West Pokot, Kenya (CNN) -- More than 13 years after his parents drowned in a flash flood, David Kakuko is at the Moruny River, building a bridge that might have prevented their deaths.
The hanging footbridge will provide safe passage over the Moruny, a frequently flooded waterway in West Pokot, Kenya.
"Before the bridge, there [were] so many people, so many who lost their lives," said Kakuko, 32. "I know, because I have no parents. I have no parents, because this river took them."
Kakuko is working alongside other local residents and Harmon Parker, a master mason who has been building bridges through Kenya's mountainous terrain since 1997.
Parker, a Lexington, Kentucky, native who came to Kenya in 1989, has seen firsthand how flash floods -- and the threat of predators such as crocodiles and hippos -- can make rivers impassable in isolated communities.
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