Starfish thrown – Kithogondo Well
Our pilot team in 2019 spent a week working on a health clinic in Mwea. Just along the road from the clinic is Kithogondo, a slum village where rice workers live. The village’s population is approximately 3,000 people, living in 600 households. A typical house has wattle and mud walls and a corrugated metal roof. It will usually be a single room, but it will often be home to six people.
Some of the pilot team met with the village elders to discuss the village’s needs. Naturally, the availability of clean, fresh water was at the top of the list! It is a significant issue because back then, the villagers collected and drank water directly from the river at the bottom of the village. They also used the river to wash clothes etc.
The water is unsafe to drink, but they cannot afford to buy bottled water or boil it due to the fuel cost. As a result, stomach illness is frequent, and at least one person in each household becomes sick every month. Villages must also take medication to eliminate the parasites picked up from drinking river water.
From that meeting, one of the team, Irma Mullins, was determined to do something about this. The obvious solution was to build a well which would provide clean drinking water and keep them safe from parasites and illness.
It was essential to discuss the situation with the villages; we held several community meetings to agree on what they needed; they wanted their own well. So Irma set about to raise the money to build one.
Throw a Star Fish commissioned a water engineer to complete a site survey who advised where to site the well. Then, as happened in many places, Covid-19 came along and put everything on hold. However, working with our partner BOHI, we are pleased to report the well has been built, and the clean water is flowing for the villagers