AIDS Orphan's Boarding School
Water Projects

Updated: April 2, 2009

There is currently no secure water supply in the Gotichaki area. The closest uninterrupted water supply, which is open river water, is 1.2 kilometers away down a steep ravine.  There are an estimated 6,000 people in this area without any piped or clean water for domestic use. In order to have fresh water, individuals in the community must go down the ravine to the river and then carry containers back home to their families.

The new school and boarding home for the children is using ~ 1,000 liters of water per day. Because we do not currently have a well or any piped water source our water is obtained by one of three methods:

Water Catchment

Rain water that runs off our roofs is collected in a series of tanks. We can currently store 28,000 liters of water this way. This of course is our preferred method because it is free and clean. The issue of course, is it must rain in order for this method to work.

Children Carry Water From The River

All the children make the trek to the river everyday when there is not enough rain to fill the water tanks from catchment. The older children carry a 20 liter jerry can and the smaller ones carry a 4 liter can. Because we currently have 67 children at the school, this method does not supply enough water for their total needs so we must also use the next water collection method described below.

Purchase Water Carried From The River By The Local Community

Women and children in the community are willing to carry water from the river for our school in order to earn extra money. This is the most costly method to obtain water yet we realize that it does help the local community by providing work.

The new Okari AIDS orphans boarding school needs a more efficient and economical way of securing it's water. And in the future we will eventually need a deep borehole well for it's 200 AIDS orphans. The steps below list our current overall water securement strategy:

1) Obtain a hydro geological report for the deep borehole.
This step is completed. Update On This Step: We decided on March 30th, 2009 to obtain a second Hydro geological report. This decision was made after reviewing many different well drilling bids. The main concern is the distance of the proposed well head (from the original hydro geological report) from the actual site of the new school. A second hydro geological report is scheduled to be preformed the week of April 13th, 2009.

2) Obtain 4 independent bids from well drillers capable of drilling deep boreholes. The boreholes are estimated to be ~ 160 meters deep at completion. This step is completed. Update On This Step: After the new hydro geological report is completed we will ask for updated bids.

3) Drill a deep borehole and install an electric pump. So far the costs for a well is estimated to be approximately $35,000 to $40,000 due to the very extensive depth (~480 feet).

4) We are also working on a back up plan to run a 2" water line down to the river. This plan has already secured the permissions from all the land owners whose land we would need to cross with our pipeline. In exchange for crossing their land we will install one standpipe on each parcel of land we cross. We are working with the Kenyan Power Company's Rural Electrification group to run an electric line down to the rive as well. This will also allow local families along the way, who could never have afforded to have an electric transformer near their home, to buy electricity from Kenyan Power. We are also working with the local government agencies to allow us permission to pump the river's water in this manner. As of now, all lights are green on this plan with the local authorities. The total bid costs for this project are approximately $16,000.

5) Continue to add water storage capacity to our boarding school. We will do this by adding an additional 10,000 liter tank on top of our water tower. The tower was designed and built to accommodate a large tank like this but we currently only have a 3,000 liter tank on it. This will take our total storage capacity to 28,000 liters. The estimated cost to add this extra tank capacity is approximately $1,500.