A lack of clean, accessible water is one of the most pressing issues in Maasailand. The Community Water Project works to bring safe and adequate water supplies to communities who currently live 10-15 kilometers from the nearest water source.
Water Means Life
The Partnership Project has found a wonderful collaboration with local Rotary clubs, and Rotary International, as the Rotary community shares with us a commitment to clean water projects. This collaboration was initiated five years ago by then Prescott College students, especially Ann Radeloff and Kaitlin Noss, and members of the Prescott Sun-up Rotary Club, especially Tony Terrasi, and many Rotarians have given countless hours since toward developing this relationship. Four Prescott area clubs, District, and Rotary International, raised $74,000 to install a well in Erusiai, in the Narok area of Maasailand, a project overseen on the ground by Maasai Rotarian Daniel Ole Kaputa.
Water Also Means Education
Through the Erusiai project, we have discovered how much impact clean water can have on the ability of Maasai children to receive an education. In fact, we chose the Erusiai project originally because of the Erusiai community’s dogged commitment, over many years, to improve the education of their children. The Erusiai Primary School was founded by Meitamei and three other Maasai people in 1990. At that time, the community had no school at all for its 160 children. The closest primary school was 10 miles away, and charged prohibitive fees. No funding was available from the Kenyan government for the construction of the school, so Meitamei and the others raised the equivalent of 50 cents from each family to buy nails and tin roofing. Using wood from their forest, they built a one-room schoolhouse with a dirt floor. Maasai women were leaders in this effort. Over the next 15 years, the community continued to raise money to hire additional teachers and supplies and to build additional classrooms. But their best efforts were not producing quality education—teachers appointed by the government were unenthusiastic about their assignments and hard to motivate, children developed asthma from the dusty floors, and no lunch program could be organized because the school had no water. Daily attendance averaged 45% of children enrolled. Year after year the school failed to produce even one student who could pass the Kenyan Primary Certificate (KPC) of Education exam that allows students to enroll in a secondary school.
The commitment of the Erusiai community to educating its children did not falter, however, and it was well aware of the broader range of issues that prevented the school from thriving. The community identified needs for: 1) clean water, 2) cement floors in classrooms, 3) teachers who really believed that Maasai students could be educated, and 4) a school lunch program. To support this vision, we connected the community to Prescott, Arizona area Rotary clubs, which funded a $74,000 borehole, generator, pump and distribution system, bringing clean water to the school for the first time. That well was completed in late Fall, 2007. The floors were cemented. New teachers’ houses were built with sanitation facilities and vegetable gardens, in efforts to recruit better teachers, and a smart and fearless Maasai women, Miss Kanana, accepted the position of head teacher. Miss Kanana is respected by the community and maintains high standards for both the students and the teachers.
The community has taken advantage of every opportunity to improve its school. In 2008 Erusiai Primary was designated the Most Improved Primary School in Narok District, out of roughly 500 schools. Daily attendance is over 95% and enrollment is at 392 children. This high enrollment includes large numbers of children enrolled from other communities, who walk many kilometers each day to reach the school, and equal numbers who have moved in with Erusiai relatives to attend the school—a practice common in Maasailand. The dedication and commitment of Maasai children and their families, once they have an opportunity to obtain a quality education, is impressive and heartwarming.
More than half of the children are girls, as girl’s education is a top priority of the community. Its school board which is comprised of equal numbers of men and women, is committed to increased education for girls. The community’s greatest achievement is that the school produced 30 candidates for the 20008 KPC exam, with 25 passing. Considering the circumstances, this is nothing short of amazing and even more amazing is that 10 of these students were girls.
Generally, we are finding that the most effective way to support girls education in Maasailand is to support the economic opportunity of the entire community, especially through clean water projects. As women are freed from spending their days walking many kilometers for water, they can spend that time making beads and other products for sale, to raise tuition for their daughters. Women tell us over and over again that their time translates into education for their girls. Even more, families tend to have a hard time seeing a future for their daughters through education, and they are afraid for their material well being in adulthood if their education reduces the chances that they will marry. But, as a community’s economy improves through access to clean water, as cattle are healthier, men enabled to stay closer to home to care for them, and people are healthier and better able to work, the future looks less desperate, and parents are more willing to take this risk.
Current Projects
Expanding School Support: The success of Erusiai has led to a flood of requests from other communities to partner in building infrastructure for their schools. As in Erusiai, we find no shortage of vision and effort in communities across Maasailand, who have been trying to improve the educational opportunities of their children for many years and need only committed and understanding partners to succeed.. As a first step, we have found partners for water projects in four of these communities, all located deep in Maasailand with limited access to outside collaborations, and those projects are all underway. Together, these projects will serve a total of 12 primary and 2 secondary schools, and 2 health clinics. It is expected that these water projects will be completed in late 2009 or early 2010. The Erusiai water project itself is being expanded, through World Vision, which has nearly completed constructing 15 water kiosks and troughs and miles of piping to bring water to a total of 20,000 people and four more schools.
