You're invited

• more construction, finished 3.9 catchments, one more than last week
• rain gauge placed at Lucas's home, 2.29 in on April 1st
• rainwater catchment open house and children w+s training invitations sent out

So from an outsider's perspective, my construction seems to be taking up a lot of my time in these past three weeks. From my perspective, it definitely has.

(Note: Thanks to Jeff for recommending a bullet list on the top of my posts to give a quick summary (see CNN). Also, Jeff asked for a wider angle shot of the catchment which I've added on the right hand column and in my picture album. Keep the recommendations coming!)

Construction slowed down a bit this week but we still were able to finish off Pauline's catchment and get the gutters and foundation done at Christine's. We were planning to work on Maurice's gutters and foundation on Thursday and Friday. Sadly, Maurice's niece passed away so we moved the work at his home back to Monday. I don't know much about what happened but both Maurice and James, an agriculture leader like Lucas for w+s, were pretty torn up about it. Please keep their family in your thoughts or prayers.

We now have three fully completed catchments with a fourth, Christine's, being virtually finished. Marabe's and John's have both been done for quite a while and we have been getting good reports from both of them. Since finishing installation, neither of their families have had to collect water from the streams or springs. That's great news! Marabe's tank was completely full on Friday after rain on Thursday night.

The next big step is testing to see if the water from the catchments is potable. If they can drink straight from the tap, they will save the time and firewood required to boil the water for three minutes. Time is always nice to have more of and reducing firewood consumption will help deforestation which is a problem in Kuria, Kenya.

Lucas and I were able to set-up the rain gauge at his home in Nyametaburo, the village on the far eastern side of where we work. We tested measuring with water from my water bottle and then put the rain gauge up on a piece of wood out in the center of his compound. He has been taking data every day with our first rainfall recorded as 2.29 in on April 1st. Now we need just 364 more days and we'll have the data we need to do some better computer modeling for rainwater catchments!

The most exciting part for me this week was working with the leaders to invite w+s representatives to our upcoming rainwater catchment open house and children to the children w+s training. Lucas and I prepared invitations to both events in english and then translated them over to kiswahili. At our weekly leader meeting on Friday we passed out the 48 invitations to our leader to distribute to their w+s representatives. Below is the invitation to the rainwater catchment open house, click on it so see the english translation.

The rainwater catchment open house will allow the larger community to see some of the work we have been doing. The only people attending are the 48 w+s representatives but they will surely be telling their neighbors how the program is going. The open houses will be replacing our bi-weekly w+s representative meetings so the six leaders will be doing a bit more than just showing off their rainwater catchment. It will be a great exercise for the leaders to begin taking more responsibility in the w+s program. I'm very excited for the open house!

Training the people of Kuria, Kenya in proper w+s techniques is one of the most valuable things we can do in our program. Lucas has done a great job with training the adults in w+s techniques but we still need to reach the children. We have asked our leaders to train the children and many of them have but a few asked for some help. School has just finished and the children will be out until early May so we have decided to hold training sessions for the children in five different locations. The training will serve to train the children that haven't been and to see how well the w+s representatives have done with the children they did train. Here is the invitation we distributed on the back of the open house invitation. Again, click on the picture to go to an english version.

The open house is in two weeks and the children training in three so both are still quite a ways away. We will be working hard this week to finish most of the construction, prepare for the open house, and make sure that the permit application process is going smoothly for the wells we hope to drill soon.

five new pictures