Water is LIFE

Water.

What a precious thing.

Living in Kenya, we have gone long periods of time without it.

To explain how our water system works, basically, we have gutters which pour into 6,000 liter tanks where we store it for use. That is it.

Right now we have 3 large tanks. One tank is elevated, and we have to pump water into it from the two tanks that are connected to the gutters, and they get full in just 2 rains.

Now, our weather in Kenya is some what predictable, just like other parts of the world. We have only 2 seasons: Rainy and Dry

During our dry season, it is drought for several months at a time. We just endured such a season, and our tanks have gone completely empty. The good news: we were able to wash our tanks and prepare them for the next set of rains. The bad news: We have no backup water and we can't live without it.

Answers to our problem:

• Some suggest a bore hole. That costs around $20,000 according to my research


• others suggest some generous organisation comes and digs a well for us... again, we are not certain we qualify, and we need water now.


• Our thoughts are more water tanks would work just fine to prevent this problem in the future. They would be less expensive than a bore hole, and provide the needed water storage for the drought times. They cost around $700 each, though, but 8 of them would give us 12 weeks of water storage.

At the moment, one 30 minute deluge filled up a whole 6,000 liter tank. That means during our rainy season, we could easily fill up 100,000 liters in just a week or two of good rains. Our rains last for a few months, so this is not a problem.

We have already received donations for 3 tanks! We are working on that in this week.

With that said, we could use about 5 more tanks, or $3,500 to buy them.