“Do people really drink this water?” That was my initial shocked thought when I looked into one of the wells we had set out to clean as a community service activity together with the youth volunteers from Lamu Red Cross. The goal of the day was to clean and add chlorine in some of the towns most needed public wells with a sensitisation on sanitation and health.

Buckets and plastic bags in the drinking water

As a starting point we had gotten a list of wells from the Public Health Department in Lamu. The list showed wells that were much used and truly needed a clean up. We could quickly locate that the public wells were much more exposed to waste and garbage than the private owned ones.

I don’t really know what I had expected to see, but buckets, plastic bags, and rubber pieces floating around were not it. The water definitely didn’t look like it should be for drinking and the health risk would be big. The wells are not covered so that the water will be able to regulate and maintain its own ecosystem by sunlight. This leads to the fact that flying objects and slippery hands easily can make the wells look more like trashcans than drinking water for the people living in Lamu.

Around the wells and into the wells

The Public Health Department had provided us with chlorine to disinfect the water in the wells that we cleaned. The 13 youth volunteers that had assembled to participate in the activity had in addition equipped themselves with buckets for the waste, gloves, a ladder, and a net that had been tied to a long stick to collect what was inside the wells. While some picked up garbage around the wells, others gathered what was inside by using the net. It was still not so easy getting everything out and one of the volunteers had to go inside some of the wells to remove big pieces of wood, cans and buckets. After the worst of the waste had been removed the chlorine was added for disinfection purposes. It was satisfying to see the huge difference and the clean result.

“This is a very important activity and one that we should definitely keep on doing”, says Abdul Aziz, one of the volunteers for this clean up and the one who entered into the wells to remove the waste. “Since the wells are not covered so people easily have access to the water and the sunlight can reach, a lot of garbage finds it way into the wells. Dirty water also leads to insects breading and therefore it is important to clean the water to avoid outbreaks of diseases like for instance malaria”, Abdul adds.

Focus on health, sanitation and Red Cross

The activity focused on health and sanitation and the importance of clean water. It was also obvious that this was clearly needed based on what we saw and found. It was an easily conducted activity which took us one morning and gave an immediate result and thereby an activity that can be conducted more frequently in the future. At the same time it also gave the opportunity to disseminate the Red Cross to curious, interested and helpful people along the way by doing a community based activity. Clean water is a necessity that all people are entitled to and the youth in Red Cross in Lamu could with voluntary effort and only with a few tools help and assist some people in Lamu this day.