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Preface

30 years of change in domestic water use & environmental health in east africa summary

Back in the 1960s there seemed few facts available about water supply in Africa and much of the developing world, and almost none from the users' standpoint. There were no set ways to investigate the questions, nor was it clear what the key questions were. Two geographers, keen to investigate household decision making over water, were introduced to a medical researcher with a Land-Rover. All were funded by The Rockefeller Foundation. This led to a survey of some 20 or so households in each of 34 communities with diverse landscapes and settlement patterns to get a first cut at answers to an array of questions about domestic water use in the three countries of East Africa: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The results were published as the book Drawers of Water, and clearly the time was ripe for it.