But the women of Kikumbulyu village are not worried. Last November, they built a rock catchment system to harvest rainwater. Now, despite dry weather, the village still has plenty of water.

"Apart from the gift of life from God, this is the other biggest blessing that has come to us," said villager Mary Mwikali Kiminza, a mother of five and a member of the village's Ithine Self Help Group.

"My feet are now rested without endless trips to (fetch water), and my children can now concentrate in school because I no longer ask them to follow me to the river," she said.

Kibwezi sub-county, where Kikumbulyu village is located, is hilly with huge rocks – not the kind of environment that supports traditional methods of water conservation such as water pans or "sand dams", which use wet sand to hold water.

But since 2010, the Africa Sand Dam Foundation (ASDF), a Kenyan non-governmental organisation, has worked with villagers in the Makueni area to build rock catchment systems, taking advantage of the local geography to make themselves more water secure.

Rock catchment systems use naturally occurring rock outcrops to divert rainwater to a central collection area. A concrete wall is built to direct the water that trickles down the rock surface into a sand and gravel filter, then down pipes into covered storage tanks.

"The main idea is to build resilience to climate extremes among the worst-hit areas, using locally acceptable techniques and making them as sustainable as possible," Matheka Cornelius Kyalo, ASDF's executive director, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Courtesy: Thomson Reuters Foundation