Lack of Water, Washing & Cleaning:

 

Our only current source of water is the nearby rivers.  The closest river is located approx. 3 km away, but it dries up during the drought months. The next closest river and the one with most water is 6 km or 50 min. away. It takes a bit longer than an hour for our Mothers and girls to walk back with the filled plastic containers of water. Our rivers have non-potable water because elephants, zebras, tigers, giraffes, monkeys, hyenas and buffalos use it daily. We drink it regardless and believe the herbs we use in the water helps kill most if not all the bacteria. Since the water is only abundant in the rainy season months of November through February, a couple of times a week for the rest of the year our Mothers and sisters walk two hours to later wait in land another two hours to buy water in a nearby town and bring it back to our Manyatta.

 

Many of us only bathe weekly because cooking and drinking is the priority use for the available water. We have no dedicated bathing or washing facilities. Women, girls and children are the only ones allowed to bathe with buckets inside our homes since they fetch their own water. Morans and visiting Elders must go to the river and bathe. We typically have one set of clothes and there is typically not enough water or soap to wash them regularly. We use thorns from our trees to clean our teeth and most of us have never used a toothbrush. Some but not all of our Mothers boil the water for drinking and cooking.  Since we have no electricity, we don't have refrigerators or use ice to preserve our food. Our dishes are cleaned with minimal water and many of us don’t know about proper hand cleansing when cooking, eating or handling our food. Eating with our hands is the norm.

 

Disease Prone Environment:

 

The lack of education on personal hygiene matters, the challenging access to water, the abundant dust present in our semi-arid lands, the smoke from wood burning inside our homes, the human and animal feces, endless flies and burning heat all help create a perfect environment where disease quickly spreads.

 

Our goats and sheep are kept inside the Manyatta on the footsteps for our homes to prevent attacks from outside predators. When the green grasses return from October to December, our Morand and cattle migrate backhome from Tsavo National Park. We welcome the milk and meat, but with more animals inside the Manyatta, flies multiply even faster than usual.

 

Toilets are non-existent and everyone must go to the bush right outside our Manyatta for daily needs. Human and animal excrement is in direct contact with the bare feet of our young ones. There is simply not enough money to buy shoes for everyone. Shoes are more of a priority for older children and adults who have to fetch water, food and herd our animals.

 

Malaria is present in Kenya and is very much abundant in our region. With no mosquito nets in our homes, weekly outbreaks of malaria cases are common.  Many of our children also have worms since they don’t attend school and therefore don’t receive the deworming pills given there by the government. Skin rashes and wounds are also very common since we are in contact with desert like bushes and plentiful animals, including the bed bugs in many of our homes. We don’t have medicines like aspirin in our homes, let alone local doctors or access to nearby health clinics. When we get sick we must either walk 3 km to the nearest chemist for medicine in Mailitatu or find transportation to the nearest hospital located in neighboring Tanzania. Funds needed for food and water must often be used to pay for the hospitalization and medicine of our sick ones.