Location
Baolala, Kenya
Community Description
The community of Baolala, located 2.5 hours west of Malindi, is primarily composed of a Kenyan tribe called the Giriama people. The Giriama are beautiful and friendly welcoming people who live with common occupations as farmers and cattle livestock raisers. They have their own language apart from Swahili, but typically follow the same culture as most Kenyans. They are known for their love of dancing, eating roasted rats as an ethnic food, and their friendliness.
Baolala is a very rural area with many small shrubs, flat land, all dirt roads, with hot arid weather. Most if not all the houses and buildings are made from mud and sometimes plaster. Although the area is developing, there is currently no electricity, no open market for clothes or food, and no running water to most individual structures.
The community faces several challenges, including lack of transportation, insufficient housing, shortage of public health facilities, limited communication, unavailability of consumer products, difficult access to water, high level of malarial infection, and shortage of produce and food.
Baolala has determined that access to water in order to maintain proper hygiene is of top priority. With diarrhea being one of the most common and easily-prevented diseases in the community, sanitation and hygiene is an absolutely vital health issue to take on immediately.
The Baolala Health Dispensary alone counted 13% of the entire community coming into the dispensary for diarrhea treatment per year and this does not include those who don’t report their sickness.
The Baolala Health Dispensary also treats minor injuries and performs circumcisions. The nurses that perform these duties need access to water to ensure sanitation for hand washing before and after these operations.
Project Description
This project is to construct 7 handwashing stations, to be located at the most critical places in the community. Each station will be include a 20 liter water tank, and maintain a supply of soap.
There will be a handwashing station placed in the health dispensary, staff quarter housing, 2 public pit latrines/restrooms, and 3 food serving areas. These areas have been chosen because of the high traffic of people and also the high risk of having contamination enter the body orally.
The name of this project to prevent diarrhea and promote sanitation is called “Safi Kabisa” (meaning “completely clean” in Swahili).
Project Impact
3,384 people will benefit consistently from this project. This consists of the people coming to the Baolala Health Dispensary, those using the public pit latrines/restrooms, people living in staff housing, and patrons of the public food serving areas.
Peace Corps Volunteer Directing Project
Nicholas Shen
Comments
This project is a prime example of using appropriate technology to impact on a critical health need. Extremely effective in its simplicity, there would be no alternative way to have such a great impact on the needs of the community for adequate hygiene.
Dollar Amount of Project
$350.00
Donations Collected to Date
$350.00
Dollar Amount Needed
$0.00 – This project has now been fully funded through the generosity of Hack & Slash, who have designated Water Charity as beneficiaries of this year’s Hack and Slash Christmas Special in Color held in Baltimore, MD.
The project is dedicated in honor of Amy Lewin Coots.
We encourage others to continue to donate using the Donate button below, and we will notify the PCV of your donation. Additional funds will be used to fund future projects in the country of service.
This project has been finished. To read about the conclusion of the project, CLICK HERE.