Meet Patrick Kilonzo Mwalua, aka the water man, who delivers water to the wild animals in dry lands of Kenya’s Tsavo West National Park. The kind fellow, who is a pea farmer in his local village, came up with the idea after seeing the dire effects that global warming is having on Kenya’s land. “We aren’t really receiving rain the way we used to,” he says. “So I started giving animals water because I thought, ‘If I don’t do that, they will die.’”
Mwalua spends a few hours driving every day to fill the dry watering holes with life-saving water. Whenever he shows up with a truck of 3,000 gallons of fresh water, the elephants, buffalo, antelope and zebras come to greet him. “There is completely no water, so the animals are depending on humans,” Mwalua tells The Dodo. “If we don’t help them, they will die.”
“Last night, I found 500 buffalo waiting at the water hole,” he says. “When I arrived they could smell the water… They started drinking water while I was standing there. They get so excited.”
Mwalua’s passion for wildlife inspired a few American women to set up a GoFundMe page for him. The man will continue caring for animals as much as he can.