Article April 17, 2006 Issue

Water tanks, a book, and my Spiritual education

BY JOSEPH WAWERU KAMENJU

Many years ago when I was a boy growing up in our village on the slopes of Mt. Kenya, Africa's second highest mountain, I learned practical lessons from maintaining our family's water tanks. Their full meaning has only recently unfolded to me with the aid of a wonderful book.

At that time, there was no piped water in the villages, and all water for domestic use had to be drawn from the river or a well a long way off. My father, being a leader in education and development in our village, pioneered a method of capturing rainwater from our roof runoff and storing it in a tank, for use in the dry season.

He built a house quite unlike the usual round grass thatch huts of our neighbors, made of plastered walls with a roof of corrugated iron sheets on a rectangular plan. By traditional standards, this was a mansion consisting of six rooms, and included a kitchen, granary, pit latrine, bathroom, and cow shed, not to forget a small structure behind the kitchen where I kept my pet rabbits. The main house had a sitting room with a dining table and sofa sets. This is where my five sisters, three brothers, and I grew up.