Last week, on Friday at 3pm, the temperature outside City Square Post Office on Haile Selassie Avenue was 32 degrees centigrade.
The jam-packed avenue had turned into a vendors' paradise, with bottled mineral water and ice cream being the fastest-moving goods of choice. The vendors were selling to a captive market of thirsty motorists.
The motorists could have been Nairobi residents leaving work early, or returning to their offices from late lunch. Water should not have been their problem then, but it was — after they missed the lifeline for a few minutes.
Drinking a bottle of cold water is one way of cooling a sweat-drenched body under the brutal heat of Nairobi at the end of February. Many often take a glass of water granted. But clean water, or any water for that matter, is rare for taxpayers who live in drought and flood-prone parts of the country. Some taxpayers have said goodbye to a regular bath.
Those who are yet to experience heat, radiated from an unalloyed sun rays, would think the end of February was the worst there can be in the age of climate change. Meteorologists say this season is one of the hottest. But there is probably nothing the City County Government of Nairobi can do to tame the heat.
If you think Nairobi's heat is the worst, then you need to venture outside the capital of this third-world metropolis. Only then will you appreciate the contrasts.
There is a crisis across the country, which is yet to attract national attention. The silence is due to the usual preoccupation with politics, rather than the suffering of rural communities. Women and children are particularly vulnerable.
Garissa, Marsabit, Wajir, and Isiolo counties have attained "alarm drought status". Nineteen other counties, including Machakos, Kitui, and Taita Taveta, are classified as "alert drought status". Devolution Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru released the drought data last week.
Drought classification measures the seriousness of food scarcity. The rating starts from normal, grows to alert, then alarm. The worst is emergency, which is when people and animals begin to die. But it does not consider taxpayers who are admitted to hospitals with waterborne diseases or acute dehydration.
The official rating requires free flow of information, which is lacking in equally hit sections of drought-prone counties. One such location is MidWest Karachuonyo, in Homa Bay County, a devastated community of about 18,000 people.
Mid-west Karachuonyo, covering parts of Kibiri, West Karachuonyo, and Karachuonyo North wards, is vulnerable. It is too far away from the lake, and even farther from any flowing river. All water pans in this epicentre of a devastating drought, dried up in December. The only source of water is the half-done Kobondo Dam. The Kenya Red Cross Society visited this dam on Sunday, for situation analysis.
The fast-receding Kobondo Dam, with a foot-deep swell of dust blowing into the water, is the oasis for this community. Women draw water from the same spot, where their animals drink and urinate. It's a raw struggle of man and beast. The water is greenish or brownish filth - possibly the largest receptacle of typhoid-causing germs.
These are images one would expect in the Kalahari Desert, where Bedouins struggle to cope with the vagaries of their environment. But this is the other Kenya, 15 years after the year 2000, when piped water was expected in every home. This is also Kenya during the year 2015, when the millennial development goal of sustainable access to clean water was supposed to have been realized.
The goalpost could be moved to 2025, five years shy of 2030. Then, Kenya dreams of being an industrialized country, with indicators of all-round human development.
Let's appreciate the reality, for many rural communities, now: Women wake up as early as 4am, with children trekking along to fetch water. They travel the rough and dusty terrain, carrying water in pots, pails and jerrycans that make their effort exhausting.
The first trip to fetch water ends around 8am, when tired and hungry children prepare for school, sleepyheaded and exhausted. The women then travel back for water to collect the brown and greenish dirt-filled liquid at 10am before livestock move in to complicate their struggle. Fetching water takes most of the day for the poor women. For every trip, about 19 litres is all they can carry on their heads.
Most water pans have dried up because of poor rains during the last two years. Most schools release pupils at 2pm because of the searing heart. The early closure of schools also allows the children to rejoin their mothers in the search for water. Boarding schools are particularly affected, with some spending Sh20,000 on water every day. Tankers deliver the water from Homa Bay Town, about 40km away. Water vendors retail Sh35 for a 19-litre can, in a poor village of struggling peasants.
This part of the country did not feature last week when the Government declared a drought alert in 23 of the 47 counties. The 23 are the usual victims of perennial drought in a country that suffers the vagaries of flooding and drought. Where, then, are our development priorities if water is overlooked?