Water

This, dear Friends, is what the bathwater of the children looked like after bathing them the first day after arriving. Afterwards, i washed my feet and all our clothes in it. It's hard to imagine what life without water is like if you have never lived it. I became aware of how much we take it for granted, or how little we realise how much water we use in our day to day lives. No water in Marsabit means, first of all, no clean drinking water. For Humans. Obviously the most impacting consequence in the long line. It means no water for the live-stock one is dependant on for food or milk, which in turn means death of said live-stock. It means no water to grow your own food or for your trees from which you get food, to survive. It means no or limited washing, of yourself, your cooking-things, your food, your utensils, which in turns leads to problems with hygiene. Friends, i can safely tell you that i will NEVER take the fact that we have clean drinking water out of a tap for granted again....

It has not rained in Marsabit for 5 years, the pictures above are of a farm that used to be a similar green to the northern hemisphere forests i have raved on about so much. A huge amount of food used to be grown here, and a huge amount of cows and goats used to graze the once-green pastures of the hills...

Now the only form of water is what is delivered by truck from a borehole, and that the people, like above, pick up in a large yellow  plastic container once a week...

This is the dam being built behind mount marsabit, whose aim is to be able to supple the whole of marsabit and the surrounding area with water once it is finished and filled....

Paradise Lake, once upon a time was a lake and was he water source of all the animals who live in the surrounding forests..

The Garden in Ababu's backyard, in which there once abundantly grew orange, mango, avocado, paw paw, banana, coffee and miraa.. 

Last week, we got a call that it had rained, really rained in Marsabit. Enough for all the People, the Animals, the Plants, to fill the empty water-tanks. I cried. I can't remember the last time I heard such good news.