New toilets at a primary school in rural Kenya.

Thanks in part to your support we were able to start work on the new boys’ pit latrine toilets at Kisimenyi Primary School last month. Unfortunately though the early stages of the project have been beset by a number of setbacks.

Firstly, the ground proved to be harder than expected and we were unable to excavate the pit to the targeted depth of 20 ft and then, whilst we were working on a solution (which we have now identified), heavy rainfall and subsequent flooding damaged some of the foundations we had built. Whilst repairable, these works combined with the need to dig a secondary pit to compensate for the shallow depth of the original pit have increased the cost of the project by around 15-20%.

The same rains also badly undermined the foundations of one of the existing girls’ toilet blocks (not built by us) and these have subsequently collapsed almost completely, leaving the school critically short of adequate toilet facilities for the girls; the new girls’ latrines which we had planned to build later are now required immediately.

We will be resuming work on the boys’ toilet and commencing work on the girls’ toilet once schools close at the end of next week and hope to have most of the work completed by the time they reopen in January, as long as it doesn’t rain too much more between now and then!