Published in June 2025

In March 2025, Sarah Field (SDW Trustee) and I visited six sand dams in Kenya which had been built with the help of Sand Dams Worldwide (previously called Excellent Development) volunteers since 2014. Last month, I wrote about our visit to Isunguluni’s sand dam. This report covers our visit to Athiani self-help group (SHG) and their sand dam which, over 10 years on, continues to play an integral part in their lives. 

We visited the Athiani SHG and were greeted enthusiastically by lots of community members singing and dancing - a lovely welcome. This is a very attractive site and the dam, which was built in 2014 with the help of volunteers on an Excellent Development Expedition, fits very nicely into the landscape. It’s a pretty big dam, fully mature (filled with sand and water), and the sand goes a long way up the river channel behind the dam, clearly holding huge quantities of water.

Here shows footage of Athiani's sand dam site:

Although the surrounding landscape is pretty dry, the river corridor around the dam is abundantly green. It’s a great site to build a dam, with a well-defined river channel and excellent rock in which to anchor the dam.

Among those greeting us were Arnold Mutua, SHG Chairman, and Edward Malile, SHG Secretary. They started by describing life before the dam was constructed. They had to walk 5 kilometres to collect water, which was often dirty and caused diseases. This walk for water obviously caused a lot of tensions within the community, including women giving birth while on that daily journey, break-up of marriages, "early marriages for girls" and absence from school. They were often hungry (they talked about malnutrition and starvation) and could only grow drought-resistant crops - which failed when the rains failed, of course.

Since the dam was constructed it’s never run out of water. Occasionally the shallow well runs low but it refills gradually overnight. Scoop holes provide access to an abundance of water specifically for livestock throughout the year, and for irrigation - so their farming practices have been transformed. They now grow lots of vegetables and have also planted a lot of trees - mango and citrus in particular. Coincidentally, some days before our visit, they had used a tractor to level about a hectare of land adjacent to the dam on which they were planting citrus and fig trees. Interestingly, with access to water, bees have increased in number and now do such a good job of pollination that the fig trees produce fruit all year round. Arnold said: 

“Firstly, we’re able to get enough access to water. The livestock are also able to benefit from this project because they also have access to water from closer. As a community we are able to achieve tree-planting initiatives utilising water from this project to irrigate our saplings back at home.”

Unprompted, the community told us about how they feel the local microclimate has changed. One community member said: “The atmosphere has changed; fresh air because the trees are very green. The trees are producing the oxygen. Then there is the increase in the water level.” They also talked about the astonishing abundance of birds, which they attributed to the dense tree canopies, access to water and a plethora of natural bird food “so the ecosystem around this place is better.”

We closed by asking them if they had a message for the volunteers who worked with them on the dam in 2014. This was their reply: “We are very much proud of them for their support in building this dam. We are very happy because through this project we are able to have water closer to our homes, for all the reasons we have talked about."

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