Digging A Well @ Sokoni Community, located in Roka, Killifi (Kenya)

Posted by Your Environmental Voice on 20:43 in | 0 comments
In this project, we provided the Sokoni Primary School and the community around the school with a reliable source of water. The Sokoni Primary School is located in a small town known as Roka in Killifi, Mombasa.

The inspiration for this project came while two of the members of our organization were watching the news about the drought in Northern parts of Kenya. After watching the footage, they just could not get the images of the kids dying of thirst in their heads. It was as though they had reached a point of realization and actually wanted to do something to help the less fortunate people. One thing lead to another and we eventually decided to assist a local community in need considering that Northern Kenya was too far from us.

In order to find a local community, we had to speak to someone with experience, someone who had done so much around Kenya in terms of helping people and would know which place needed immediate assistance. This person was Andrew Kitanyi, a student at the Methodist University in Mombasa and the chairman of The Pamoja Africa Initiative. Despite our fears, he was delighted to be of assistance and we planned to visit the location that he had in mind the following weekend.

The Sokoni Community, Roka, Kilifi, Kenya
The visit to the Sokoni Primary School only motivated us to work harder to help the people of that community. The visit to the school truly made us appreciate what we had. The people of that community live in terrible conditions but never seem to complain about it. We had to meet with the councilor of that community and he told me that one of the major reasons to why people of that community don’t receive assistance is because they don’t seem to want to bother others with their problems, they never ask for help.

We had visited the school with Bockle, a borehole contractor who was going to oversee the area and inform of us of the costs of digging a borehole there, which would provide the school with water. He informed us that it would cost about Kenya shillings 250,000. That was a lot of money that we just couldn’t afford. Regardless of the cost, our determination was too strong and we knew that we would somehow raise that amount and provide the community with water, which was something that they desperately needed.

We addressed the leaders of the community, the headmistress of the school and the councilor of the area to notify them of our intentions so that we could get their blessings. Most African communities are very superstitious and it is very important that if you want to do something for them, you ask them first.

Signing An Agreement With The Well Contractors
As soon as we got back, we got to work. We wrote a proposal as well as a letter to several companies around Mombasa asking them for financial assistance to enable us to begin working on our project.  We emailed over 20 different companies. However, only 2 companies replied. These were the Mombasa Maize Millers and the Gulf African Bank who in total gave us kshs 80,000. Although we were very grateful, we were also quite disappointed. This amount was nowhere near the amount that we needed. We could not get any more money and so we had to improvise. Well’s served the same purpose as boreholes and were cheaper but took longer to be dug, way longer. We called the Councilor Hassan and he was able to find us someone who would be able to dig the well for Kshs 30,000. This was a good amount, as we would have a lot left over which would allow us to assist the community further.

Over coming all the difficulties that we faced during the course of this project, we worked efficiently with the Leaders of the community as well as the people in charge of digging the well in order to complete the project as soon as we could. After many days of dedication from all the involved parties the project finally came to an end. We successfully provided the people of the Sokoni community with a reliable source of water. We created a lasting relationship with the Sokoni community.

The success of this project has inspired us to take up many more similar projects. Today we can proudly say “We Made A Difference” by providing the Sokoni community with a reliable source of water. We would like to urge you to support our initiatives, its time we give back to our communities.


Check out more images taken during the course of the project here:

http://your-evoice-gallery.blogspot.com/search/label/Digging%20A%20Bore%20Hole%20At%20Sokoni%20Community


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