GVI Kenya

Category: Ex-poachers, Tsavo West Sustainable Development Programme | Date: Sep 18 2009 | By: gvikenya

I’ve been writing about our ‘adventures’ in Tsavo on a water access project for Kasaani village where former paochers have turned their back on the bush meat trade in search of a more sustainable way of life. We are all rightly proud of what was achieved in two weeks armed with just spades and hoes but much of the credit goes to our project leader and mastermind, Sara… so here’s what those two weeks traversing the Tsavo bush meant to her:

It takes a fair bit to make me cry, but I do cry.  People cry for different reasons and at different times.  Some cry around others who are crying, other people cry when they are alone.  Some wear big sunglasses and let a few tears sneak out when no one is watching (that’s me), others cry loudly and freely.  The last time I cried was sitting on a bus from Mombasa to Taveta – I looked out of the window and saw people carrying empty yellow water jerry cans to the north of the village of Kasaani.  I knew some of the people and didn’t know others.  So why would I cry about that?  Because it meant that the water pipeline I had been working on a week earlier was up and running and the people of this village were no longer making the 5km return journey to fetch water from the water source they previously relied upon.

When I left Kasaani a week earlier, the pipeline was complete but there were a few teething problems and I was yet to see the water flowing for any extended period of time.  Even though countless people from the community had called me the following week to tell me that the water was flowing, the sight of people carrying their jerry cans out in the direction of the tap in Kasaani somehow made it more real.  I knew for sure that the pipeline was being used and making a difference to the people of this community.  Seeing people fetching water from the tap in Kasaani was worth every ache and pain that arose during the two weeks we spent working on the pipeline.

Priscilla collects water in her own village 

Working on this project has been one of the best things I have ever done and I don’t say things like that lightly.  It has been tough.  More things went wrong than I dared to consider could possibly have gone wrong.  But at the end of the day the only thing that matters is the people of Kasaani now have their own supply of drinking water in their village.

Sara (left), David the chairman of the Kasaani ex-poachers group and Zaya witness the first waters flowing towards Kasaani 

I owe thanks to so many people who made this project possible – to Taveta District Council’s Constituency Development Fund for putting in the greatest financial contribution, and doing it within the time frame required, to the other GVI staff who ventured out there and covered me while I was tied up in endless meetings, to the community of Kasaani for their endless work, to my boss for believing that I could pull this project off, and, to the amazing volunteers who came out to work on this project – it would never have happened without them.  Asanteni sana.

Tags: ex-poacher groups, kasaani village, sustainable development, tsavo west national park, water access, water pipeline

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Category: Community Conservation, Ex-poachers, Tsavo West Sustainable Development Programme | Date: Sep 15 2009 | By: gvikenya

So, as I wrote about before, a small team of us had two weeks to lay a 3.5km water pipeline from Salita bore hole to Kasaani village. And bring them a water supply for the first time in living memory.

We didn’t have any kind of modern machinery to help us. Instead we had a collection of hoes and spades. And 3.5km of red earth baked rock hard by the Tsavo sun. However we also had the community members of Kasaani, by our sides, literally day and night; to teach us their digging techniques, to swell our numbers from 7 to over 70 on some days, to sing us songs, tell us stories, make us laugh when the going got beyond tough, to make us cups of hot sweet Kenyan chai at the end of a long day, even to cook us dinner when we barely had the energy to walk home. They sat with us around the campfire until we went to bed, and they were there waiting for us at sunrise the next morning.

Their belief in the project and their commitment to making it work, within our 2 weeks, left us with no doubt that it would happen… even on the morning of day 2, when we returned to Salita village to admire the maiden 80m of trench we’d dug the first day… only to find there was no trench. It had been filled in. In its place was a group of rather upset, rather intimidating, Maasai women. It turns out that despite the project leaders dutifully going through the process of informing all stakeholders, including the Maasai leaders, the message had not been passed down to their Maasai community. In a region where living is a daily struggle and resources hard to come by it is understandable that the women of the community were alarmed by the ’sudden’ rush of activity to divert precious water from their borehole. Over and above that, there are certain protocols that should be respected!

Disheartening as it was to see our previous day’s hard work undone, it was an interesting and very genuine cultural insight, as members of Taveta District council teamed up with the Maasai leaders to explain the project, explain the surveys that showed there was sufficient water in the borehole to supply both villages, and thanks to the local MP, to promise a new water pump that would actually increase the flow of water through their tap. So by mid afternoon, with protocol duly complied with, we were back with the chattering, smiling Maasai women who had watched us the day before and more importantly back with spades and hoes in hand. We made sure we reached 100m before putting them down, just to feel that we had made some progress that day.

The rest of the week was thankfully less ‘eventful’, characterised by a daily increase in blisters, sore muscles and physical exhaustion! The ground was hard… very very hard. Even with up to 30 of Kasaani’s human digging machines putting us to shame, were closer to a third of the way by the end of week one, not half way where we needed to be! The weekend off became just the Sunday off as we spent Saturday playing catch up until we could no longer physically raise a hoe above our heads.

Fortunately the villagers of Kasaani spent the weekend rallying the troops and with some astute negotiations from David the chairman of the Kasaani ex-poachers group, the following Monday saw 50 villagers join us. Before the end of week 2 we had close to 80 and come Thursday morning we had the privilege to be laying 3.5km of pipes along a trench that stretched from Salita to Kasaani… 3.5km of blood, sweat and tears!

Standing in Kasaani village at 8pm on Thursday night to watch the first water flow down the pipe, it was almost too close a call for comfort… but we had the sheer overwhelming joy of seeing water make its way, finally, to Kasaani. Not quite all the way; a dodgy connection along the pipework meant we didn’t quite get to see it flow from the tap, but the hard work had been completed and we could leave Kasaani Friday morning knowing that all that stood between the villagers collecting water from their very own supply were a few hours of tinkering with pipe connections.

The final sighs of relief and tears of emotion came the following Tuesday morning. David called to tell us that the villagers of Kasaani were filling up their 20l water containers from the tap in their village! But the actual reason he called was simply to thank us… they finally had water in their village and it meant the world to them. 

Tags: ex-poacher groups, kasaani village, salita village, tsavo west national park, water access, water pipeline

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Category: Community Conservation, Ex-poachers, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Tsavo West Sustainable Development Programme | Date: Sep 09 2009 | By: gvikenya

It was back in early 2007 that GVI first met and began to work with the community of Kasaani village… in many ways your ’stereotypical’ rural dusty Kenyan community trying to scrape a living from the land.

The Tsavo landscape around Kasaani village

In their case the land lies on the very edge of Tsavo West National Park. The landscape is stunning with views of Chyulu Hills and Taita Hills dotting the Kenyan plains to the North and East, the impressive North Pare Mountains of Tanzania to the South and, when the clouds clear, the majestic Mt Kilimanjaro to the West.

Collecting water from the neighbouring village of Cess

However it makes for tough living, the rains so unpredictable that their efforts at subsistence farming are more like a lottery than a livelihood. It’s not just the crops that suffer from lack of water; the community of Kasaani have never had a water source in their village and normal daily life requires the men, women and children to make a 5km round trip to their nearest source. Those lucky enough to have a bicycle can fetch 60l at a time, on foot you have to triple the number of journeys. Beatrice highlighted just one example of how they are forced to economise on water when she pointed to a group of children and told me how they don’t wash their children’s clothes when they need to because they just can’t spare the water.

Some of the curious children at Kasaani

Poor access to potable water is cited as one of the key objectives of the millennium development goals. So getting water to this community that we have been working with to promote sustainable alternative livelihoods in place of poaching and the bush meat trade has become a priority… with volunteer manpower and some funding sourced, we set ourselves the challenge - 3.5km of trenches to be dug to run a water pipeline from the borehole at Salita village.

We teamed up with Taveta District Council’s Constituency Development Fund to co-finance the project and bring the expertise, and we, our volunteers and the ex-poachers of Kasaani teamed up for two weeks of digging.

At the outset it seemed a huge task for our team armed only with pangas, hoes and spades but when on the first day we took the 5km round trip with a 20l container to get our own water the value of the project struck home and the seeds of determination were sown.

Our own attempts to fetch water from the nearest supply

Stay tuned for our progress,

 Corti

Tags: alternative livelihoods, bush meat trade, sustainable development, tsavo west national park, water access

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Category: Charcoal Burning, Coastal Forest, Shimoni Forest | Date: Sep 01 2009 | By: gvikenya

Hello all,

This blog today is mainly to say a huge thank you to the responses we’ve had regarding the issue of charcoal.  Last week we wrote three blogs focusing on charcoal burning here in Shimoni forest; how it is done, why people do it, and finally a brief introduction into the alternatives available.

We had some great responses, with Kathy informing us that the BBC did a programme related to this subject recently, and that they were offering advice to anyone who would like to know more.  And then Sherri pointed out the ‘ending charcoal’ site on our very own Wildlife Direct!  The internet here has been playing up recently so I’ve only managed to have a brief look, but at first glance it appears both inspirational and genius!

It never fails to amaze me how lucky we are to be a part of this online network of like-minded people, groups and organisations that are all doing such fantastic work.  It makes such sense as well – everyone can ask questions, share ideas, help out and support one another.  I’m going to give the ‘ending charcoal’ blogs a good, solid read, and see what ideas I can plagiarise!  Once we’ve got a prototype kiln and press up and running we can hopefully do our part by sharing ideas, mistakes and thoughts.      

So again, thank you guys for your interest and support, and of course your super ideas.  And here’s to us all working together for a brighter future!

Matt

Tags: BBC, charcoal, ideas, kiln, mistakes, network, press, prototype, Shimoni Forest, thoughts

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