Raising money seemed to be the biggest challenge. It wasn’t. Although difficult, beginning with the house concert and continuing with ‘Tap the Water’ where local restaurants asked patrons to pay a dollar for a glass of tap water, a Kenyan dinner at the home of Gary and Naomi, ongoing pleas for contributions in a water project that might never produce a single drop and the resulting $5 to $5,000 individual donations, the Kingston Sunrise Rotary contribution and Catskill Rotary’s job as our umbrella organization, somehow the funds grew. But obstacles still loomed.
First, we had to find a driller, someone in Kenya willing to deal with, not a development agency, but individuals in the United States who knew nothing about wells or Kenya. Hiring Tom Armstrong and his company, JB Drilling, turned out to be the single most important part of the process. When I was freaking out because my ‘Ugly American’ standards did not mesh with developing world sensibilities, he would reassure, “We have a saying here in East Africa — ‘Things will work out, if we let it.’”
Armstrong, an ex-pat Brit who has lived in Kenya for decades, was well-versed in both African traditions and Western demands. He even understood the particular idiosyncrasies of a New Yorker, as I babbled about the absurdity that all work must stop for a week because someone in the village died. “You know what we would accomplish in New York if we did that — bupkis.” (Who would have guessed that bupkis was translatable to Swahili?)
He laid out the odds of hitting water on our second and final try when the first shot came up empty. “Not that good.”
Our celebratory scream must have been heard in New Jersey when the water committee learned that JB Drilling struck water. We were more than halfway there. Or so we thought.
Late in December 2007 into 2008, post-election violence erupted between Luo and Kikuyu tribes after Raila Odinga and his Luo supporters accused incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, of rigging the presidential vote. Armstrong’s Kikuyu workers refused to go to Miyuga, a Luo village, despite guarantees of their safety. After months of negotiations, JB Drilling returned to Miyuga.
But we still needed money for a pump, electricity, a storage tank and kiosk, where water could be sold for a nominal fee to ensure sustainability.
It may have been our imagination, but the water committee noticed friends walking the other way whenever one of us arrived on the scene. Could it be they sensed that behind our smiles was another urgent need for their checks? Some dug into their pockets again, but we needed new sources. When the Kodi matriarch, an 84-year-old Catholic, learned that an 84-year-old Jewish woman wrote a check for $5,000, she told her son, “Before I die, I want to meet that woman.”
With a new infusion of cash, the required parts were falling into place. Soon the pump would be cranking and the pipes overflowing. Wrong again.
Miyuga was one electric outlet away from completing the final stages. We awaited word of Kenya Power and Lighting Company’s arrival to install this key component. When the workers finally showed up, they came with a two-prong rather than three-prong outlet. No problem, we thought, they’ll be back in a jiffy with the correct part. But this was Kenya. We were relegated to the back of the queue. The wait began anew.
One year later, Kenya Power and Lighting returned to Miyuga with the three-prong outlet.
Four water committee members, Patricia, David, Ruth and I, arrived by jeep in Miyuga on October 21, 2011. This was after a whirlwind week of jumping on and off postal stamp-sized airplanes and bumping around dirt roads as our driver navigated terrain resembling Overlook Mountain in order to visit the Kodi children.
We met our two graduates who were successfully negotiating their adult lives: Sylvester, enrolled in welding and metal arts school in Nairobi, and Oliva, a mother of four, living on the army base near Nakuru while her soldier husband patrolled the border between Ethiopia and Kenya. Oliva has enrolled their children in school, underscoring the development mantra: Educate a girl and you educate the next generation.
We met Inviolata, the next oldest girl, studying away in hopes of passing the national graduation exams. (She passed and in December joined her older siblings as high school graduates.) Our travels also took us to the boarding school of Vincent, who has two years remaining and wants to be a lawyer, and to our youngest and most promising, Valaria, a quiet, deep-thinking child who would occasionally flash a shy smile as the adults tried to engage her in conversation. She remains close to the top of her class and says she someday wants to be an accountant.
After crisscrossing Kenya’s Lake District to visit the children, we finally arrived in sunbaked Miyuga. The entire village came out to greet us as if we were long-lost family. Dressed in multicolored finery, the women danced and serenaded us with call-and-response chants. Countless tears, laughter and hugs later, we walked to the well where the matriarch, Angelina Kodi, would cut our ribbon. Red, white and blue for the United States. Black, red and green for Kenya. Right before her shaky hands snipped the ribbon, a village priest blessed the well and all who had gathered. As he began his incantation, the sky opened and the usually arid Miyuga was bathed in a soaking rain. The irony wasn’t lost on us.
Wonderful story. Well told. Empowering. We can’t change the world but this reminds us, we can make a difference. One project at a time, success building on success — way to go! Clean water is a human right, not a bottled privilege.