Last week I was in the villages last week, and here are the
short updates on where the falls projects are at:
MZ – The big
irrigation water supply project is nearly done! The checkdam, ditch, and settling reservoir were just 1 day
from completion. The foundations
for the suspension bridge were cured and ready for the pipe to be
suspended. The 830-meter-long ditch
was dug and the pipe was installed and only the outlets remained. The community has continued to go through
some challenges deriving from differences of opinions, differences in
priorities, and weak planning and informing on their part. I’m glad that these struggles have
gotten easier as we’ve progressed through this project. Part of it was the necessary building
of relationship and trust with the community, part of it was little mistakes,
assumptions, and miscommunications that added up, and part of it can be seen as
just an ordinary part of community work!
AQ – Big
encouragement in visiting this village!
This was the community that was so angry with us not so long ago, and
now that they have access to water in each of their three neighborhoods the
mood has completely changed! The
construction of this project was not too difficult; once we got through the
careful surveying it was just a matter of bringing the few extra materials and
letting the community get to work.
The solution has not been perfect, because the electricity power supply
from a nearby hydroelectricity plant has not been very steady, and that causes
the flow rate to go up and down, causing some people to say that they are still
not getting their fair share of water.
The water level in the well itself is also down in this season, so we
are monitoring that. There are
still risks to watch for, but at the moment it is encouraging to see that this
simple project provided a good solution.
We also went to KT, but I still need to back up and tell out
about the latrine work there.
That’s for another night!
FYI: I am storing up a number of blog ideas, and hope to get
them out before we send our next newsletter in mid-January. In the week after Christmas, the family
will also be going with me to one village for one day, just to enjoy a visit
and see the MZ irrigation project.
That project should be completely done then, and we’ll try to get a
number of pictures that we can post on the here for your enjoyment!
By the way, snow has fallen! We got a couple inches last week, and cold temps have followed, so we are done with cement until spring. It was a great fall project season, and I'm looking forward to wrapping up photo summaries of the projects for you in the next few weeks!
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