting, doing so at the expense of their time and lost opportunities. And so, just as with our Neema students, access to this water will ensure that women and girls in our community will be able to spend their time on more productive tasks.