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Two years in Kenya: a goodbye message from Sam Robroek

24 June 2021

Sam Robroek was part of the Young Expert Programme (YEP) from 2019 to 2021. During this period he worked for World Waternet’s WaterWorX and Blue Deal projects in Kenya. In his last blog, he looks back on his experiences.

‘Kwaheri’ is displayed on the ceiling just after the final passport control at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. I take one last look at the illuminated letters that read ‘Goodbye’ in English and walk to the gate. I leave Kenya looking back on two great years working with our partners and dedicated colleagues. It felt like ages ago when I first set foot on Kenyan soil and knocked on the doors of our partners, Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company and the Water Resources Authority. Together with these partners, we strive respectively for sustainable access to sufficient and clean drinking water for the people of Nairobi and for improving water availability and reducing water stress in the Upper Tana Basin.

Figure 1: Meeting with the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company in the boardroom.

Mid-2019, I had started working on my graduation thesis on intermittent water supply in Nairobi. Shortly after a brief summer-break back in the Netherlands, I continued my endeavors with World Waternet via the YEP Programme and returned to Kenya. Over the past two years, our projects have touched upon various topics and done much to achieve the goals of WaterWorX, Blue Deal and the SDGs agenda.

Together with Nairobi Water, we worked on improving the water balance to obtain more insight into the physical and commercial losses of the utility. We initiated several interventions to enhance drinking water production at the main water treatment plant and introduced asset management within the utility. In the area of integrated water resource management, we worked with the Water Resources Authority to improve the hydrological database, set up a modelling working group to implement a Water Evaluation and Planning system, and aimed to improve the monitoring network in the Upper Tana Basin.

Figure 2: Field survey regarding the sampling points for the Covid-19 Sewage Surveillance in Nairobi (near informal settlement Kibera).

So far it has been a remarkable collaboration between the Dutch and Kenyan partners and I am always delighted to see that everyone in this line of work, anywhere in the world, is passionate (and a bit crazy) about water. We may not always have the same challenges in working with water, but we definitely have the same goals and ambition. Whether it is connecting everyone to reliable drinking water, providing proper sanitation, monitoring SARS-CoV-2 in sewage water to mitigate the pandemic or allocating sufficient water to people living in a certain catchment.

Figure 3: On the summit of Lenana Peak (Mt. Kenya), 4985m. Mt Kenya forest is one of Kenya's most important source of water, meeting 50 percent of the country's needs for fresh water, and supplying the national grid with about 70% of its hydroelectric power.

I am convinced that these long-term cross-continental partnerships will have even greater impact in the years to come and that the special relationships between our partner utilities and water authorities will last for a very long time to help tackle the water challenges of today and the future. Personally, I learned a lot during my time in Kenya, which I hope to put to good use in my future career. I would like to thank all my colleagues for the excellent collaboration, it has been a pleasure.

Kwa heri!