Kenya is seeing a herd of 50 cattle being under the control of an 8-year old boy who throws rocks at them and beats them with a stick. He in turn treats other children the same way. It's seeing a 10-year-old boy running a donkey cart to pull five-gallon buckets of water out of the lake to take to the school, and then to plug the jugs with the water hyacinth which is where all of the terrible diseases thrive. It's seeing a 5-year-old girl bathe her 6-month-old baby brother among the goats and cattle.
-Christina Hachmann, civil engineering major and EWB-WYO chapter treasurer
Water brings life, from the growing of crops to feed villages, to bathing at the end of a long day, to transporting people and goods by boat from point to point. People of the village of Mbita (BE-tah), Kenya, are slowly dying from a lack of clean water. In 2008, a pair of Laramie-based nurses traveled to this part of Kenya on behalf of a charity project, and discovered that 80 percent of diseases afflicting the Mbita people could be cured simply with clean water.
Mbita lies two miles from Lake Victoria, the second largest freshwater lake on Earth, and one of the world's most polluted. The people of Mbita use Lake Victoria as a primary water source. There is no faucet to turn or toilet to flush, only miles of land to cross and water shared with animals to haul back home. A group of University of Wyoming students set out to change this after hearing about the lack of clean water in Kenya. In 2010, the UW chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB-WYO) made its second trip in the hopes of bringing clean water to the people of Mbita.
For more information visit UW Engineers Without Borders webpage.
Content courtesy of the UWYO Magazine.
