Some potentially very good news for Kenya has made several news websites today: discovery of a huge underground water reservoir.
Some sources say it will never run dry, and some say that it has the capacity to supply the county's needs for almost 70years - either way, it's very good news for a country that frequently has severe droughts in some of its more northern regions.
The aquifer is in the Turkana region of Kenya, one of the driest parts of the country, and also an area close to borders with South Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda. Due in part to the harsh living conditions, and in part to the frequent conflicts that occur in the area over the sparse resources, there aren't many people living in the region - at the moment. It will be interesting to see if this remains the case, or if there is a movement of people towards a place where the wells will never run dry.
I've never been to the Turkana region of Kenya, but I have been to some similarly drought-stricken places in other African countries e.g. in Mali and Burkina Faso. One of my lasting memories of these places, apart from the heat, was how any water available came at a great price due to rich land-owners charging extortionate prices for use of their wells. The rich guys had deeper wells than the villagers wells, due to having the money to drill further down, and thus it was the villagers wells that dried up first forcing them to go to the rich guys to seek the life-saving liquid.
And it is with this memory in mind that my prayer for Kenya is that it will find positive, well-managed ways of moving forwards with this new find.
May the poorest in Kenya have as much access to the water as the rich; may the water lead to improved sanitation and clean water supplies to those who need it most.
May the water not be wasted through bad practice, but treated as a precious resource.
And may the presence of the water in Turkana bring only positive times of growth to that region, with no conflicts or illegal acts taking place by those trying to gain access to a resource that isn't rightly theirs to have.
For a full news-article on this go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24049800
Some sources say it will never run dry, and some say that it has the capacity to supply the county's needs for almost 70years - either way, it's very good news for a country that frequently has severe droughts in some of its more northern regions.
The aquifer is in the Turkana region of Kenya, one of the driest parts of the country, and also an area close to borders with South Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda. Due in part to the harsh living conditions, and in part to the frequent conflicts that occur in the area over the sparse resources, there aren't many people living in the region - at the moment. It will be interesting to see if this remains the case, or if there is a movement of people towards a place where the wells will never run dry.
I've never been to the Turkana region of Kenya, but I have been to some similarly drought-stricken places in other African countries e.g. in Mali and Burkina Faso. One of my lasting memories of these places, apart from the heat, was how any water available came at a great price due to rich land-owners charging extortionate prices for use of their wells. The rich guys had deeper wells than the villagers wells, due to having the money to drill further down, and thus it was the villagers wells that dried up first forcing them to go to the rich guys to seek the life-saving liquid.
And it is with this memory in mind that my prayer for Kenya is that it will find positive, well-managed ways of moving forwards with this new find.
May the poorest in Kenya have as much access to the water as the rich; may the water lead to improved sanitation and clean water supplies to those who need it most.
May the water not be wasted through bad practice, but treated as a precious resource.
And may the presence of the water in Turkana bring only positive times of growth to that region, with no conflicts or illegal acts taking place by those trying to gain access to a resource that isn't rightly theirs to have.
For a full news-article on this go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24049800
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