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Kenya Diaries: Delivering Clean Water in Kenya
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more on Barry Simmons
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Clean water is a rare commodity in some parts of the world. In Kenya, people often drink polluted water, because there is nothing else available. With that, a middle Tennessee organization decided to help.
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Jena Lee runs a nonprofit called Blood: Water Mission. It was started by the rock band Jars of Clay, who had a hit called “Flood.”
The water in Kenya, however, is not popular. It is often loaded with diseases, such as cholera.
“With cholera, just give yourself 24 hours of vomiting, diarrhea, you're gone,” Lee’s partner Benjamin said
Sixty percent of the diseases people die from in Kenya come from the water. Typhoid, diarrhea, and cholera kill tens of thousands of Kenyans a year. They are literally drinking poison.
"It's the best they can have. So, they would rather take it than do without water, because you cannot do without water,” Benjamin said.
It's water that women and children walk miles just to get. Often it's from the same place where people bathe.
That is why Lee, Benjamin and his drilling crew paid one village a visit to build a clean pump.
“It's like a dream come true, when you have been dreaming of something,” Benjamin said. “That's what they're going through. They've been waiting for this day, this minute, to get this kind of water.”
A Kenyan living in a rural area lives on about 12 gallons of water a day. Someone in the United States typically uses more than 170 gallons.
Copyright © 2007 International Reporting Project. All Rights Reserved.