Africa Water Project

In much of the rural settings in Kenya, people often walk up to 20 miles to secure drinking water - water that is usually contaminated and unsafe to drink. Women and children, in Africa responsible for the water supply, have to carry heavy containers filled with dirty water all the way from streams or pipelines back to their villages. If they draw water from local streams, it is often the same water used for bathing, washing clothes, and livestock care, which is normally unsafe to drink.

Contaminated water causes many life threatening diseases such as typhoid, malaria, diarrhea, cholera, and malnutrition. Most of the diseases that stem from unclean water are completely preventable if people have safe, clean drinking water.

In remote areas like Meto, Kenya, livestock and cash crops are the main sources of food and income and can not be supported without a viable and reliable water source. Due to the lack of water resources, crops often fail, and animals die.

Integrity Worldwide has seen this first hand during mission trips to Kenya. We saw the devastating effects of what a famine and drought look like as we drove through completely dry riverbeds and passed a multitude of animal carcasses on the side of the road. Many people were very ill from not having access to clean water. However, most of their sufferings were preventable.

What we do to help

The answer to many of these issues is the drilling of deep wells to supply whole communities with fresh drinking water. Just one well can supply water for an entire community. Wells not only enable lives to be saved, but they also provide a way to break out of the deepest poverty through the businesses of livestock and cash crops.

The Africa Water Project from Integrity Worldwide on Vimeo.

In February 2009, we were able to dig a well for the people of Meto, Kenya. Now, the round 16,000 Maasai in Meto can drink clean, fresh drinking water from their own local well. Located only 50 yards outside the village of Meto, the team of Water Man Drilling Africa dug a well 450 feet deep that supplies the entire community with clean and safe drinking water. Before the people of Meto had to walk 10 miles to the nearest water source - contaminated water from a dirty pipeline in bordering Tanzania. The well was completed and officially opened in July 2009 after the water had been tested and approved.

Separate troughs for animals provide better hygiene. People and animals no longer have to drink from the same water source. With the new well life for the people of Meto will not only be a lot easier, it will also be way healthier!