Ernest Waititu, for the Pulitzer Center
At the crack of dawn when women and children in other parts of the world wake up to take warm showers and sit down to breakfast, women and children of Kakuma in Turkana Region of Kenya wake up to a different exercise: to walk for miles in the hunt for water.
It would be one thing if the women and girls, once they arrived at the watering point, could just draw water from a free-flowing source or from a reservoir. But walking is just the beginning: Upon their arrival at the "water source" the real work begins, as they dig the ground for water in the essentially dry gulch that goes by the name of Tarach River.
Early one morning I walk down to the valley that gives Kakuma life. Mine is a short walk, two kilometres at most, and when I arrive I have the privilege of watching groups of women and children in their brightly colored clothing and heavy strands of beads form a rainbow of colors as they troop down the nearby hills toward this gargantuan valley of life from different directions.
Most of these women have walked for miles to be here and when they arrive, they scatter on the river bed, all of them sitting or kneeling to scoop dirt from the holes they dug yesterday or to dig new ones.
The women and children sit digging stumping and panting until they make a cylindrical hole where the water oozes and collects.
Ironically, just by the banks of the valley where the women are now digging, Kakuma Township authorities, with the help of aid agencies, have put up mechanical water pumps where people can draw water.

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