A Struggle for Water

We assessed the needs of the small village sitting at the foot of the Northwesterly slopes of Mt. Meru because the High Commission had funded a small clinic there and the dusty access track was an indication of how dry the area could become. A few Acacia trees struggled in the gullies and any was grass was dry, brown and withered.

The scattered Maasai bomas baked in the sun and everything had that light brown, dusty colour. Few people were braving the afternoon heat.

The school was grey because like the clinic, it was built from concrete blocks and it crossed my mind that encouraging the school to establish a tree planting programme would be challenging.

‘The long rains come,’ says Joshia, ‘enough for a crop of maize to grow – otherwise these people could not survive here.’

We carried out the environmental programme and during the long rains, each pupil planted a tree, but of course when the dry came, the trees struggled.

The only water supply was from a pipe that carried water from high up the mountain but the supply was erratic, so as the dry progressed, the elders ordered that there was enough water for livestock only, however, the students stole water at night to irrigate their trees.

Although I was assured otherwise, I took ownership that we had motivated the students by way of prizes for growing the best tree, so I suspect the beating up of the teacher was a demonstration not to meddle with decrees from the elders.

After two years the school had some shade from trees the kids had tended.

Some five years later on other slopes of Mt. Meru we were asked to assist in the rehabilitation of an old water scheme that had failed. The old galvanized pipes were rusted but before I committed to helping, I wanted to inspect the origins of the water source.

I was warned not go up there!

‘The best cannabis in Africa is grown there.’ I was told, ‘The locals are very suspicious of visitors and they are likely to attack you.’

On the other hand the locals assured us it would be quite safe.

There was no vehicle access to the village and from where I left the Landrover, it took four and a half hours of steep climbing to get there an waiting for us [they watched our approach] were two Maasai grandmothers who greeted us warmly, offering us a cup of milky tea followed by a mug of loshoro. Two men then arrived to take us further up the mountain to where there was a small spring.

On the way up there, I saw the square, tidy gardens where the cannabis was grown. Grandmothers [young people don’t seem to stay up there] harvest the choice bits and sell it by four litre pail-full.

I was told that sometimes the army are helicoptered in to destroy the crop, but there seems to be plenty of seed in the soil to ensure further crops.

Certainly there were no threats to me.

At the spring there was a square concrete box with a locked iron sheet over the top, which one of the men unlocked to reveal a space inside of about one cubic metre.

The spring poured into the reservoir and there were three one inch diameter outlets; the one pointing toward the village had a tap, where the village people collected their water. Near the top was an overflow back into the creek.

I was dumbfounded to be told that the Westerly-heading pipe flowed down to that first village at the foot of the slope!

The outlet that was supposed to serve the Easterly line, the one we were to rehabilitate, was blocked off with a screwed up shopping bag – ‘because the line down to the village was broken’.

The upper tribe and those of the Westerly village are Maasai, and the to-be-rehabilitated line served another tribe so plainly, more than a little diplomacy was required.

The distance from the spring to the village was perhaps half a mile, so I offered to pipe the distance so that women folk didn’t need to walk the distance to fetch their water - the men were ambivalent but agreed to allow the rehabilitation of the line.

We fixed the line and the lower village had their supply of water, but of course they were pretty much at the mercy of the Maasai up the mountain, so only whenever the spring flowed well, was there an abundance of water. We altered the scheme so it could eventually be hooked onto another supply [not yet pinpointed] from somewhere in the National Park.

Meantime, it was up to the village people to remain on good terms with the Maasai man key-holder.