It is very hard to access health care here because it’s expensive and the people don’t have the money. So when people get sick and need help they can’t do anything about it. Water is essential for living, you can’t cook or grow anything.
Without water the human body can’t sustain itself. Because there is not a lot of water its hard to grow food and have proper meals so, the people become malnourished. Water is one of the biggest issues in the small villages that me and my mom saw. First of all in most areas the land is so dry that whole rivers dry up and and the earth begins to crack. People have to walk up to twenty kilometers just to get to the water source. The Wells are not always reliable and break very easily, sometimes they don’t even give out a full bucket of water. When the wells aren’t working the villagers go to the dried up rivers. They dig big deep holes by hand until they reach water. Because it is so dry sometimes the holes are up to twenty feet deep. Everyone is fighting for water, even the animals. Moshi told us about two women who came to the water whole one night and a hyena killed them because it wanted water too. The plants grown here are very unhealthy. When me and my mom went to the market we passed by all the different types of vegetables and fruits like tomatoes, carrots, oranges, bananas, watermelon, and papaya. People in the villages don’t even get these types of plants, they don’t even eat green vegetables. What is mainly eaten is something called Ugali ( a dough form of corn meal), beans rice, and on special occasions chicken, goat, or cow. Many families don’t even have enough money to make these things. It makes me really sad because in all the villages we went to, the majority of the kids had distended stomachs from malnutrition. That is why me and my mom went to those villages with a man named Richard. Richard went to the schools and taught the kids in these villages how to grow food using special techniques in this dry environment. One of the techniques was making a sac garden that uses rocks in the centre which makes water go right to the bottom, so that after the initial growing phase it only takes a cup of water to grow. Seeing this has made me realize that i’m very lucky. I have running water, a great healthcare system, and food on my table.
