Turkana Kenya Day 1 027, rev.jpg
Turkana, in northern Kenya, has been hit by a massive drought for over a year, triggered and worsened by the effects of El Nino. Under a program called Kenya Resilient Arid Lands Partnership for Integrated Development (Kenya-RAPID), funded by USAID and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), CRS is the lead NGO in Isiolo and Turkana Counties working with Catholic Church dioceses to support the County governments as they develop their capacities to sustainably tap and exploit precious water reserves in Kenya's Arid and Semi-Arid Lands, or ASALs. Substantial water supplies lie below ground, so using them responsibly and maintaining them at the County level (as part of Kenya's devolution under the new Constitution of 2010) is key to the economic development of these traditionally marginalized lands. In the ASALs, crop farming is possible only along riverbeds and/or with irrigation, so livestock is a mainstay of the economy. Ensuring access to water for livestock and people is a major pillar of the program.
Often what one notices in Turkana is not only the scarcity of water, but a shocking mismanagement of those water resources when they are available. Here, a solar-powered pumping system supplies a local village, but a school and dispensary were without water, but the pump keeps running to overflowing, sometimes due to some malfunction. Here, CRS and the Diocese of Lodwar have partnered with the Lodwar Water and Sanitation Company (LOWASCO) and the Turkana County government to extend the water to a medical facility, and a concrete livestock watering trough will be built separate from where humans draw their water.
Often, the water is allowed to flow freely like this to provide water to the animals, but without a concrete receptacle, the water quickly seeps back into the ground and is wasted.
The dispensary, without a clean water supply, couldn't provide services to the local people, especially in its maternity ward.
Photo by Nancy McNally/Catholic Relief Services
Turkana Kenya Day 1 027, rev.jpg
Turkana, in northern Kenya, has been hit by a massive drought for over a year, triggered and worsened by the effects of El Nino. Under a program called Kenya Resilient Arid Lands Partnership for Integrated Development (Kenya-RAPID), funded by USAID and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), CRS is the lead NGO in Isiolo and Turkana Counties working with Catholic Church dioceses to support the County governments as they develop their capacities to sustainably tap and exploit precious water reserves in Kenya's Arid and Semi-Arid Lands, or ASALs. Substantial water supplies lie below ground, so using them responsibly and maintaining them at the County level (as part of Kenya's devolution under the new Constitution of 2010) is key to the economic development of these traditionally marginalized lands. In the ASALs, crop farming is possible only along riverbeds and/or with irrigation, so livestock is a mainstay of the economy. Ensuring access to water for livestock and people is a major pillar of the program.
Often what one notices in Turkana is not only the scarcity of water, but a shocking mismanagement of those water resources when they are available. Here, a solar-powered pumping system supplies a local village, but a school and dispensary were without water, but the pump keeps running to overflowing, sometimes due to some malfunction. Here, CRS and the Diocese of Lodwar have partnered with the Lodwar Water and Sanitation Company (LOWASCO) and the Turkana County government to extend the water to a medical facility, and a concrete livestock watering trough will be built separate from where humans draw their water.
Often, the water is allowed to flow freely like this to provide water to the animals, but without a concrete receptacle, the water quickly seeps back into the ground and is wasted.
The dispensary, without a clean water supply, couldn't provide services to the local people, especially in its maternity ward.
Photo by Nancy McNally/Catholic Relief Services