Ron and Erma Weaver during their recent visit to Kenya Sept. 27th - Oct. 9th 2011 worked with the locals at Enziu through a food for work initiative aimed at motivating the locals to take ownership of the project. A steel tower was erected for a 10,000litres water tank which has already been purchased. We also ordered for a solar panel that will be installed over the water tank to avoid interference.

The plan was to finish up the solar installation this first week of November but the rains and inaccessible roads have hampered this progress. We hope to get back on it as soon as we can get favorable weather and a passable road.

Nyeri borehole [13^th – 23^rd June 2011]

Borehole drilled to 173m and yielded about 9m³/hr.

Nakuru Salgaa [24^th to 27^th May 2011]

Borehole drilled to 126m and yielded about 28m³/hr.

Nakuru General Hospital [20^th May 2011]

This borehole was previously drilled to 150m without fully exploiting the available aquifer. It had also been cased without gravel packing. We serviced the borehole and gravel filled to the initial 150m depth drilled. In addition we deepened the borehole by an extra 30metres thus reaching 180m depth and fully exploiting the available aquifer. It yielded 12m³/m.

Enziu Self Help Group - Mwingi [25^th – 27^th April 2011]

This charitable borehole was finally drilled in the often dry and famine stricken region of Eastern Province. It ran to a depth of 57m and yielded about 12m³/hr. The borehole is also currently being installed with pump ran on a solar panel which is far more reliable for the community.

Makutano borehole [26^th – 30^th March 2011]

The borehole was drilled to 102m depth and yielded 14m³/hr.

Kiomo borehole [21^st February 2011]

This is a borehole that we had previously drilled that needed servicing. The borehole is 140m depth with a very high yield of about 30m³/hr. The client is an indigenous farmer growing green house tomatoes among others. The community has benefited from the borehole project. In addition to access to clean portable water, this client has provided employment to many as well as farm produce to the local market.

Anole Village Rural Water Project – Bura [Jan-Feb 2011]

The year started with quite a challenging borehole in Bura along the Tana River basin stretching from the Coast to the N.E. border. The project that involved mud drilling ran through January and February and was eventually successful. It was drilled to 126m depth and yielded 4.5m³/hr. The client is a Christian organization reaching out to the largely Islamic populous through hospital evangelism. The need for a borehole arose after establishing that most of the illnesses treated in the dispensary they run were mostly water borne diseases. The borehole is hoped to alleviate this predicament by ensuring access to clean portable water to the community.

While on a visit to Kenya in November 2010, Ron and Eugene got to install a pump at Harvest Blessings Centre in Ngoliba which is run by Rehoboth Global Ministries. We had drilled this borehole a few months earlier after HBC’s initial attempt to drill it using a percussion drilling rig turned futile at 50m. The borehole was supposed to be drilled to 150m.

There was a dire need for a borehole to ease the burden of struggling to draw water from the nearby Thika river sometimes using donkeys, incurring lots of costs in the process and barely getting enough to meet the basic water needs of running the home. Piped water from the council had become unreliable over time, often being cut off for no clear reason and without notice.

DFL was more than eager to help the children’s centre gain access to clean portable water in line with its mission to develop and commission water well projects and support efforts of community development in these same areas with help for building churches, schools or orphanages to enhance the cause of Christ’s Kingdom. This will go a long way in helping sustain the projects in the center such as tilling land, poultry farming & cattle rearing among others.

DFL Director Ron Weaver and Board Member Eugene Snader recently visited Kenya (5^th - 19^th Nov 2010) and got a chance to work with the drilling team locally.

The local drilling team has been in Samburu since 1^st of Nov 2010 drilling five boreholes in different areas of the vast community. The boreholes are funded by different organizations including Christian Children’s Fund (CCF), the government’s Community Development Fund (CDF) and the local County Council.

Samburu is a water scarce arid area in Northern Kenya. The Samburu, closely related to the Maasai of East Africa, are semi-nomadic pastoralists living just north of the equator in the Rift Valley province of Kenya. Their population is estimated to be around 150,000. Their livelihood is dependent upon the cattle, sheep and goats they raise. Living in a semi-arid climate, they do very little farming and the search for water and grazing land leads out from their homes during dry seasons.

The district’s fairly developed center, Maralal, is a town rich in Kenya’s history, home to Kenyatta House, the location where Kenya’s first president Jomo Kenyatta was detained prior to his release in the fight for Kenya’s independence.

Ron Weaver, Tony Nzivo and John Mbolu drove from Maralal to Samburu, a 20km drive through the mountains, carrying a Samburu woman with a sick child along the way. The mountainous terrain to the borehole site in Barsaloi is only accessible by four wheel drive, land rover or by Jeep trails. The rest of the drilling team having headed out days before had to drive the trucks through the further northern region of Baragoi to Barsaloi, a 150mile journey that lasted almost a week due to mechanical breakdowns caused by the very rough and rocky road.  Fortunately the borehole drilled in the area was successful with a 15gal/min yield which will be a huge blessing to the people there. It’s a blessing to provide portable drinking water to those people who have never had such a privilege.

Communities are the building blocks to an entire society and hence there is a need for them, however small to be empowered through access to safe reliable water. Lack of safe reliable water has led to community and ethnic clashes, low agricultural productivity, hunger and increasing levels of poverty. Taking this into consideration, drilling for life has worked closely with communities and self help groups to avail water for all use. We drilled three boreholes in the Wamba area of Samburu last year. And this year, in November we have so far drilled three boreholes there, one in Lupus, the second in Barsaloi, third in Baragoi and serviced a borehole at Kisima. We have two more to go in Ngilai and Morijo.

How time flies! 2010 came with its share of successes and challenges like any other year. One of our objectives for the New Year was to be engaged in more direct boreholes than subcontracts unlike in the previous year. In this, we have not been disappointed. We started off with a 200m depth borehole at an area called Kamulu on the Ruiru East Block which puts it in Thika District. The borehole was for an individual and was drilled between the 14^th and 17^th January 2010. We ended up drilling to 198.9m a successful borehole yielding 12m³.

Afterwards we headed to Naivasa – Musingini in Yatta District. This was a long awaited contract funded by the Constituency Development Fund (CDF). We had drilled two other boreholes in the area still with the CDF, both successful. However, a change of officers over time had caused a delay in the award of the said borehole. The community had waited since 2007 when we first placed our bid on the borehole in response to a tender invitation, probably even longer than that. Finally, by the grace of God, all doors that had closed up on this job seemed to open up and we were more than eager to undertake the job and help a community that had anxiously waited for this miracle. We successfully drilled the borehole between the 15^th and 17^th February 2010 to 160m and it yielded 3m³.

Masinga Hope Project at Kathukini – Masinga District is a ministry that reaches out to orphans and widows. The borehole was drilled from 22^nd to 25^th Feb 2010 to 102m depth. It yielded 1.8m³.

Kanginga Oasis Academy is a school in Mwingi District, Eastern Province. The borehole was drilled from 14^th – 15^th March 2010 at 102m depth yielding 12m³/hr.

The team later headed out to Nyamira District of Nyanza Province where a market had just been constructed at the Kebirigo town centre. Having water available at the market was crucial to ensure cleanliness and that hygiene standards were met. The borehole was drilled to 112m depth between the 12^th and 17^th April 2010 and yielded 1.2m³.

Kanthonzweni & Kakuyuni were the first subcontracted jobs in 2010. Kathonzweni was drilled from 23^rd to 30^th March 2010 to 200m but was dry. The first dry borehole in the year. Kakuyuni in Kangundo district of Eastern Province was drilled from 7^th to 8^th April 2010 at 138m and yielded 4m³.

In Bungoma, Western Province is Chemwa Children’s Home where we drilled a borehole from 21^st to 23^rd May 2010 to 80m³ and a yield of 1.2m³/hr.

The team took a short break in June to do repairs on the equipment. We are looking forward to several other boreholes in the next half with about four boreholes already scheduled up and many more coming up.

Enziu is a rural semi-arid region in Mwingi District of Eastern Province of Kenya. A recent visit to the area revealed the adverse situation in which the community survives. A manmade dam, Enziu Earth Dam Project with less than 10,000litres of water is what they call their best water source. It’s a miracle that the water never completely dries up. Somehow, God keeps refilling it so that those who come to fetch do not lack. The community has formed a committee to manage the dam to ensure it is not interfered with by animals. The members contribute a fee that employs a guard to look after the water. Non members pay Kshs.70 (less than a dollar) per month to fetch water. About 10kilometres (6.2miles) from that dam, two rivers once converged, these too are completely dry. Desperate villagers sink wells that seem to chase after the underground water reservoir. Hand dug shallow wells are deepened with every passing day of the dry spell, as far down as the water level will go. 

School children are sent to fetch water or a woman and her donkeys with several cows trotting behind. They construct a wooden trough just next to the well from which the animals drink as the women and children fill up their cans. The water level is so low that there’s no way of fetching it without mixing with some sand particles. Not to mention that their feet will crush the lower sand walls as they go down the well to fetch the water, further contaminating the water. Having walked for miles under the humid heat and dying of thirst, a villager bends down to drink up the water, completely oblivious of the diseases one can contract. From cholera to typhoid, the swelled up stomachs of school children demonstrate that.

Drilling for Life, with help Lancaster Evangelical Free Church Koinonia Adult Bible Fellowship in Pennsylvania is putting up efforts to provide access to clean portable water for the Enziu Community. DFL is raising funds from the Church and well wishers to help this community by providing a borehole that will serve over 120 families in Enziu. Putting up a borehole in the area will give hope to this community and improve their standard of living as well their health. A nearby well drilled by DFL in another area of Mwingi called Kiomo evidences how much benefit a borehole can bring to a community. In Kiomo, they have used the borehole to irrigate a local green house yielding tomatoes which the community earns a livelihood from. Our hope and aim is that Enziu will equally be transformed as we drill for them a borehole, thus giving them access to clean portable water. Well wishers are welcome to send their donations to:

DRILLING FOR LIFE

266 Vera Cruz Road, Reinholds, PA 17569 USA

For more information email here