Nairobi's Reservoirs Hold, But the Margin Thins by the Week

NAIROBI — The Sasumua reservoir north of the city sat at forty-one percent of capacity on Saturday, down four points in a fortnight, according to figures the Oceanic & Atmospheric Assembly logged this week. That is not yet a crisis line; it is the line before the line. "We plan now in weeks, not in seasons," said Grace Wanjiru, a district water engineer who has managed the intake for eleven years. She walks the drawdown mark each morning — a pale ring of dried mud that has climbed a hand's width up the bank since August. The emergency water allocation session the Global Concordat Council opened in July under Secretary-General Ingrid Halvorsen bought coordination, not rain; ministers left with a framework and the same sky. Across three continents the Assembly tracks the same slow arithmetic: demand steady, inflow uncertain, storage the only cushion. For Wanjiru, the number that matters is not the percentage but the mud ring, and how fast it climbs.