Baltimore, Md., Sep 27, 2011 / 22:56 pm
Mixed with the braying of livestock and the welcome laughter of children, a new sound swirls above the village of Nakupurat in Kenya these days. It is the steady creaking of a windmill. For villager Ekiru Ewoi and the 2,000 residents here, it is a sound that reminds them daily that the hard days of thirst have passed.
"When the windmill was broken, we were going to the river," Ekiru says. "That took the whole day, from morning to evening, to get water."
Like many in Kenya's Isiolo District today, the villagers of Nakupurat have been hit by the drought gripping the country. More than three million people across Kenya are directly affected, many of them pastoralists like Ekiru whose lives depend on the grasses their livestock need to stay healthy.
Staying alive became more difficult in 2009, when the windmill that pumps water from a well in Nakupurat broke. With the next closest water source miles away in the muddy waters of the Ewaso Nyiro River, the effect on Nakupurat was catastrophic. Young men herded their livestock to greener pastures and the village school closed, forcing children to walk nearly seven miles each way to attend class at a neighboring school. Elders like Ekiru, too old to join the young men in their search for forage, struggled each day to make the arduous journey to the river.