The Carbon for Water Program's Impact in Rural Kenyan Homes

Editor's Note: Triple Pundit's RP Siegel visited Kenya to learn more about the LifeStraw Follow the Liters campaign. This is the second post from his trip. In case you missed it, you can read the first post here.

Last week, I described a school visit, in which the team introduced a number of LifeStraw Community Filters -- provided by the Follow the Liters Campaign that just kicked off this week. The program will provide clean water to 125,000 school children in western Kenya.

On Friday, I made a number of home visits with Steve Otieno, Vestergaard's country director for climate & water in Kenya. Steve manages the Follow the Liters campaign here. He also managed the Carbon for Water program, which, funded by carbon credits that were administered by Climate Care, provided nearly 900,000 LifeStraw family filters back in 2011. The company maintains a staff in the area, who, assisted by a large volunteer force, makes regular home visits to ensure that the families are using the filters properly and are having no issues with them.

The company had hoped that after the pilot was completed, the program would continue to expand across Kenya. But the carbon market, which drives the program, has not kept pace. Now they are looking into other funding sources including local governments.

At the opening ceremony on Monday, Steve said, "We have been a family, but now we are a community." Over these past few days I have come to see the meaning behind these words.

The first home we visited belonged to Demaris Saswani, who lives with two children and six grandchildren all enrolled in school. The house was built by her late husband who worked for the power company. She said that since they received the filter three years ago, none of them have been sick. Before that time, they had to boil the water and if they didn't, they got sick. The children do not have a filter at school, so she makes sure that they each carry a bottle of clean water with them.

Next, we visited Canary Omusinde, who lives with her husband and baby. They have also had very good results and no problems with the filter. She says that she typically makes three trips to the river with a 20-liter gerry can, though on wash days, she might take five trips. Fortunately, the river is only five minutes away. Like many in this area, the kitchen is outside to avoid the pollution. They get whatever food they don't grow themselves from the local market. I asked Canary if she knew what she was named after. When she said no, I showed her a picture of the bird in a book I had with me, which brought a smile to her face. "Now I know where my name comes from," she said.

Siprose Osore has a family of five. Her husband is a farmer. She fetches 10 liters a day from a spring 500 meters away. Three years ago, before they received the filter, several family members contracted typhoid. The only problem she has had with the filter has been occasional blockage, but volunteers, who visit her weekly, help her to resolve it.
We later stopped at Ebushibungo Primary School and chatted with Headmaster Judith Asubwa. Her school also had a typhoid outbreak three years ago that badly impacted attendance. They are very happy to have the filters. Now, the children, some of whom have to walk more than 2 miles each way, can carry empty water bottles instead of full ones, which makes life easier for them.

All the gravity-fed LifeStraw filter models are based on the use of a "membrane," which is actually a bundle of very fine, tapered tubes. The narrow end, which is at the bottom, has an opening of only 0.20 microns (even smaller on some models). Therefore it is important that the filters be backwashed regularly to avoid clogging. This is done by means of a red handle, which is pulled down gently. This forces water back up through the filter and through a separate channel, where it drains out into a red waste bottle that is dumped out.

It's hard to overstate the need for this technology. One of the other teams went out to a school that had been getting their water by collecting rainfall into a cistern. Though the water was muddy and opaque, they felt it must be safe. When the filters were installed, not only were the children amazed to see crystal clear water coming out of the spigots, the team was shocked to see dozens of tiny red worms caught in the pre-filter stage in each of the five filters they had installed. The water had been so dirty, no one could tell that the worms were there.

So, what are the takeaways from a day like this and from seeing programs like this? For one thing, it's hard to even talk about things like sustainability when basic survival needs like health, water and sanitation are not being met. For another thing, what does it take to successfully pull off programs like this, at this level of scale and effectiveness?

For the next and final installment in this series, we'll look at what it is about Vestergaard that makes it so uniquely successful in this difficult but desperately needed field of endeavor.

Image credit: RP Siegel

RP Siegel, PE, is an author, inventor and consultant. He has written for numerous publications ranging from Huffington Post to Mechanical Engineering. He and Roger Saillant co-wrote the successful eco-thriller Vapor Trails. RP, who is a regular contributor to Triple Pundit and Justmeans, sees it as his mission to help articulate and clarify the problems and challenges confronting our planet at this time, as well as the steadily emerging list of proposed solutions. His uniquely combined engineering and humanities background help to bring both global perspective and analytical detail to bear on the questions at hand.

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Editor's Note: Travel expenses for the author and Triple Pundit were provided by Vestergaard.