Pulitzer Center Untold Stories

Digging for Water in Kakuma

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.

Kakuma, Kenya: Life can be cheap

Ernest Waititu, for the Pulitzer Center


When the flight attendant announces that we should prepare for landing, the plane plummets fast towards the hills at a speed that makes me think about the will which has remained on my to-do list for a while now.  The plane steadies, only for a while, for when it hits Loki’s runway it is with a thud. Never before had I felt a stronger urge to perform that old ritual of bursting into applause when a plane touched down. The eventful tumble into Loki and the quickening of my heart would characterize much of my stay up north in the Kenyan-Sudan border – in Loki, Kakuma, and the wider Turkana.

On leaving the airport, I hike a ride on a 4x4 vehicle organized for me by friends at International Rescue Committee (IRC), headed for Kakuma – 56 miles southeast of Loki. We drive in a convoy, sandwiched between 4 other aid agencies’ vehicles and one security agent's vehicle, which I am told, must accompany us on our road down to Kakuma.

We cruise down the hills at high speed. The security officers call on the radio, ask all the drivers to keep a steady speed of 100 kilometres (62 miles) per hour.  It takes less than an hour to roll from Loki’s rugged hills to the flat lowlands where Kakuma Refugee Camp, the former home for thousands of the Lost Boys, sprawls.