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Vinay Grover rightly reflected that mothers are like water: fluid, fierce, nurturing, and eternal. They adapt, they cleanse, they nourish and sometimes, they drown. But without them, nothing survives.
Every year, we are reminded of the opportunity to celebrate the courage, resolve, strength of character and passionate perseverance needed to nurture families, communities and nations.
Beyond the gifts, messages of appreciation, roses and praise, it is also an opportunity to reflect on the unnoticed struggles women bear in our communities. One of these challenges, especially in our rural and urban poor communities, has been water inaccessibility, undignified sanitation and hygiene.
The story of water access, sanitation and proper hygiene across Kenya is, in many dimensions, a story of women. Growing up in Nyakiambi village in Nakuru County, it was an ordinary ordeal for my mother to wake up before dawn, walk long, rocky, and insecure distances to fetch water at Rongai River, where she would meet other women queuing for water for their families. They would balance heavy jerrycans on their backs, heads, and bear harsh circumstances to acquire the basic commodity.
To all of us learning early in the day, the availability of water would determine whether we would attend school on time, whether meals would be cooked, and whether hygiene would be preserved.
While this seems like a story of ages, in some villages, towns, and informal settlements, women still sacrifice to access clean and safe water while promoting hygiene and dignity in unbelievable conditions.
Yet despite these struggles, mothers have not only endured the water crisis but, through their sacrifice, resilience, agility, strategic approach, and the desire to be agents of change, women have learnt, shaped, and led the journey towards reform and transformation. Indeed, mothers have been the unsung heroes of the water reforms.
Past female leaders centred on legal and institutional reforms, moving from centralised control to decentralised, efficient, sustainable, and user-friendly water and sanitation service delivery.
These heroines include Alice Wahome, who revitalised water reservoirs, particularly in water-stressed areas, and oversaw major water and irrigation projects focusing on delivering the government’s Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda.
Sicily Kariuki worked with organisations like Maendeleo ya Wanawake to facilitate water access at the grassroots level, focused on improving water billing and corporate governance in water companies to ensure sustainability, an action point that saw the Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Irrigation win the 2021 UN Public Service Award(UNPSA).
Martha Karua was instrumental in the implementation of the Water Act 2002, which separated water resource management from water service provision, and in initiating the creation of Water Service Boards to decentralise water service delivery and improve efficiency.
Across Kenya and the world, women have been at the forefront of advocating for improved sanitation, environmental conservation, green energy, adequate and equitable distribution and access to services. They have served as mothers, leaders, community enhancers, utility staff, engineers, policy advocates, and household managers.
Abraham Lincoln once said that all that we are and hope to be, we owe to our mothers. Today we have reason for hope, the government’s last-mile connectivity, the national sanitation policy implementation, the non-revenue policy guidelines, pro-poor guidelines targeting water connectivity in rural and low-income urban areas, and the growing role of counties in water service provision have expanded water coverage from 35 to 78 per cent over the last 10 years.
Women’s advocacy associations like Women in the Water and Sanitation Sector continue articulating and shaping the water agenda while advocating reforms, inclusivity, and innovation to realise universal access to water.
Universal access to water is not simply about pipes and pumps. It is about restoring dignity to mothers. It is about freeing our girls from the burdens of water; from the slopes of Mt Kenya to the plains of Turkana, from the peri- urban settlements of Kibera to the coastal hinterlands, nationally.
To achieve universal access, we must recognise water as a women’s empowerment issue. We must deliberately mentor girls as water engineers, hydrologists, and regulators. As we honour mothers for the sacrifices they make every day, let us appreciate the historic journey with water. A journey marked with endurance, grit, courage, and hope.
-The writer is the Managing Director of Murang’a Water and Sanitation Company Limited (MUWASCO)
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