Edward Omondi lives in the K20 Community Village in Homa Bay in Kenya. The village NEEDS a well. The whole community is suffering with lack of clean water and food. Edward has asked me to help, but I don’t really have the funds. All I can do is collect this information and these pictures and share them with you.

Edward is self described as “a permaculture practitioner and also Syntrophic Agroforestry practitioner in Kenya working together with orphans in the community, we produce food which is in turn given to the community members.”

He has a Facebook link to the K20 Organic Permaculture Project

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100072313320730

I have been talking with Edward for a while now. He looks like the real deal.

Homa Bay is a town near Lake Victoria. It lies at an altitude of 1,131 m (3710 ft elevation) and is the headquarters of Homa Bay County. Its population is about 32,000 people.

“In our community people have been suffering from food shortage for several years, that’s why I started this project to help the vulnerable people in our community,” said Omondi.

I met Edward over Facebook because we both share a keen passion for growing food. It seems that my gardening antics and activities attract many wonderful brothers and sisters from various African countries, so we began chatting about various topics of the day.

It became very apparent as Edward told me that, “Right now, in my community village where I come from, there are outbreak of cholera as well there is a lot of hunger and no one can help. Now water is a problem in our village so people lack clean water to use. That’s why the outbreak of cholera is high. We need to have to purify water. Water purification reagents to kill the germs.”

I said, “This is so difficult.” He said, “For sure it’s difficult situation over here since now around 3 people have died.”

How do you purify water in your village?”, I asked. Edward replied, “We can purify water by using the chlorine and some reagent if we can buy in our local market, like cotton wools, some spoons, the containers and chlorine as well.”

We also discussed the use of Iodine, which was a new idea to Edward.

Edward sent me many pictures of the water areas they gather from and the containers they use to fill. “Imagine this is the kind of water we are using over here in domestic use and drinking as well,” he said.

I asked, “Is this just a runoff pond? Is this a stream? Can you drill a well?” Edward replied, “Yes this one is a runoff water, and yes a well can be drilled, though the finance to use in drilling is really high, and we lack the finance.” He added, “I bend low with high gratitude and respect to you. I’m kindly asking for your support to enable us get enough water to serve the community and water detergents to treat the water in order to avoid bringing in waterborne diseases in the community. I am looking forward to your feedback friend, any little you will donate to our community will highly help. We will highly appreciate your support to us my friend.”

He showed me some more pictures.

“Is this woman getting water your wife or sister or a friend?” I asked. Edward replied, “That one is a woman from our village. We are really having a crisis of water as well as the outbreak of cholera since we really consume dirty water which is not treated my friend. It’s really difficult with us now.”

I said, “I have no money to send, but if someone did…How would you receive it in Kenya?”

Edward replied, “I can receive it through PayPal account or World Remit.”

He gave me his email address, (his brother’s email address)

[email redacted]

I intend to verify this address and more information to make sure any assistance really arrives where it should.

I asked, “Do you know anybody that can drill a well where you live?” “Yes,” he replied, “There are some people who knows how to drill in our small town here, there are some companies which drill it here too.”

“Can you get an estimate?” I asked “If you can get an official estimate, I’ll see what I can do in my spare time here to raise some money.”

“Yes I can get the estimate.” said Edward.

“Do you have electricity to run the well?”, I asked.

“Not really,” said Edward, “we will use solar panel to run the well.”

“And is that included in the price of the estimate?” I asked.

“Not really for the total estimate,” said Edward, “as I saw one well drilled in another community over here, all the estimate when solar was included it was around 5500 dollars for the total cost of a well plus the solar power.”

“Then make sure you include that in the estimate,” I said. “But seriously, I am going to help you, there has to be some type of official estimate document involved, because people are not going to just throw money at you even though you truly are legitimately desperate. I also need smoe more pictures of where you get water and what you have to drink. We need to SHOW people the truth. Do you boil the water before you drink it?”

“Yes,” said Edward, “we use to boil water before drink but my friend the water is totally really dirty and most of people are still being affected by the diseases.”

“I need to paint a picture so other people can understand what’s happening and a picture is worth a thousand words”. I said.

Edward replied, “Might I also ask that in this difficult time that we are having with the water problem, when we are still making on how we will drill a well, if we can get some clean water to help some households in the village, can really help.”

“Like today,” said Edward, “in the morning when I went to a neighboring community I got when they were brought for a clean water by a vehicle and the shared it very happily. If we could get some little fresh water to help some households which are affected most by the outbreak of cholera, the aged, the orphans kids, as well can really reduce the outbreak of cholera in our community my friend. There are the kind of water we used over here in our community for sure they are really dirty and not good for drinking too. We still walk a longer distance for around 15km away to search for water.”

Edward said, “I have tried my level best so that I may lay out and send you the pictures of estimate and the drawing as well as the name of the company. Since we live in a rural area it’s very difficult to get them until you travel to some other town there so that the things can be sorted out.”

“ I understand,” I said, “But people all around the world and through the USA that I know will want to see something of proof, otherwise they will just think it’s a scam.”

Edward said, “Yes that is true, I know most of people will not see it like a true thing. That’s true most of Africans scam people for money, but what I do to my community it’s somehow like a call from God, doing it to my best so that can help our community.”

“We also had another suggestion as the community, “ said Edward, “that, since the drilling process may still take some more time in processing, we can be mobilized some labour people to help in making a bore hole (this is basically an old style well with a bucket to draw water) so that we might get some water from the ground to help first before drilling a well. We have a good place where was started long time to make a bore hole but was never completed. So I was told to ask you, by some of our elders in our community if you help in making a bore hole at the moment to help out people from dying and getting a lot of diseases at the moment. A bore hole is dug by going deep using some metallic equipment as well there is some small machine that they use. Usually approximately 20 feet is the depth of a bore hole and 2 to 3 feet wide. Then at the top if plastered too.

As you can see, there is a legitimate need. And God has called me to try and assist this brother and his village. Perhaps if 10,000 people gave 1 dollar. We could get this done right away. I am not asking to break the bank. But whatever you can spare. I will get follow up pictures so you can see your money at work for this village community.