Bunyala District, Lake Victoria, Kenya – 33 tanks
In the middle of April, 2011, a trip was planned to the Island of Sigulu in Ugandan Lake Victoria, to add 70 new water stations on the island. The project had begun the year before, also during the month of April, just prior to the arrival of the rains. Being that the island is long and that the 10,000 residents suffer from the lack of clean water, especially during the rainy season, Wings of Grace International had decided to use a large part of the funds that had come in, to help Sigulu further.
Upon arrival, it was found that although the tanks were all delivered, ready to be prepared and then distributed to the awaiting sites, a very necessary document had not been acquired. It was the paper allowing Wings of Grace International to cross the Kenya-Uganda border with our tanks, to help out the people of Sigulu. Although the first time around we had worked with the verbal acknowledgment of the Uganda Revenue Authority, this time, with 70 tanks and thus much more at stake, we insisted on a written acknowledgement.
The Surprise Birth of A New Project…
The team we were working with at the time, failed to have the paperwork within the stipulated time (it was a short trip, and much was to be done), and so upon passing the agreed upon deadline, Tasmin went to the local Kenyan authorities, asking where the tanks were needed on the Kenyan side of Lake Victoria.
Immediately we went to work looking for villages which were suffering from water needs, and decided how many tanks we would put at each site. Along the way the Ugandan side acquired the necessary document, and persuaded us to leave half the tanks on the Ugandan side. We agreed, but allocated 33 water stations on the Island and almost islands in the Bunyala district of Kenyan Lake Victoria, where each rainy season, there’s an outbreak of cholera, a highly contagious waterborne disease, that is transmitted primarily by improper hygiene.
There’s much work still to be done in the area, but the project is off to a good start. We have had some problems with the initial management team that was put in charge of taking care of the tanks, but hope to resolve this with the help of the local Catholic priest and his far-flung parish, and leader from the office of the fisheries in Port Victoria.
Spending
As this project was brought upon by the delay in the Sigulu, Uganda project, the spending is shown in the report on the Sigulu project .
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