Water for Life
The water issue – water scarcity on the horizon !
Matuga, our village with an estimated 3000 inhabitants is a typical Kenyan coastal village. The entire village population has about 4 wells and a small river that does NOT offer water all year round, and in addition the water is of poor quality. In the whole village you will not find a single well with good quality drinking water ! The water supply of the government, which frequently fails and is only available from time to time at certain taps in the are, was built about 50 years ago and is not only extremely unreliable (usually there is no water for several weeks !) but also of poor quality, often even contaminated, during tests we found E-coli bacteria in frighteningly high numbers. Accordingly, gastrointestinal diseases, infections and serious illnesses up to typhoid fever are nothing unusual.
As the government fails to provide drinking water for their citizens we have decided to help these afflicted people from our community with high quality drinking water. This includes the distribution of high quality drinking water from our own well which is approx. 130m deep.
The solution and it’s challenges …
These days we are distributing around 4,000 – 12,000 liter of fresh drinking water every day to our villagers, depending on the season and climate – trend continously increasing. The construction costs of this deep-well were about 20’000$ and to pump the freshwater from the aquifer to the surface we need a powerful 3-phase wellpump. from the surface we pump the water into a clean cistern from where it will be distributed mainly by force of gravity, but if we are facing high demands we need to engage a pressure pump in order to satisfy the needs of the people during a day. These power requirements are reflected in the power bill from Kenya Power. But not enough, there is a constant maintenance and repair of the equipment needed. Is it a broken tap or the overhaul of the borehole pump or even a electrical brakedown – it causes rather high costs throughout the year – not included the salary cost for the tap-operators which are making sure, everybody gets his/her water. It was quickly apparent that, unlike in Europe, we would not be able to pass on the actual costs of water production to the consumers, since most households here have an extremely modest household income or cannot generate any income at all due to unemployment.
An ECO – SOCIAL Project was started and is very successful
So we decided to give our drinking water to the population for a very symbolic price of 5 Shillings (approx. 0.04 $) per Jerrycan (free of charge is impossible otherwise local trade will quickly emerge). At the same time we were aware of the fact that we need sponsors to finance the true costs. In order not to simply depend on donations or monthly support contributions, we decided to offer our excellent drinking water to private individuals, hotels and restaurants in Diani Beach at an attractive price. The response was excellent right from the start and the demand from customers in Diani and the surrounding area is growing steadily. However, we also attach great importance to sustainable use of our deep well in order not to exploit its capacity. We therefore limit the sale of water to third party customers to the same amount that we provide to the local residents, a maximum total of 30% of the potential supply capacity !
We offer not only a safe and high quality drinking water, but also an ecologically sound water that is free of chemicals and purifications and convinces by the extraction in the vicinity and thus also convinces by short transport routes in terms of sustainability ! With the purchase of our water in refillable and durable PET bottles, our customers not only buy ecological water at an unbeatable price, but also become supporters of the villagers. The re-financing of the water delivery to the population was thus secured and a time-appropriate, new ECO-SOCIAL-PROJECT was created which makes all participants winners !
We are proud to be able to continue this unique project with confidence and joy and thank our customers for their valuable support towards this project !
