By Njenga Kahiro
Like many areas of
central and north of Laikipia County, Segera area faces water scarcity.
Laikipia County lies on the leeward side of Mount Kenya and therefore receives
low rainfall. Rain water is the cheapest and cleanest water. But how can it be captured
by those who live in a grass thatched house and who are likely to relocate if
the pasture diminishes?
Two local community based
organizations (CBOs), Segera Jirani na Mazingira and Sugutan have with the help
of Zeitz Foundation and funding from United Nations Development Program under
its Global Environment Facility Small Grants Program (UNDP GEF SGP) been
implementing the Manyatta Rain Water Harvesting Project in Laikipia County.
In keeping with the Zeitz
Foundation’s tradition of finding innovative solutions to everyday problems,
partners like Engineers Without Borders USA and Sugutan CBO have been at the
frontline of this innovation piloting a novel rainwater harvesting model for Samburu
Manyattas in the North of Segera.
After many deliberations,
rain-water harvesting through manyattas eventually became a reality. The challenge
was how to ensure a household gets clean rainwater irrespective of whether the
house is grass or mud roofed.
The project implementation
team, together with partners – Engineers Without Borders USA - have come up with
an innovative solution involving: a water proof poly tarp; wood guttering
frame; first flash filtering; above ground capture; and underground storage
with a hand pump to draw the water from the underground tank.
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| Picture of a Manyatta rain water harvesting technology |
Unlike most rain water
harvesting setups, the principle in this innovation is not to force the Samburu
households to change their building architecture but rather to incorporate the
tradition in designing the innovation.
Challenges
On average, a household
would need around 20,000 litres of clean water annually but the roof surfaces of
their houses would not collect that much water. The cost of doing 20,000 litres
storage is also prohibitive. Another challenge is when one water source is shared
by many households. It is therefore often a source of conflict when some
households want to draw more than the agreed share. Another challenge is when
some in the community fail to conform to agreed use of water. An example is
when some use the clean rain water for washing or watering livestock while the
agreed use is cooking or drinking.
Gender dimensions
In Sugutan village, women
who are the traditional builders in this community, have learnt how to fix the
roof and the guttering. The system is completely plug and play, and if the
household moves, the owner can set up the same system in their new homestead as
long as it adopts the same dimensions.
Replication of the innovation
Recently, a much more
improved system developed with technical input from China’s Gansu Research Institute
for Water Conservation (GRIWC) has been introduced resulting in more households
accessing clean water.
Engineers from GRIWC
completed a project with a similar approach at Greater Segera and the plan is
to monitor the two different designs and see which is most effective for scaling
up and introducing more broadly to improve sustainable water management in
Laikipia County. African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) has made requests to share the
knowledge and explore its application at institutional level.
Some schools namely Uaso Nyiro
Primary School which uses 350,000 litres and Endana Secondary School 1.2
million litres of water annually have used the innovation to become
self-sufficient in water.
In addition, the newly
finished Samuel Etoo Football Academy adopts the same water harvesting approach
and is now collecting 1.4 million litres from the roof of a sports stadium, a
canteen and girls dorm. More exciting, perhaps, is the combination of rain
water harvesting and conservation agriculture in one site. This package is
truly set to change the face of dry land communities in Central and North
Laikipia.
Njenga Kahiro is the Laikipia Programme Manager, Zeitz
Foundation – Kenya, Email: njenga@zeitzfoundation.org,
Tel: +254 061 2309996, 0721475876
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