We are a Civil Engineering team from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, coordinated by our professor Claudio Olalla, in collaboration with Fathers Angel Valdivia and David Escrich from the MCSPA. Our goal is to do research for different academic projects aimed at improving mobility and water resources for the Nyangatom pastoralist people of south-west Ethiopia. In previous years several other students have also come to Nyangatom to do the final projects for their civil engineering degrees.

For us it is proving to be a very exciting and learning experience! First after about a week of adaptation to the hot and dry weather, the insects and bumpy roads, we were ready to interact with the local community. Then we had meetings with the local authorities and after an important meeting with the council of elders of Kakuta, where they expressed their main needs. In the meeting it was made clear that water infrastructures are the number one priority which could improve the Nyangatom way of life. Thirdly, we engaged in surveying different locations shown to us by the local people which could be very good for the construction of such dams, as you can see in the pictures attached.

During these last five years of presence in Nyangatom, the MCSPA missionaries have made a big effort at drilling wells for providing safe drinking water to most of the Nyangatom villages at the border with Kenya. The next step forward then, as expressed by the Nyangatom elders, would be to build infrastructures for harvesting rain water.

This is why our projects will focus on the design of an earth pan and two dams, that could provide an important amount of water to the community and their animals and a road to Naita (South Sudan) that could help the mobility of the people, especially during migrations. This road that connects Naturomoe with Naita could provide more accessibility to services and make movement safer and faster.

We hope and pray that our efforts, in conjunction with the missionaries and the Nyangatom community, will realise good academic projects that, with the help of donors and well wishers, will one day come true.

Carlos Rueda

Civil Engineer UPM

At Nariokotome Mission and at all the other MCSPA missions, cultivation of vegetables and fruit, livestock and poultry farming is one of the five main elements that we focus on.

We try and produce food for the mission personnel and also to feed the children at our nutritional units. This year we have been blessed with a good harvest and yield of milk and eggs. Many years ago when I first came to Turkana, I could not believe that agriculture would be possible.

Thanks to our founder, the late Fr. Paco Andreo, who insisted always on planting and transforming this dry and apparently barren place to be a “garden”, where people are able to eat and be lifted from a permanent situation of hunger.

We have been able to harvest plenty of tomatoes and Lucia, the mother of one of our missionaries from Italy, Patrizia Aniballi, taught us to make tomato preserve.

Just as we made tomato preserve, this time round we have also been able to produce and conserve mangoes, and vegetables of different sorts. The women around are eagerly learning this skill.

Thus, the words of Genesis 1:11 may come to pass: “And God said,
‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.’ And it was so.”

Thanks to all for supporting our agricultural programmes!!!

Lillian Omari
MCSPA

Leviticus 26:4

“I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and trees their fruits”.

We have been blessed to receive plenty of rain this morning in Turkana. The photos are from Nariokotome Mission (MCSPA).

Lillian Omari, MCSPA