africa report

8/4/2019 Africa Report

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By: Joshua Gale

August 20, 2011

Water, in Kenya, as it was referred to so many

times during my experience there, is life. For the entirety

of my time in Kenya, I lived with the Samburu people of

Northern Kenya, a nomadic, indigenous sub sect of the

Maasai tribe. In crossing the expansive cultural divide, I

found myself being met with many obstacles; probably

the biggest would be the language barrier that held a firm

foundation and set an obvious separation between the

local people and myself. Amidst those obstacles, my

purpose in Kenya remained quite clear; to document the

progress and completion of water wells funded by

donations of various amounts from people of the United

States. With every location I had the fortune of visiting,

came a dialog, one that many times, oddly enough,

occurred without words, between the recipients of the

water wells and me. Sometimes one's presence with his

or her stated purpose says plenty enough. The message

that was communicated to me from them came in

different forms and the contextual property of every well

was changed for each particular location, but that

message was always clear—and always came with a

silent undertone of urgency. The message was simply

this: Water is important. [Please or thank you for your]

help.

Kenya is currently in a drought, as it was in 2006,

2009, and the latter months of 2010. The effects Kenya

has been experiencing from the lack of water, and

especially clean water, can not be expressed even to a

small degree in numbers, and to put them into words is

nearly as difficult. Accurate calculations could not

possibly be made by even the most skilled analysts

because the effects extend well beyond what any

numeral can convey. Even beyond the seriousness of

the epidemic of cholera and other water borne diseases,

other lesser known effects have surfaced, such as

clashes or fights between tribes who find themselves

competing for the same water hole. The term "water

wars" has been coined to describe such an event. For



example, Tribe "A" and tribe "B" may have coexisted

peacefully for hundreds of years, but their precious

supplies of water have been depleting due to the lack of

rainfall and now there are fewer supplies of water to

support the two dehydrated tribes of people. What

occurs is the same thing that has throughout history;

unless a mutual understanding is decided upon, they

fight. If tribe "A" is more powerful than "B" then "A" will

take control of the water supply and that leaves tribe "B"

to either die fighting or to die from dehydration. Dr. Tina

Ramme of Harvard University has been working for 7

years trying to help a famished community but finds

herself and her funds falling short of tackling other

concerning issues because most of her attention is spent

attending to the shortage of water. I asked her once,

"Why are you so focused on water?" She replied, "I have

been trying to help with supplying the community with

food as well, and sometimes I manage to get both done,

but honestly a person can survive for one to two weeks

without food—they can only make it a few days without

good water." Water wells, which in Kenya are many

times called "bore-holes," can be drilled and the

development of such wells is clutch for the distribution of

clean water—and in Dr. Ramme's case the procedures

are being taken for that to happen.

Water that is sprung from such water wells is used

for a variety of purposes. A few of the wells I visited had

made use of the well by starting community organic

gardens; it was really interesting to see members of the

community walk out to their portion of the garden and

pour cups of water on each individual plant. Another

community took that concept one step further and

harvested the leftover vegetables and sold them at a

local market—the money obtained from this went straight

into education through the purchase of school supplies

and paying of fees for the children of the community.

The water is used for other things as well such as

sterilization for operations (pregnancies) and also helps

keep the livestock, which is extremely important for a

nomadic society, hydrated in extreme cases. Water wells

have become an excellent response to the water crisis,



but unfortunately there are factors, geological,

governmental, and monetary factors, that are hindering

the development of such wells.

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The process required to drill a bore-hole is quite

simple in theory; an inquiry is made with an engineer,

who is responsible for analyzing an area and for testing

that area in order to find the prime location to drill;

permission is granted from the government to drill the

hole deep into the ground; a drilling rig is deployed to the

location; the well is then drilled out; piping is laid; and

finally people have access to water—and of course

monetary transactions sometimes of sizable amounts are

littered throughout the process. It's essentially the same

procedure required to drill a well in the United States. As

I traveled to the location of the first water well site, a

place near the city of Maralol, I realized very quickly one

key element that hinders the progression of the timeline

of procedures; the road we had been taking from Nairobi

made a not-so-subtle change from pavement to gravel to

dirt. I could spend time trying to put down in words the

texture of that particular stretch of road, but I feel as

though an analogy would do it much better justice.

Imagine riding a gigantic, old wooden roller coaster at Six

Flags for four hours and it would be at a comparable level

of comfort. The roads go only from bad to worse. I once

had the joy of riding on a freshly paved road with Dr.

Ramme, who was an American courageous enough to

drive on them, and she said to me, "The trip that you just

took back home," which was about a 45 minute drive,

"used to take us about 8 hours."

About midway through my time in Kenya, I

traveled on yet another terrible road that if rated on a

scale of awful roads would put the "roller-coaster road" to

shame. I have never in my life ridden on a worse road,

which I deem from henceforth appropriate to be called a

"path." This path wound its way through the Great Rift

Valley to a small community of people that found refuge

on the outer edge of one the Valley's many mountains

that were large enough that only God himself could have



imagined them. The path had literally been chiseled, and

with seemingly little effort, out of the mountains

themselves. The drive to that location with a drillingmechanism, which is mounted onto a large diesel truck

the size of a semi, would be at least a full day's journey.

After finally arriving, the bush-truck we were riding gave

its final sputter and halted. I stepped out onto the ground

made of solid rock, looked at the steep slant that fell in

elevation ahead of me, looked to the mountains that

stood gentle but strong like a council of elders circled

around us, and there a moment of enlightenment came

over me—we were not drilling a bore-hole in my

backyard through soil and clay back home. The skill

required for drilling wells in Kenya is of a whole new

caliber. Some of the donors from home had gotten a bit

flustered at how long this particular well had taken to drill,

clearly unmindful of the geological factors that were at

play and the present, physical conditions that require

diligent work of to time and planning.

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"Don't even employees of the government get tired

of dealing with these roads? Why don't they push to

have the roads paved if only for their own selfishmotives?" I inquired of Mujumba, a native Kenyan man

who was taking a break from work at the camp where I

stayed for the second half of my trip. He was a large

fellow for a Kenyan, formally trained in construction to be

a manager—that training is where he learned to speak

English. He just let out a haughty laugh in reply to my

question. It was not much of an answer; especially not

one that I was hoping for and a silence fell between the

two of us for a minute or so when I heard the woof of air

from a distant helicopter. Finally, in reply to my question

he looked at me and pointed to the helicopter, "that's the

way the people who actually have the power to change

things travel."

Kenya's government, as a whole, is broken. In

1963, Britain left its unctuous colonial thumbprint on

Kenya and, along with its independence, Kenya adopted

Britain's Western idea of parliament. Corruption has



rooted itself deeply into the political ties of "freedom" and

from then on that corruption has only run its ridges

deeper. Along with its integrity Kenya's legislature hasabandoned its duty to serve all the people of Kenya and

its members began to serve only themselves as

individuals--and those who have enough excessive

amounts of money to manipulate things themselves. The

newly paved road I mentioned earlier was not paved by

the government—in fact, any Kenyan whatever did not

pave it. It was paved by China. China has discovered

that there are oil reserves in Kenya and believe that there

is enough oil to be refined so that they need their own

road to get to it. Of course, the old Kenyan roads would

not do, so they simply took control and built one

themselves. The road—that runs right through Maasai

territory—was widened, trees were blazed, and any other

nuisances that previously stood in their way were

removed. Over the following three years, with the last

attack occurring this past May, Kenyan policemen

committed horrendous crimes against the local people in

attempts to eradicate them from their land. Livestock,

stolen. People, beaten and murdered. Livelihoods not

helped but demolished at the hands of their own sworn

protectors. China has paid off Kenya's debts—only tocause Kenya to be indebted to China. What China wants

is many things and if judged upon their influence in

Northern Kenya they limit themselves at nearly no costs

to get it; in this case, their desires are land and oil.

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"China is selfish," I can still hear a young man

lament—his voice trails off and I hear it again like a track

stuck on repeat. I was riding home one day from an

unsuccessful expedition where we had hoped to spot a

lion or two. The sun was settling below the skyline, the

moon had already begun to rise when our car decided it

was through with life—a head gasket broke—and rolling

to the side of the road we went. When the rolling

stopped I looked up at a bus station full of at least ten

dark figures, silhouettes in our headlights. Fortunately,

those dark figures were not murderers out to hunt

Muzungus, "Westerners," like my imagination had quickly



jumped to but were actually very nice people. In fact,

nice enough to help and savvy enough that they, at least,

diagnosed the problem of our car. The sun was longgone now, far more knowledgeable mechanics than me

were there at our aid, and we were still sitting, waiting, so

I decided to seize the opportunity to do some night

photography. I retreated with my camera and tripod

across the road when I realized rather quickly I was being

followed. Once again, in complete contrast to where my

imagination plummeted to, those following me did turn

out to be interested in my camera—but not interested in

taking it, just in it, and even more so, my ability to use it.

"Where are you from?" A young guy about my

age asked as I was fiddling with the exposure settings on

my Nikon.

For some reason I was a bit nervous about

revealing my nationality, but managed to suppress my

nerves and calmly let out, "the United States."

There were roughly five Kenyans that surrounded

me, all of which had been gawking at my camera, and

they were suddenly much more interested in my originthan the "television" I held in my hands. "I hear you put a

man on the moon," one man said. His eyes shifted from

me and made a slow motion to the moon and with utter

amazement those eyes bounced back at me and he

asked, "How did you manage that?"

Just to clear the air of any potential

misconceptions, I quickly reassured him I had nothing to

do with that shuttle launch. Following that clarification, I

gave a rather brief explanation about NASA and the one

space shuttle I had ever seen down in Florida. I also

mentioned how the program has actually been cut but left

out the fact that there is a lot of doubt that the lunar

landing even happened. And with that came the

outpouring of questions about buildings and famous

rappers and cars and electricity and, finally, politics.

"What is your government like?" the one who asked



about the moon wondered again, but now with even more

sincerity in his voice.

"Umm...it's okay, I guess." I said, unsure how to

approach the topic. "It's very big and I'm very small. Like

all ruling bodies it has its bit of corruption—you know,

some pretty self-serving individuals at the head of

things."

"Not like ours." He said drawing back some. "You

know Westerners are the ones who set up our governing

structure..."

"I do know that...” I knew that our Western

philosophies had infiltrated their Eastern approach to life

and from that chaos has nearly devoured Kenya's

legislature. All the pieces are there, people delegated

and put in power for their government to work in a way

very similar to ours in the United States, but the

functionality is misconstrued—destined for anything but

success. Their past is different from ours. Our histories

unalike. And thus they think dissimilarly. And now, owing

to the faults of a multitude of people or possibly to the

fault of none, their government has fallen into a subdued,internal chaos. None of that is ever as real as when you

are actually talking to someone affected by it--the ones

who carry the burden of a truly apathetic government. I

decided to avoid that conversation all together though

and, with a sense of empathy, I continued, "...you're right.

The violence you guys have experienced would never fly

back home."

"Well I like the United States." He retorted rather

quickly and I was thankful, for it brought the mood of our

conversation back up. "China, they're just selfish. They

build this road for themselves--not for our benefit. And

they brought the corruption and violence that came along

with it. An American is the one that bought the computer

we have in my school for us...and the books for our

library too."

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John Burnett, an accomplished journalist and

speechwriter for members of congress on Capitol Hill,

found himself growing weary of the “clap-trap of politics”and ended up pursuing alternative careers where he

found himself working for the United Nations as a relief

worker for the country of Somalia, a country located just

north of Kenya. In Where Soldiers Fear to Tread , Burnett

recounts one of his many experiences. A young

Somalian mother approaches him holding an infant. She

hands Burnett the baby and walks away from him. Just

like that. Clearly the mother is unhappy and Burnett

shouts for her to come back to get the child but she

disappears around a corner down the street. She’s gone.

Utterly confused he whips around to Harun, his driver

and Somalian coworker, and asks what to do with the

baby. Harun replies, “It dies, captain…Malaria.”

Compelled to action, he writes:

“I cradle the baby in my arms as we speed out of

the port, down the dusty road toward town…

“Harun drives up the roadside hill…I clasp the

baby tightly, protectively. Before, this was just a job, a

duty. Now it is a mission. I want desperately to get thisbaby to the hospital; I want desperately for this child to

live.

“The baby’s fever has abated apparently, for he is

no longer shivering and I relax. I look down at the infant

and smile, talk to him softly.

“The child’s eyes, heavily lidded, stare back at me.

They are glazed and old tears are drying on his cheeks. I

wipe his eyes and try to reassure him, soothe him. But

now I sense, I suddenly realize, that there is nothing

there! A second ago—just a second ago there was life.

Now there is nothing, not a living thing, not a soul, not a

smile.

“…[At the hospital] I hand the baby over gently,

and with…reverence [the nurse] takes the little body in



his arms, turns, and walks through the hospital doors. I

am left stunned. Emptied.

“It is written that a child dies from malaria every

thirty seconds in Africa. But why do I have to be a part of

this child’s death? Is there a purpose? Am I supposed to

get some sort of message? Are we merely statistics?”

“Make sure to buy a few malaria treatments,” my

father gives me one final instruction as he leaves to go

back home—he was with me for the first half of the trip.

“They cost about a dollar.” A dollar. One, single, dollar , I

remember thinking. That’s Less than one pack of

chewing gum these days…

My father, Bobby Gale, directs Unto the Least of

His, a non-profit organization that in various ways has

raised enough money for the installation of 14 water wells

and also for whom I was in Kenya to do such

documentation in the first place. "We have all the money

necessary to help," I have heard him say. "It's just still

sitting in people's pockets." Money, inherently, really is

an easy issue to resolve. In fact, the lack of funding is

quite possibly the most common of obstacles thatsurfaces when people try to make a significant change

anywhere. The sad irony is that it is also one of the

easiest to be resolved if it were handled honestly. It is at

the hands of those who see compassion as a weakness

and greed as rebuttal that people are dying from

problems derived from a lack of humanity’s basic and

essential needs—in this case, water. When the

monetary efforts recede, unfortunately a helping hand

can only go so far and so many times it ends up falling

short.

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As with every fire that needs but a small spark to

ignite or as with any crop that needs but one seed to

sprout, compassion is igniting from within communities all

over the world and from that hope is being planted in the

hearts of millions of Africans because of the relief efforts

that are being made. The Kenyan water crisis is not one



just of natural calamity—the true fabrication of this not-

so-natural disaster that has landed itself on the Eastern

coast of Africa is one derived from a mix of corruptionand global apathy. If the blinds were pulled back and our

world’s potential to help were to be revealed, the drought

that is impacting those communities with such brutal

force could be withstood and the people of Kenya

relieved. It is my prayer that people continue to open

their hearts and minds to a world beyond their borders,

and that we, as a global society, learn to love across

boundaries because that is the solution—not only to the

water issue but to many others as well.

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