On Wednesday 10 March, the SJB team, consisting of Simon Witney, Maria Watson, Kate Gammon, Claire Osborne, John Atherton, Darren Reid, Lars Reubekeul and Alexandra Clapp, landed in the early hours at Nairobi airport.Bleary-eyed, we met up with Alexandra Oatham, Excellent Development’s Fundraising Development Manager, who was with us every step of the way during the trip.What followed was a comedy minibus journey to our host community in Kalawa, via Excellent’s office in Kola, during which we experienced some three flat tyres and a stint sitting by the side of a dusty road.
Nevertheless, all of that was worth it for the greeting that we got from a number of the local communities when we arrived that evening to meet the ‘Wendano wa Ngomeni Self-Help Group’.Our rattly old minibuses followed the ladies of the group as they sang and danced whilst the school children lined the sides of the road shrieking with excitement.Then came the speeches, which required pretty much everyone to say a few words...as we were to discover, this was a theme that was to become commonplace during the trip!We quickly familiarised ourselves with the accommodation- rooms to ourselves and mattresses on floors (lucky), and showers from a bucket, toilets that were a hole in the ground and big bugs (not so lucky but to be expected).
On Day 2, due to rains, the build for the SJB funded dam had to be postponed by a day, so we helped the ‘Ngatho Ya Kyaani Self-Help Group’ complete the wings on their dam.Fortunately Day 3 brought some better weather and we turned up at the site of the Wendano dam build eager to start.Little did we know that there was some 6 hours of digging down to the bedrock that had to be done before we could even begin cementing the foundations.We soon realised that (a) these ladies were seriously strong, and (b) shifting sand by hand is not easy.However, we hit bedrock at about 3pm and proceeded to mix the mountains of sand and cement!Resident cameraman Darren did a fantastic job of combining filming with digging along the way.
On Day 4 we returned to the dam for more cement mixing for the foundations.The pace at which these dams are completed is quite astonishing with it not being uncommon for them to be completed in 2 to 3 days.Ours was a midsize dam requiring about 301 bags of cement and being around 29 metres wide (including wings).By this stage we were all being called by the Kamba names that we had been given. Some of these were quite flattering, Maria’s being ‘Mwende’ or ‘the loved one’ and Kate’s being ‘Wavinya’ or ’the strong one’.Others were less so: Simon’s was ‘Mutuko’ or ‘the one who was born after midnight’ - so they clearly thought he had something of the night about him?!
Later in the day we went to watch a football match between a team formed from four of the local community self-help groups and the visiting team who had helped earlier in the day with the building of the dam, Kibwezi.
On Day 5 (Sunday), as the communities in the area are predominantly Catholic, we were invited to attend a church service held by a local community which, as it turned out, lasted for 3 hours!!!Followed by more speeches!Later on, we played in a volleyball match which we, not surprisingly, lost!We vowed to practice and return with a super-elite SJB volleyball team however. Day 6 involved more project visits around the area of Kola including some 9 sand dams and a visit to a farm belonging to a lady called Josephine (see:www [add a link], the farm had been cultivated under Excellent’s guidance and was now producing an array of vegetables and fruits.
On our last day, on our way to Nairobi airport, we were fortunate enough to stop off at The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust to see the baby elephants being fed and to feed (and kiss!) the giraffes at the Langatta Giraffe Centre.
This was a fantastic end to a truly remarkable trip and we all felt extremely privileged to have been a part of it.
Thank you so much to all those who sponsored us - by the time we left we had doubled our fundraising target and hit £16,000, including SJB matched funds.We can now safely say that every penny of your donations has been worthwhile as the two dams that we helped out on have now filled with water (see photos attached), and we have seen at first hand how the dams and the projects are literally transforming people’s lives.Access to clean water is something we all take for granted, but is not available to over 1 billion of the world’s population.Thanks to your generosity, that has now changed for the thousands of people living in the communities we visited.