Lifting Kenyans out of poverty-one sand dam at a time

Excerpt
Two traumatic events seem to have stoked Maddrell's ambition - the death of his older brother, Paul, and the early collapse of his marriage. Paul Maddrell was a former Royal Engineer who had gone to the Falklands to build runways and clear mines after the war. He dived off a weir into shallow water and broke his neck, dying of septicaemia at the age of 29. "After that, I was determined to be successful and make something of my life."

Xerox was a temporary answer. But Maddrell says he knew he wasn't "corporate compliant", deep down, and had a tendency to rock the boat. When redundancy was offered, he took it. His first gesture was to send £2,300 to Joshua Mukusya for a tree-planting pilot project in Machakos. His second was to buy a long dining room table from which he would eventually run Excellent Development. After a year of being turned down for charity jobs (again), he decided: "If you can't join 'em, beat 'em" and founded his own.

"When I reflected on what I really believed in - sand dam technology - the penny finally dropped that that was what I needed to do. Joshua had been working with non-governmental organisations but they would always tell him what to do, rather than listen to the people living there."

It appalled him that villagers were spending up to 12 hours a day trying to find enough water for one meal. Most likely, that water would be contaminated. While the adults were away, their livestock and land would be neglected, children unschooled. The beauty of building small-scale sand dams, he explains, is that they capture seasonal rains and store the water underground. The sand filters the water clean and protects it from evaporation and parasites.

Sand dams have been around since 4BC but never really took off. "One reason is that they're just not sexy", Maddrell admits. "They take a bit of understanding. The water is hidden. There are no boreholes or pumps or smiling children with a cup underneath. They have no visual appeal."

But their power to effect change is sensational. Each sand dam supplies water to 1,200 people all year round and makes the surrounding ground moist enough to plant. Crops flourish; tree nurseries can be established; from the trees traditional medicines can be made. People are liberated from the need to search for water and can grow food. The cycle of impoverishment and dejection is broken.

"The building of a dam is fantastic", he says. "It almost ends up like a carnival with women singing kikamba songs, everyone joining in. People have put in their own energy and time and, at the end, it is their dam; they own it."

Communities are taught how to build land terraces to stop rainwater running off the dry terrain back into the sea, taking seeds and crops with it. "Word spreads beyond the communities," he says. "People outside our 57 self-help groups have seen and heard what can be achieved. They are harvesting food from terraced land, making little tree nurseries. Farmers are the same the world over: they will listen to one another and copy what works."