For decades, the people of Tirioko Ward in Tiaty West Sub-County endured the harsh realities of climate change. Every year, prolonged drought left families struggling to find water and pasture, turning survival into a daily battle.

As an arid and semi-arid region, Tiaty receives scanty and erratic rainfall, mostly between April and June. The brief rainy season makes crop farming unreliable, while the remaining months are characterized by prolonged dry spells that leave rivers, water pans, and grazing fields depleted.

During these dry months, residents often trek more than 10 kilometres in search of water and pasture. Many are forced to migrate with their livestock to neighbouring counties such as West Pokot, Turkana, Samburu, and Laikipiasome travelling over 40 kilometresin a desperate effort to save their animals from starvation and thirst.

According to the Chairperson of the Ward Climate Change Committee under the Financing Locally Led Climate Action Program (FLLoCA), Moses Lorien, women and children bore the greatest burden of the recurring drought.

"The dry season begins in July and lasts until March or even April," he explains. "This is the period when families migrate in search of water and pasture. Donkeys carry heavy loads, including the little water available to keep children from collapsing along the journey."

He recalls that drought exposed the most vulnerable members of society to unimaginable hardship.

"Children, expectant and lactating mothers, older persons, and people living with disabilities suffered immensely due to shortages of water, milk, food, shelter, healthcare, and other basic necessities. Many school-going children never returned to class after the rains because some girls were married off or became pregnant, while many boys remained behind as livestock herders in line with cultural expectations," Lorien laments.

The situation was equally devastating for early childhood education. Several ECDE centres temporarily closed because parents had no choice but to migrate with their young children. Girls who remained behind spent countless hours fetching water or delivering food to herders grazing livestock far from home.

Families unable to migrateparticularly those caring for the elderly, persons with disabilities, or the sickresorted to digging shallow wells six to ten feet deep along dry riverbeds to access underground water. To survive, they slaughtered healthy livestock, sliced the meat into thin strips, dried it under the sun, and stored it for future consumption until the next rainy season.

Children often survived on plain maize porridge whenever maize flour was available, as milk became scarce after livestock either migrated or became too weak to produce any.

For students at Tiaty High School, the struggle for water was equally severe.

Every day, learners walked nearly six kilometres through the rugged terrain and steep gorges surrounding Tiaty Hill to fetch water. The community borehole they once depended on had broken down years earlier, and engineers later recommended against rehabilitating it due to its poor waer yield.

When the FLLoCA Communication Team visited the school to document the project's impact, students shared painful memories of the challenges they endured. Many frequently missed lessons because they had to fetch water or were recovering from waterborne illnesses. Others missed meals because there was insufficient water to prepare food. Maintaining personal hygiene was nearly impossible, with students sometimes going for up to two weeks without bathing. In desperate situations, they reused water that had been used to rinse clothes or wiped dirty plates and cups with tissue paper or old newspapers because there simply wasn't enough water for washing.

Everything changed with the construction of the Kabunyany Water Pan.

With a storage capacity of 28,000 cubic metres, the KSh 9.4 million FLLoCA project has become far more than a water infrastructure investmentit is a lifeline for the community. The project is expected to benefit more than 300 households and over 10,000 livestock, including cattle, goats, sheep, and camels, by strengthening community resilience against recurring drought and pasture depletion.

When clean water finally reached taps within Tiaty High School, it felt almost unbelievable.

For the first time in decades, students no longer had to sacrifice learning time in search of water.

The school's Deputy Principal, Hannington Lokwele, recalls how water shortages frequently disrupted learning.

"There were occasions when we had to suspend afternoon classes so students could fetch water for preparing supper and breakfast. We also needed water to clean classrooms, dormitories, and sanitation facilities to maintain hygiene and reduce disease outbreaks, especially during parents' meetings and other school events," he says.

The school had previously spent enormous amounts hiring a 10,000-litre water bowser from Chemolingot at a cost of KSh 20,000 per trip.

"Today, those savings can be redirected towards improving student welfare by purchasing more food and fruits instead of transporting water," Lokwele adds.

He also credits the reliable water supply for contributing to improved academic performance. Last year, Tiaty High School attained a mean score of 8.974 (in the KCSE examinationsan achievement he believes was made possible, in part, by the availability of water that created a healthier and more conducive learning environment.

For the people of Tirioko Ward, the Kabunyany Water Pan is more than a climate resilience project. It represents restored dignity, improved education, healthier families, stronger livelihoods, and renewed hope for a community that has spent generations living at the mercy of drought.