Rotary Club help to improve lives of Africans

A few of the women from the community with two Meru Rotarians

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Middleton Rotary Club, along with other Rotary Clubs, has been raising money and providing water for Tharaka, Meru in Kenya.

Rochdale Online reporter Nicole Bradley caught up with Rotarian John Brooker to find out more.

Five years ago, Mr Brooker saw, on a television programme, a young boy being awarded for his charity work for providing water in Africa. Mr. Brooker told his Rotary Club about this and they decided to get in touch with Rotary International, based in Chicago, and they set to work on providing water for Tharaka.

So far the club has received three grants, and have just had their fourth accepted.

Tharaka is a semi arid place, and at the height of the dry season it can take the women and children who search for water up to eight hours a day. They collected dirty water from ditches and rock crevices.

Mr Brooker told Rochdale Online about what his Rotary Club does to help in Kenya, he had this to say: “Children would go out at 4 o’clock to collect water, and come back at dinner time. This was too late to go to school, but at least they had the basic means for living, water.

“Our first project was completed about 18 months ago, and it was building a wall about two feet high, around two rocks, and having a tank to collect clean rainwater on each. Both tanks joined to a single pipe, which runs to a kiosk tap.

“The tap is turned on twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, which brings water to 300 families, and they’re allowed to take 40 litres of water on each day. This is a big improvement from what they had. To give an example of how little water they had, a woman spared one cup of water to wash her children in, as the rest was needed for cooking and washing.

“When we first went over there, we noticed two women collecting filthy water from a ditch. The women told the other Rotary Club member I was with and myself that they had walked all night to find the water.”

Tharaka is a poor town, with the average population at 75 people per km² and 3 out of 20 children die before they reach the age of five. There is an incredible lack of water and no roads or wells. The soil is poor, and is not suitable to build wells on, as the water would be salty.

However, thanks to the Middleton Rotary Club and others supporting them, the lives of the people who live in Tharaka have been changed drastically.

“We received a letter from a member of the Rotary Club in Meru, and they said that average marks for the children at school have risen from 230 to 280, which is a dramatic increase. Water based illnesses have also decreased, so the health has improved.

“Women used to carry their water containers by feeding some fabric through the handle and carrying them on their heads. Now women don’t suffer from headaches, or back or chest pains because they don’t have to walk so far to get the water.

“They can also farm and grow crops with the spare time they have.”

The Rotary Club has provided 1,800 people with access to clean water, and although it may have taken a lot of planning, time, effort and money, they are proud of the improvement that has been made on the Kenyans’ lives, which is what they wanted from the start.