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A boy in a shallow well pours water into a plastic drum, Kakuma, Kenya

Work / Finding Water

NGO · field · Kenya

Finding Water

In Kakuma, Kenya, a refugee community lives with scarce water, broken pipes, and the hope of finding more. When boreholes fail, people fetch from rivers and shallow wells — and risk what is in them.

The camera stays with the work of looking: the well, the jerry can, the class on cholera, the map of where to drill. Not a talking head in Nairobi.

Goal

Show the scarcity as it is lived, and the slow work of finding groundwater. For an organisation whose audience lives outside the camp. English that travels. A film, not coverage.

Outcomes

A film of the riverbed, the water point, the survey. The look of the work. Cut at home, in Poland.

Directed by
Brendan O’Brien
Produced by
Patrick O’Brien
Location
Kakuma, Kenya
Presented by
Red Van Studio
in association with Last Mile Media
Crew
Jack Jones, Landon Woods, Erin Ernst, Colin Miazga, Paul Bauman, Douglas MacLean, Randy Shinduke, Franklin Koch

Stills

  • The crew walking a tarmac toward a small propeller plane
  • An acacia tree on the Kakuma plain at dusk, seen from a moving vehicle
  • A figure walking a dry, sandy riverbed
  • A person standing at the lit doorway of a screened building at night
  • A star field over silhouetted trees
  • Hands pointing to a map of Kakuma Division, Turkana County
  • A lone figure on a paved road through dry bush
  • A woman teaching a cholera-prevention class at a chalkboard
  • A boy in a shallow well pours water into a plastic drum
  • Rows of yellow jerry cans at a UN water point
  • The Finding Water crew standing in a line on dusty ground