“Food, Faith, Life and Hope” ...these were the words on a drawing by Tyler Nagayama, one of the summer team members. He made an impression of the borehole at the Heavenly Treasures guesthouse. It was just the beginning of something that was going to transform the Kakuyuni community.

This morning I woke up early and I decided to walk down to the water kiosk with David to see how it works. By 7am , there were people already waiting in line for the kiosk to be open. One of the customers joked about having the kiosk open 24 hrs so that people wouldn’t have to wait in line. Considering the nature of the weather right now and the drought that has hit the country, there is dire need of water; it is a source of life out here.

Slowly by slowly donkeys, oxen with carts motor vehicles and people on foot started rolling in the kiosk and it became like a beehive. People are walking as far as 10 to 15 kilometres to come and fetch the water. Some say that they pass other boreholes along the way because of the saltiness of their water. Our water is not salty and it has some sort of mineral natural taste and the people love it!

The Water Kiosk has brought hope to this community and it is also a meeting place for the villagers. It reminds me of a story of one village in the western part of Kenya. There was a river where everybody used to go fetch water. The community basically met at the river and people were able to discuss issues that are affecting the community and come up with solutions on how to empower themselves. The water kiosk has become like that river.

We have integrated the kiosk with some agricultural development, and to my surprise, people are not only looking at the vegetables growing but they are trying to replicate what they see in their farms. After about two hours at the kiosk, I decided to take a walk around the community to see what people are doing in their farms. The first family I visited lives on the opposite side of the water kiosk but at the top of the hill. I found two young men and a lady in the garden preparing the soil for the planting this season. This time around they were not using oxen to till their small piece of land but they had 15 double dug beds properly done with enough manure. The lady started explaining to me that they have formed a group of 48 members within the community and each one of them have at least two double dug beds. She had a plan. She started explaining how she will grow which vegetable in what bed and how she wants it to look -  like the one by the water Kiosk. I was really impressed.

Later we visited another family, which had five double dug beds and were waiting for the rains. The bio-intensive phenomena and the new methods of farming is a result of a one-week training that was done by Boaz from Organic for orphans in May 2009. We initially planned to have about 30 people for the training but about 10 people showed up. I personally thought it was a flop, but once Patrick started growing the vegetables, the community really embraced the idea and started emulating what they saw.

Today, two years after we began plans to drill the borehole, we are able to see the fruits of the water! Food, faith, life and hope are slowly being restored in the Kakuyuni community.

- Kigen Teimuge, Manager of Organizational Development