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Field report. Lokichar, Kenya,

A pump, a committee and a schedule

Repairing a borehole takes two days. Keeping it running for ten years takes a committee, a savings box and a rota.

Margaret, a resident of Kataboi village in Turkana, during the 2011 droughtDFID - UK Department for International Development, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
Margaret, a resident of Kataboi village in Turkana, during the 2011 drought. File photo from the same region, not of the people in this story.

Every borehole we repair in Turkana is handed to a water committee elected by the households that use it.

Committees collect a small monthly fee and keep it in a shared savings box for spare parts. Trained pump mechanics live within a day's travel.