The Well That Changed Everything in Kisumu

Six months ago the women of Kisumu walked four hours a day for water that still made their children ill. Today the queue outside the new borehole lasts eleven minutes.

The borehole itself is unremarkable: a steel casing, a hand pump, a concrete apron that keeps the mud out. What makes it work is the committee of eleven villagers who maintain it, collect the small monthly fee that pays for spares, and hold the keys.

We have learned the hard way that a well without a committee is a well that lasts eighteen months. Pumps fail, seals perish, and a community that never expected to own the thing waits for someone else to fix it. So the training now comes before the drilling rig.

Clinic admissions for waterborne illness in the surrounding villages have fallen by roughly two thirds since the pump was commissioned. School attendance among girls, who carried most of the water, is up by a quarter.

Your donations funded the survey, the drilling, the pump, the apron and the training. The committee funds everything after that, which is exactly how it should be.