American Brings Water to Kenya

Written by Mary Welch Saturday, April 10 2010

Joyce Tannian founded Water is Life, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing sustainable water sources to Kenya. Her sister is Atlantan Monica Tannian, president and CEO of Milk Money Consulting Inc.

Womenetics: How did you get involved in Kenya?
Joyce Tannian: I had a very good Kenyan friend who invited me to come and visit in 2003. So I was in Kenya for a few weeks in June/July of 2003 and saw a lot.

I was especially impacted by meeting some bright kids who were our guides at a place called Lake Baringo, members of the local Njemps tribe. They took us in a boat around the island and spoke great English, knew so much about plants, fish and animals, and geology. We paid them a decent amount, which they shared among themselves.

The next day when we were leaving the island, we met one of our guides along the road and offered him a ride. We asked where he was going. He said he was off to school to pay off his school fees so he could go back to school. He said the night before when he and his family sat and discussed how to use the money we had given him – probably he got $15 – they said he should use it to go back to school. I thought – $15! That’s the difference between school and no school?

When I got back to United States, I started paying more attention to the amount I would drop every day for odds and ends – let’s say, coffee. I started putting that money aside and really had it in my heart to help in Kenya somehow. I found an organization that was coordinating sponsorships for girls for their education and called up to find out how I could become a sponsor. That’s how I started sponsoring Soila, who at the time was in second grade.

Womenetics: Were you always looking for a cause or to help the world?
Tannian: I always enjoyed doing volunteer work. I believe that talents are given to us to be shared, and that everyone can serve someone else – all gifts are giveable – whether it’s the gift of listening, music, computer skills, humor, fashion sense. Two hands can do so much, especially when joined with people with a common purpose. I also realized that helping other people was good to do for so many reasons – keeping busy and working to help others helps put your own problems in perspective

I especially started doing more volunteer work after Sept. 11, when I was living in New York City. I started volunteering with The River Fund. They’re a nonprofit based in Queens that cares for so many people, helping them with food and clothing, visiting the sick, providing sandwiches, groceries, and warm clothes during tough seasons. I learned that simple things like putting extra whipped cream on someone’s hot chocolate, complimenting them on their nail polish, taking time to chat while you’re handing out shopping bags for people to collect their food, really make a difference.

Womenetics: Why did you decide to start your own nonprofit rather than join another one?
Tannian: In 2006 I went to Kenya to work as a volunteer. In my work in helping to manage a girls’ sponsorship program I observed a serious lack of even the most basic resources, like water, in so many areas and that there were few organizations visible on the ground trying to work on development. Month after month of drought, dying livestock, suffering, and you just ask yourself can't something be done here? Isn't some of this avoidable? Who's working on this? Shouldn't we try?

I really believed then and believe now that anything is possible especially when it's done with the heart of helping others and working with them to find solutions to problems they've identified. How great is it when people can look at what they've accomplished for themselves and know they've contributed to a better life for many.

Organizing projects and mobilizing resources was not something new to me from my work as a freelance singer and fund-raising for projects I supported. Why couldn't I use these skills to help people get clean water close to their communities and help women have a chance for a different kind of life? Were they destined to break their backs carrying water eight hours a day?

I believed that if we told the story people would be moved to want to help. We raised $50,000 for our first well, and then the local area member of parliament, Judah Katoo Ole Metito, authorized the local Constituency Development Fund to pay to build the water storage tank worth approximately $25,000.

Womenetics: What is the most challenging part of starting your own nonprofit?
Tannian: There are so many challenges. Starting your nonprofit is starting a business. Where will you get your start-up money, whom will you serve, how will you know if you’re providing good service, what will be the scope of your activities, when do you branch out, and when do you stay tightly focused? How do you market yourself? How much should you spend on human resources? How do you keep expenses down and still do good work? How do you build a body of work and therefore become more fundable?

Water development projects require large capital. How do you fund-raise for that?

For example, when we’re fund-raising for deep wells we go with an average budget of $75,000 to complete. People will say, “How come our church is doing wells in Africa for $5,000, or $8,000?" So you have to explain the difference between different kinds of wells – shallow wells vs. deep wells or boreholes, different water tables. In many areas where we work you get sufficient water at 600, 700, 800 feet. It takes heavy machinery to drill and a strong pump with a strong power source to bring the water to the surface.

Also, the water needs of people in a small town are different from the needs of people with livestock herds, or farmers. For the pastoral communities we serve, water is for families and therefore, their animals. Animals are people’s bank accounts. When a child goes to school, animals get sold for school fees.

You have to figure out how to be effective, how to get experts and good helpers to do good work, how to teach and inspire people for whom learning how to manage a water resource is new and challenging, how to get the full information when you’re doing the preliminary investigative work on identifying project sites and community needs, how to assess whether they’re ready to help themselves and become owners of the projects.

Of course there are also cultural challenges. The people we serve and those we hire to do the work are from a different culture and have a different way of doing things. So many things – language, their work ethic, their education, their comfort with getting direction from a woman, their comfort with something new, what motivates people -- are different from what I had prior experience with.

Womenetics: Why water?
Tannian: It is the most fundamental resource people need to live but it is sorely underdeveloped in many parts of the world.

Without water, nothing goes forward, nothing can live, no food can be prepared without water. Water scarcity and lack of developed water resources force people, especially women, to spend their life’s energy searching for water. Then, because of sicknesses caused by poor quality water, more time and resources will be spent taking care of the sick. Simple things like hand washing are great preventative measures, but impossible without adequate water.

Lack of water reinforces gender inequality because it is women and girls who are responsible for fetching water in many communities. It restricts them from being involved in other activities like school, business, saps their strength, and causes stress and health problems as they haul 50 pounds of water day after day for long distances.

Water is also a source of conflict between people and between humans and wildlife. People share water sources like swamps, springs, shallow wells, with wildlife they meet there or on the way, and sometimes elephants toss livestock or trample people. They pass lions, hyenas, and buffalo on the way. Survival is risky business. During drought – like the one suffered for two years by people in Kenya in 2008-2009 which decimated livestock, wildlife and crops – competition for this scarce resource becomes even more fierce.

Womenetics: How do you get away from the poverty and terrible conditions of Kenya?
Tannian: Kenya is a beautiful country blessed with a comfortable climate. At times like now when there has been rain and the environment is green, you see so much grass, wildflowers, butterflies. Kenya is developing, and there are some people living a good life here.

My town of Kitengela is growing rapidly. People are building houses, operating businesses of many kinds – hardware stores, supermarket, lumber yards, selling candy, cigarettes, and newspapers, shoe repair, tire repair on the street – large and small. It is bustling. The main road (the road connecting Nairobi to Tanzania through the border at Namanga) is being worked on and people already enjoy a reduction in travel time and less wear and tear on their cars. You always have to appreciate the good things, even while your eyes and heart stay open to the suffering of people and the need to work hard to mobilize resources to help improve the situation.

Womenetics: What are the three top things that would bring a better living condition to Africa?
Tannian: First is less corruption. Corruption here is so rampant, it is paralyzing and demoralizing, and it’s at the highest levels of leadership – out there for all to see. It sets a terrible example showing anything is OK if it gets you more power and money.

As far as development strategies are concerned, people in communities should be given the opportunity to decide what’s important to them, identify what they want done, and then it is the work of NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) or the government to support them with resources, education, and strong framework so the work can go ahead.

Thirdly, there should more investment in education – more teachers, classrooms, consistent school feeding programs.

Womenetics: Do you have a personal life?
Tannian: Yes, of course. You can only survive and work in challenging conditions if you are being fed personally and spiritually. I have good friends, belong to the Rotary Club of Muthaiga where we do great service projects and socialize, and I continue to do freelance singing here.

I really miss my friends and family back in the United States. There is no substitute for solid, longtime friendships and family.

Womenetics: Tell us about Water is Life.
Tannian: We started Water is Life – Kenya in 2007 when we committed ourselves to raising money to drill a borehole for the community of Imisigio. We were incorporated as a nonprofit in the Delaware in 2008. During the 2005-ʼ06 drought we managed to bring food relief to many communities in and around Amboseli, feeding around 9,000 people. We never managed to deliver any food relief to Imisigio because our funds didn't allow it.
We still had in our hearts to find a way to help there, especially when we heard how pathetic the water situation was. It had also become clear that food relief during the drought was an expensive, however necessary, Band-Aid.

This realization made us ask the question what can bring long-term help here. One of the answers was: water. And the work continues. So many places I go, people stop me and ask “Can we be next? We need water, too.”

We recently did a rainwater harvesting project at Ilmarba Primary School, a rural boarding school with a constant challenge of having enough water for its pupils. The next projects in the works are water harvesting and planting a kitchen garden at Imisigio Primary School so they can have food and water for lunch for the teachers and pupils, and a 35-mile pipeline which will deliver clean water to 5,000 people and their livestock in five communities just outside of the northern boundary of Amboseli National Park.

One other major area of focus for Water is Life – Kenya is finding ways of increasing income to the communities. Women do beautiful beadwork, making jewelry, baskets, belts, dog collars, and we buy the products and then sell them in the United States. Dozens of families are receiving income from these sales, helping them keep their children in school and put food on the table, and the profit goes into more water projects in their communities.

We work with three different beading groups. Some of the women are talking about diversifying their businesses, and, as a group, buying a small herd of dairy goats or a buying a mill and stock of maize to start a business of milling maize, a staple food in the area.

Womenetics: What can people do to help?
Tannian: Nothing happens without money and awareness. People can visit our website www.kenyawaterislife.com to make a donation, volunteer their skills or time, tell their friends, do a fund-raising event, or host a talk or bead sale at their church, office, club, school.

Womenetics: Are you safe being with the tribes and in the country?
Tannian: You need to watch out for yourself just as you would in any area where there’s a big disparity between rich and poor. I generally feel pretty safe here, but I don’t take undue risks. Certainly being a white person here makes me very visible sometimes, and I have felt that people pay attention to what I’m doing. I try to be low key.

Generally, people like Americans here. That feeling is coupled with an expectation that Americans all have a lot of money, and that can be uncomfortable sometimes. I often get requests like: Sponsor me, help me, sponsor my child, hire me, get me a job in United States.

There are many needs, and people – even perfect strangers – feel comfortable asking. I met a man a few weeks ago who asked me to take his small boy. I asked, won't his mother mind, and the man said, no, just take him to your country. Many people here want to come to United States to work, and they think it’s a kind of paradise

Womenetics: What do you do for fun?
Tannian: I love to walk, go the movies with friends if I'm in Nairobi, sing, help kids learn how to sing. I've worked with high school students in Nairobi giving musical and dramatic coaching to prepare them for their school musical. The first time we did it, it was the musical Oliver. The kids had never watched or performed in a musical before so we had to explain that it's a drama with songs.

Mary Welch is Atlanta city editor of Womenetics: and a freelance writer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Dawson Times, Plan Your Meeting magazine, and Atlanta Business magazine. She was editor-in-chief of Atlanta Woman magazine and editor of Business to Business and Catalyst magazines.