20 kilometres from our projects at Olkiramatian and Mbirika, on the floor of the Great Rift Valley in southern Kenya, lies the community of Oldorko. Like its neighbours, this is a harsh, semi-desert place — daytime temperatures climb towards 40°C, rain is scarce, and for the families who live here, finding clean water shapes every single day.

At the heart of the community stands a small mabati church with around fifty regular members — and on Sundays, its Sunday school fills with about a hundred children. Nearly 3,000 people live in the surrounding area, and it is a strikingly young community: some 800 are children under the age of five. There is no school nearby — the nearest, Oldorko Primary, is five kilometres away, serving 300 pupils — and the nearest health facility is a similar five-kilometre journey.

The nearest reliable water is the pipeline four kilometres away — and because of the distance and the lie of the land, connecting to it simply isn’t sustainable here. But Oldorko has something else: a church roof, seasonal rains that fall heavily when they come, and a community ready to make every drop count. The church roof alone is enough to fill a substantial storage tank in any season — the water is already falling; it just needs somewhere to go.