AQ village project pictures

This is the village we call "AQ" (May 2013)

In 2013 the big project in AQ village was a well for drinking water.  If you would like to read the full story behind this project, just click the label "Wells", which you will find in two places: 1- just below this post, and 2- in the list of Labels on the top of the righthand side column.

KT village project pictures

This is the village we call "KT" (May 2013)

Here are some pictures from the 2013 work in KT village.  One of the strengths of our project is training and capacity building.  We have a variety of training topics prepared, but we do not start or even offer them until the community realizes in problem analysis that they would benefit from some form of learning.  Below are pictures of men's and women's hygiene health training.

Below are pictures of latrine construction.  KT village was the big success for latrines, because of all the extra work that this community put into them.  I decided not to show pictures of the insides of their latrines!

And here are some of the new latrine owners.

If you are interested in reading more about the latrines project in KT, click here

And then there were 3 water points

Just a note of hurrah to say that the community of AQ village have successfully dug the trench and buried the pipe for their additional 2 waterpoints.  They are waiting for cement to cure on the standpost pads, but later this week they’ll be able to turn them on, get accurate flow rates, and decide how to allot time for each of the 3 neighborhoods to collect water.  At the moment, in what for months has been known as “angry village”, everyone is happy. 

Good things are happening.  Now take heart, and press on with this next beast-like-1900-word post.  

Before the snow flies

Right now is a busy time for physical projects in community development.  All the farm work is done so more men are available, and there are a few weeks remaining until it will be too cold to pour concrete.  In case you are interested I will give you the rundown of the projects we hope to finish before freezing temps and snow, and what each of the participants roles in the projects are.

Village "MZ"

Situation:  This village is eager to get irrigation working again in their village.  Until 3 or 4 years ago they were directing a mountain spring to their village with dirt canals, but the 700+ meter hillside canals were irreparably damaged by avalanches.  They know that we have done plastic pipelines before so they have requested for us to assist them in making their irrigation more efficient and durable.   

Project:  We are going to dam the stream coming from a mountain spring, and feed it into a 2.5 inch pipe that will run to the top of the village, where it can feed at least 3 different canal routes in order to irrigate all the yards and small fields in the village.

Community's role: They will supply all the labor and local materials.  That means rocks, gravel and sand for building the dam, canal, and settling pool before the pipe.  They will also dig a ditch by hand shovel, the entire 700+ meters length, 1 meter deep. 

CDP team's role: We will supply the non-local materials (like cement and pipe) and the engineering support that exceeds their own capacity.  We also advocate for the poorest farmers in the village to make sure that they do not have to work harder than others to get an even share of the irrigation water. 

My personal role: This is this team’s first irrigation project so I am responsible for making sure that it gets done right, and making sure the end result is just and fair for all in the community.  It's easy for guys to miss the social justice or injustice that happens in physical projects, so I'm working with our facilitators every step of the way to make sure that they are noticing all the times and ways that the project can go awry or poor people lose out.  To make sure it goes right I have to be the technical consultant, meaning that I take the plans of my local engineer and test and calculate them to make sure they will work.  The way he was surveying, for example, was lacking accuracy, so I made him a 5-meter fluid communicating vessel and trained him to use that.  We also have to stretch the pipe across a 35 meter valley, so as he gets his materials and plans figured out I'll calculate the weight and figure what kind of foundation anchors we will need on both sides of the valley.

Project cost: CDP team is budgeting $4000.  Local labor will be valued around $2500 (they won’t get paid, but this is the value we can attribute to their labor contribution, at the local labor wage)

Project benefit: In the fall this source will not provide much water (14,000 liters/day right now), but the community is very eager to restore this source of irrigation because of the supply it offers in spring and summer.  Using a pipeline will guarantee more water makes it to the village rather than being lost in the dirt canal.  Restoring irrigation will allow this village to double their first-season wheat harvest, plant fruit trees, and plant some second-season crops as well. 

Village AQ:

Context: This is the drinking water pipeline village (aka pants-less welldigger), so I have told this context on several chapters before.

Project: to divert the current single water pipe so that it sends water to 2 additional faucets in different parts of the village, by turn.

Community role: They first have to establish some agreements as a community, before we will start the physical works with them. Then they have to supply local materials and labor.  This means digging the ditch and bringing rocks, gravel and sand for the faucet foundations and valve boxes. 

CDP teams role: Same as in MZ: supply of non-local materials and technical support.  The team does have to work harder on the social aspects of this project, because the problem causing this project is partly their fault- they missed some important and powerful opinions last winter when they were planning the original pipeline. 

My personal role: This is the community that has experienced a number of petty conflicts (and some not-so-petty), so I have made it my job in this village to keep contact with several key people and support them in maintaining peace and cooperation among their own community.  I also play engineer in this project, but mostly I am using my technical work as opportunities to stay among the men and observe how the relationships there work.

Actually, my role in the technical aspect of this has been important, because we are nearing the limit of what the electrical submersible well pump can do.  It is rated for 120 meters of head, but calculating in the inefficiencies and friction throughout the system, and it seems we’re quite close.  Fortunately on Wed the team and the community were able to carry out a test that I gave them: they rolled 200 meter of 40mm hard plastic pipe up the hill, hooked it up to the reservoir, and turned on the pump to see what the flow rate would be at that higher elevation.  There was about a 40% drop in flow rate from that at the reservoir, but I think the community can reshuffle the number of families that go to each of the 3 water points, so that it stays somewhat equal.

Project cost:  CDP team is budgeting $800.  The communities labor is going to be nearly the same!

Project benefit: Simply put, this project makes 3 water points in a village that has had only 1 since we finished the well and first pipeline in April.  The reason that this is a big deal is that the village counts themselves as 3 neighborhoods.  When I finally realized that, and voiced that back to the community leaders, it changed the whole dynamic of how our relationships and work with them; we had finally seen life through their eyes.  You might still be asking: why 3 neighborhoods?  Gender, religion, age, and rich and poor all factor into this.  Women were not supposed to be crossing from one neighborhood to the other at the time of day that water was available.  Water was supposed to be more locally available for washing for prayers.  Men were continually cutting in line in front of children.  The rich were using vast amounts of water and the poor were not getting enough even for drinking.  Enough convoluted reasons for this paragraph?  To be honest, these new water pipes and collection points are not going to solve the whole issue, but they stand the chance of putting us in a better position to continue to work with this community and get some of these unsavory tendencies dealt with.  In the long run, I believe it will have been worth it to do this extra work and expense.  By the end of this week we should have the pipes installed and water flowing to all three collection points (one at a time that is!)

Village KT:

(writeup coming soon, it’s too late tonight!)

Latrine monitoring in K.T.

 Today I went to one of the project villages to look at the latrines being built.  It was the typical trip with lots of little things that I could mention, but usually don't because that requires more energy than I usually have in the evenings.  You're in luck because I just got back from a break and feel motivated to "take you along" on this village trip by sharing my observations of the day:

Every trip is a small adventure.  Before leaving town my driver and I made some calls to check security.  There was fighting overnight near the airport, so we took the rough road instead of the main.  A few kilometers down that road our Toyota Hilux truck started to wobble like a penguin.  I told the driver to let me drive so he could observe and try to figure out what it was.  So there’s the driver running beside me watching the front wheels.  It worked, he noticed the part of the suspension that was moving wildly from a missing bolt, and we limped it back to town to get said bolt.  20 minutes later we’re back on the road.

Our male staff are enthused that the second round of 20 latrines has been progressing much faster than the first 20.  The first took 2 months to complete, but in just 2 weeks many of the second round were well underway.  Makes sense, now that their harvest is over, they have time to do our physical projects.

Lunch was delicious salad, carmelized squash in sour cream, and rice with chickpeas (a feast to welcome me back from my trip to Am-ree-ka).  There was even pudding.  Wow, they hardly ever make pudding in the village.

Out we went on the walking tour of 30+ latrines.  The village is big, about a mile long and a quarter mile uphill in width.  The entire place is on a hillside so strewn with avalanched rocks you wouldn’t believe that over 75 families live there, but they do.  We walk up and down the hill to zigzag to all the homes with latrines.  I see a number of positive surprises along the way, including the number of latrines that had been ‘boosted’ into commode-style latrines by the homeowners.  I say ‘boosted’, because we do not include commode fixtures or extra plumbing with our program, our latrines are more basic slab and pit latrines.  It’s amazing to see that over 50% of the people in this village have gone out to buy themselves commode fixtures and piping to connect to a remote pit.  Months ago when I first heard about this idea I was skeptical because I feared there would be technical issues and it would come back at us.  Quickly I saw that lots of people were eager for commodes, because a number of men had seen them and worked on them in a neighboring country.  Now I can’t help but stand back and think this is excellent, because a commode is much better than the standard slab at controlling flies and smell, and the porcelain white fixture is a beautiful thing to see in a dusty village.

I’m humbled to see that some villagers have taken our program so serious that they have prioritized building their latrine over finishing their home.  Many new homes are being built in this village; people are constantly moving here from overpopulated mountain villages, and starting over here.  One man struggled to dig a 5-meter pit through dense rock, then bought 12 meters of 4” pvc pipe to drain the commode he installed in his house, to the pit down the hill outside.  He was so proud, and the latrine and wash space was truly well done by his own handiwork.  It was only as I left that I noticed his wife rocking an infant in a rickety wood cradle, in a room with no floor covering or windows.

Next stop is a house that looks just as simple and poor as the rest, but his latrine is visibly different; the interior of this latrine has been plastered and whitewashed!  This was not the only latrine that had been fancied up, there are several that have plastered walls and handwashing points with soap.  Some have even been turned into a latrine/washroom by enlarging the floor space, cementing the walls to knee-high, and installing a floor drain.  Then my mind was officially blown when I saw a toothbrush and toothpaste sitting on nails, on the wall of one washroom/latrine.  That’s the first time in 6 years that I’ve seen a toothbrush in a local home here, and it was out here in a poor dusty village. 

On we go, one latrine after another.  Some are average, but most look really good.  Then we find one with a green door and window frames.  Awesome

Later there is a curious latrine that does not have a roof yet, but the hole in the slab is covered.  This tells me that the family has put the latrine right to work, and applied what they learned in the training about keeping the slab covered.  Nevermind there’s no roof yet, there’s no rain this month.

Most of the latrines have covers on the slabs, which is great because this is something the project didn’t supply; they had to get their own.  One family used what looked like the cover for truck air cleaner.  Whatever works!

To be honest not all the latrines were up to snuff.  Several were made with the technical suggestions of a certain man who swore he was a well-trained engineer.  Unfortunately he suggested they overlap their 2-piece slanted tin roof the wrong way, and when the rain comes they will be getting dripped on when they go to their latrine.  I pointed this out, but as I suspected, they all chose the “we’ll wait and see” response.  That’s fine, it’s their latrine, made with their own hands, so if it needs to be fixed, I’m pretty sure they’ll do it. 

One of the big surprises of the day was learning that my lead staff took the liberty to let every man build his own latrine, and be paid the mason’s wage for that.  The plan had been that 3 masons would be contracted to build the more technical parts of the latrine, together with trainees at each house that would learn the construction techniques.  At first I was disappointed with my staff leader and planned to make an issue of how his choice would make the community more dependent, but then I decided to first go and see the result of his leadership.  We toured on a great day, because a number of men were literally putting the finishing touches on their latrines.  I saw the pride and satisfaction on their faces, and I heard their appreciation of our project finally making it possible for them to “quit being lazy” (the words of one man) and take care of their sanitation need.  I was reminded of two points I read recently in a book titled “Poor Economics”.  The authors of this book argue that development needs to be tested and researched according to how each unique people group responds to different types of support or assistance.  They suggest that a handout or incentive is not always a bad thing; perhaps the handout is what convinces people to act right away.  This might cause concern that they acted because of the incentive, or that they would get used to handouts.  On this point, however, the authors counter that perhaps it’s not handouts they get used to, perhaps they rather get used to latrines, and never allow themselves to go back to life without them. 

I was still thinking about these points when my staff started to ask me how we will proceed with the rest of the community.  That is the question isn’t it?  I mean, no matter what we have done, where is it going from here, and will we be able to affect change in sanitation outside of the area where we give away materials and pay builders?  My staff must get tired of hearing these types of questions from me.

By the end of the week I estimate 35-40 latrines will be done in this village.  The goal for the year is 75 total, and then we will do another round of hygiene training over the winter for the 50 new families (told you the village is growing fast) before we do any assistance with their latrines next year.  What we will probably do between this year and next is transition to a new phase in which we no longer pay for any labor on latrines, we only supply materials not found in the village.  Most of my staff think this will be a mistake because people will not tolerate being treated differently.  My staff leader, however, agrees with me, that once there is a critical mass of 75 latrine-using families in a village, the social pressure will be on the other 50 to get theirs done, and they will be more inclined to do the labor for free in order to catch up with the rest of the community.  I wouldn’t be so sure of this, except that the commodes, white-washed walls, and the toothbrush tell me that this community has “got” the message on hygiene and sanitation, and they should be able to handle the continuation of the latrine project as the outside organization takes steps back and lets them do it.

We will see!  Ask me later about this village that we call K.T.!

Life update on the author of the most neglected blog in the world.

I don’t have much time or energy these days to write, but I should at least try to keep you updated more, right?  Here’s a few nuggets…

The WASH proposal – In my last post I explained the WASH proposal that I had been working on since March.  After 4 months of hard work on this, I ended up dropping out of the bid for the project.  It was disappointing, but sort of an honest return to reality and who we are and what we can handle and what is more than we can handle at this stage in life and with all the other considerations we have here. 

I would have enjoyed working with a project that I designed from the start and a staff them that I picked and trained.  It also would have let me get projects in more districts in this province, which I think would be great. 

Unfortunately there were big concerns in the security outlook, and when the project got trimmed from 3 years to 2 years I realized it would be impossible to count on training local leaders to fully take responsibility for a project in such a short time; I would have to manage the whole thing myself from start to finish. 

Sadly, the nail in the coffin of this project, for me, was that the consortium leader (the organization that was going to be the leader of the multiple organizations in this country all joined in the same project) was doing such a lousy job of leading the other partners in the consortium.  I lost faith in that organization supporting me in my unique part of the project (all the other partners were working with existing teams in existing fields, I was the only one starting from scratch), and my wife and I finally said, “if they can’t give me more than 24 hours to respond to demands for budgets or beneficiary spreadsheets or proposal revisions, then they’re never going to respect that we’re trying to live as a healthy family here!”  That was the end of that.  Decisive as that sounds, I still feel a sense of loss (but not regret).

The well with the half-naked well digger – If you didn’t read this 3-part story, you should scroll down and give it a go.  If you have followed along, you’ll be as disappointed and shocked as me to hear that the community has blamed us for dividing their community with this project. 

In this project we have found a classic example of how not to do a proper “Do No Harm” analysis prior to projects, and the negative consequences of neglecting that step!  Do No Harm, by the way, is a whole methodology that focuses on, well, you get the idea from the name don’t you?  I have a draft of a post about Do No Harm that I started in… April… hmm I’ll try to finish that soon. 

Back to the well: it seems that the community was not adequately prepared to face 2 new realities: 1- the fact that water was no longer free (they would have to pay the electricity bill for the water pump), and 2- access to the reservoir was going to be more contentious than they realized. 

Once reality #1 sunk in, reality (problem) #2 started to churn as well.  The people that lived close to the reservoir helped themselves to as much water as they wanted, but the people living further away felt cheated.  The poorest people pushed for everyone to use the water only for drinking water so that the electric bill would be low, but the ‘not-so-poor’ people fought to use the water to wash, water animals, and even water their big gardens with. 

When these disputes started to arise, the village council did not want to take any responsibility for the problems.  This is disappointing, because prior to the project, our team had spent some time with the village council going over policies and agreements about the well and water usage, in attempt to make it fair and good for all.  Clearly, those discussions had not been serious enough or deep enough or touched on the right issues! 

For the past 2 months now our team has been hounding me with one suggestion after another to pacify this community.  The reason they’ve hounded me so long is that I am not going to agree to another hardware solution until the community is all together again in the fall (this community, like many in the area, scatters in the summer for grazing and fieldwork elsewhere). 

It’s been an interesting couple of months because I have learned a lot about the local team that works in this project, and they have learned a lot about critical questions!  Each time they come with another simple argument for what we should build for the community to shut them up, I ask them a series of critical questions that point specifically to the social angles of this project that have already gone wrong, and cannot be corrected only with cement and pipe.  So, week by week they are doing more and more meetings with individuals and families to learn where different people in the community stand on the issues surrounding the well, and by the time I get back here in Oct we will be ready to sort out a solution that is backed by a load of interactions and discussions between the project staff and the community, and among the community members themselves regarding the key reasons for why this project hasn’t been satisfactory for them yet. 

Well, I think this is long enough for one night.  I’ll try to write again in the next week and tell you a few other updates such as latrines, courses, and developing leaders- stay tuned!

A new project?

These days I am doing a lot of thinking and networking and gathering information and researching for a new WASH proposal.  My work at this point is entirely preliminary; there has not even been a call for proposals, let alone a clear answer of whether I can get the institutional funding to do this project.  Since I am new to this province, however, I feel it necessary for me to prepare as much as possible for the opportunity, if it comes about.  To be honest, as I learn more about the challenges of working in this province, I’m quite intimidated about taking this on.  There are definite reasons to try to do this:

• ·      After 12 years of aid, so many communities in this province still do not have safe drinking water!   
• ·      Adding another proposal and a new donor will make the community development programme here more resilient.
• ·      It will utilize the growing capacity our organization has in WASH, and extend our reach and influence in this province.

On the other hand, this is a big thing to take on, especially because the places that are the neediest for WASH are also the most inaccessible because of mountains and insecurity.  I met today with a man who formerly worked with an organization that did excellent work in one of those hard to reach places.  He told me that the only way they could reach the 3 districts they worked in was by riding horseback for 8 hours!  Amazingly, they established a project that worked well despite the access challenges, but then it had to be closed after they faced insecurity not in their working area, but along the way there!

The other big challenge to face will be using all new staff.  The funding will only be available for 3 years and the institutional donor will require a lot of outputs each year (WASH for 14 villages and 3 schools/year).  This means that the staff will have to be trained quickly and trusted to work under remote management. 

As I work towards this proposal and project, some days I’m excited with the possibility, and others I’m overwhelmed with concern about the challenges.  This morning I was encouraged to again read my favorite chapter of Proverbs.  I’ll copy the verses that were loud and clear to me tonight, I hope they are meaningful to you as well:

“The plans of the heart belong to man,
but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.  All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight,
but the Lord weighs the motives.  Commit your works to the Lord
and your plans will be established.” (16:1-3)

“When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord,
He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” (16:7)

“The mind of man plans his way,
but the Lord directs his steps.” (16:9)

Hand-dug well part 3 - finished!

Thanks to those of you who expressed interest in this project!

At the end of the part 2 post (see below), I listed the work remaining on the well.  Those last things were completed in less than a week after I wrote the last post, because the people were so motivated to get the pump running so that they could have clean water in their village.

The finished product looks like this:

All the digging equipment is gone, the well is sealed and the lid has a chain and padlock to prevent tampering.  The electric lines to the pump are all buried, as is the pipe that runs up to the village.  At the other end of the pipe is this reservoir:

This cement reservoir was actually built by Oxfam in 2008, at the tail-end of a mountain spring project they did for this village.  Unfortunately that mountain spring dried up, and this reservoir had been unused for years.  We are glad to build on the foundations of work done by other groups, after all, these projects are for the good of the people, not the NGOs!  Before putting this reservoir back into use we fully disinfected the inside, added a chain and padlock to the lid on top, and made the single output pipe into a split so that 2 people could fill their buckets simultaneously.

I was back in this village today and the people had great things to say about what this water source has done for them: they spend much less time collecting water, and the water is safe for drinking.  In the mix with the statements of gratitude however, the community members also had further requests from this project.  They would like us to build another reservoir like this one, but to build it above the village, and then run gravity pipes down from it to a system of taps, one near each cluster of 4-5 houses.  They would also like a backup generator, to continue to pump water when the hydro-power supplied electricity cuts out.

A person cannot blame a community for dreaming big and pushing the envelope with groups that come to partner with them.  However for these requested extensions to this water project, we will have to wait a little bit further into the year to see if we have budget for these, after we get planned projects in other villages rolling.

Hand-dug well part 2 (with pictures!)

Today I was back at the village where we're finishing up a hand-dug well.  Everyone was excited about today because we were bringing the big water pump and electrical control box, and we were going to get it all hooked up.  Before I explain the day, here's some pictures...

What once was a rocky hillside is now a 43 meter deep hole in the ground!  The wood and steel rope spool that rests on the barrels filled with sand is the only elevator.  Simple, but it works.

This is the big pump, housed in the yellow barrel.  The 1.5 kilo-watt pump is  spec'd to push a 2" flow of water up to 120 meters of vertical head.  The yellow barrel will keep the pump upright in the 80cm diameter well, and protect it from sucking sand up from the bottom.

 Here is the control box that houses the automatic pump shut-off.  A big pump like this requires a starter (top right), but the power going to that can be interrupted by an electrical relay switch from a Toyota Landcruiser (top left).  The relay switch is operated by a float switch that is attached inside the barrel, beside the pump.  The idea is that when the water is drawn down to a few inches above the intake on the pump, the float drops, tripping the relay, shutting off the pump.  This is all thanks to my German teammate who makes control boxes for micro-hydroelectric power plants.

After a busy morning of work at the well, the men from the village were more than happy to invite their foreign guests up to the community room for a celebration lunch.  This time with the men is probably equally important as the work itself, in both the eyes of the villagers, and ours.  The menu included: rice, meat, bread, potatoes, apricots, oranges, apples, yoghurt, and Pepsi.

After lunch I saw the well digger catnapping in the grass.  When he saw me he rose to attention, so I asked a couple guys to join him for a picture.  (Left to right up front: Project facilitator "Harry", the infamous well digger, and another consulting well digger who everyone likes better because he weighs about half of what the big well digger weighs and that makes him much easier to raise and lower in the well.)

After lunch we straightened the pipe and wires that attach to the well, and started to lower it down the well.  Unfortunately this was harder than expected.  Part of the reason was that we could not suspend the pump and barrel from dead center because of the position of the pipe and the lowering hooks.  The other part of the problem was that the well shaft turned out to be... not as straight and consistent in width as the well digger said it was.  Here's the well digger ready to climb down the well to see if he can help guide the barrel and pump to the bottom.

Most of the afternoon was like this: a small crowd gathered in anticipation of the big pump being turned on and water being pumped to the reservoir in the village, but everyone ended up doing a lot of waiting because the well digger had a lot of difficulty lowering the barrel all the way to the well floor.  When he finally emerged from the well he said, "well, the barrel is down, and it will probably never come back up, and one of your shovels is underneath it, sorry about that."   

 Despite the lost shovel, we decided to hook up the electrical and see how the pump worked.  Starting the pump caused a 30-volt drop in the electrical source (which might require heavier supply lines), but then the pump ran strong.  In this picture we are timing how long it takes to fill a 220 liter barrel.  Unfortunately before it filled the pump stopped, because the water level had already dropped to the level of dropping the float switch.  This was disappointing to everyone, because they certainly need more water than that for the village!  Discussing this with the leading men who were there, we all agreed that it was the well digger's responsibility to get the pump and barrel deeper into the water.  Our time was up and we needed to head back to town for other meetings, so as I left the well digger was climbing down the well again to get the shovel out from under the barrel, and push the barrel all the way to the bottom of the well.  I hope he succeeded!

What remains:
-The output pipe from the pump needs to be connected to the pipe that runs ~600 meters up to the village reservoir.
-The electrical lines from the pump need to be buried from the well to the control box.
-A 60cm cement ring needs to be set on top of the well, and a 20cm x 20cm cement "sofa" ring around that, sealing it.
-The well, pipe, and reservoir all need to be shock-chlorinated to kill any contaminants introduced while constructing the water source.
-Completing the terms of agreement in the community's water committee, to ensure that responsibility will be taken for this new resource.

If you really liked learning about our well project, you might be interested in backing up now and reading part 1 of the story by clicking here.

Hand-dug well, part 1

 We’ve been in the town we call Fize for a month now.  I spent all of the first two weeks setting up our house, and then I started my new job with the Community Development Project that our NGO runs here.  My start with the project was abrupt, because on my first day I was told that the hand-dug well project in one of the villages was about to fail.  Off to the village I went, with one of the project driver/facilitators telling me the background story on the way.

Three months ago the project signed a contract with a local man to dig a well, by hand, either until he found water or until he reached 45 meters.  3 weeks ago at a depth of about 35 meters, he said that the hole started to fill in with sand.  For 2 frustrating weeks he and his co-worker struggled to fight the sand, then they gave up and said the well could not be completed.  The well project contract read that he would not be paid unless he completed the work, but he argued otherwise.  One of our more technically inclined staff (my driver/facilitator today, I’ll call him Harry) sought out another well digger and received some advice.  Today we were going to try to teach our well digger the technique that we had learned.

After a 90-minute bumpy mountain road drive, we arrived at the village.  The hole in the ground outside the village looked abandoned.  We got a few tools out while we waited for the well digger to appear.  He finally showed up, regretfully, and went right into complaining that the sand could not be beat.  I was surprised that a man who supposedly was an expert at digging wells by hand had never encountered and found a way through a challenge like this.  Harry my facilitator went to work trying to explain the new technique to the well digger.  His style and skill as a facilitator was excellent.  He could have been tempted to disregard the complaining well digger and look for another one to finish the job, but instead he poured all his energy into encouraging and building the understanding of the well digger we had.  I liked Harry’s style, and I was glad to be there to help.

Now how can I explain to you the technique that we taught the well digger?  In order to keep digging, he had to have a way to hold the sand back against the walls of the well shaft.  He had tried to make a perimeter with sheet steel, but it had not worked.  So we told him that our new technique was for him to pour a cement ring (80cm diameter by 50cm height) at the bottom of the well, let it cure, then resume digging inside that cement ring.  As he dug within the cement ring, he would push the cement ring straight down into the hole he was clearing for it.  Once he dug and sunk that cement ring a full 50cm, then there would be room for another cement ring on top of the first, and then on top of the second, third, fourth, and so on.  To pour the cement rings, we were going to make steel forms for both the outer and inner circumferences.  In order to give the cement rings strength and keep them together as they sunk lower, we brought six 200cm x 14mm steel rebar that would stand vertical in between the steel forms, to be encased in cement.  I hope this makes sense, if not, reread this paragraph because this is my best explanation!

The new technique explained, the well digger sat down on a rock and scratched his shaved head in dismay.  He didn’t believe it would work.  He doubted the feasibility of digging inside a 80cm cement ring, he doubted that the sand would allow the cement rings to sink, and he doubted that it was worth this much effort.  Harry, exhausted by his attempts to encourage, turned to me and said in the local language, “will it work, can you help me convince him?”  I doubted I could do a better job than Harry at encouraging, but I decided to at least try to answer the well digger’s doubts.  First I did the cultural necessity and patted his ego by complimenting the work he had done.  I admitted that my untrained limbs could not dig in the dark inside a 80cm cement ring, but that with his specialized, God-given skill, I was confident he could do it.  Then I assured him that the cement ring would sink as he dug, as long as the steel form released it.  In order to ensure the steel form would release it, he needed to: 1- grease the form, 2- use a spirit level to level the forms, and 3- make sure the form had a slightly bigger bottom diameter.  The well digger listened close, and the small group of guys from the village all leaned in to hear the foreigner that spoke their language in an unusual way.  I wasn’t sure if I had communicated anything sensible, but Harry seemed pleased, and took over by asking the men, “are you with us?”  To the surprise of both of us, the well digger stood and said, “alright, let’s do it.”

The next 3 hours were spent perfecting the steel forms for the cement rings.  This involved 5 of us taking turns measuring, cutting, pounding, welding, arguing, second-guessing, and trying again.  Twice we went after more tools and more guys that we thought would be helpful to include.  It was not the easiest process; I couldn’t convince the well digger to wear eye protection, or shoes, when he was welding.  But by lunch-time the forms were nearly done, and the well site had become a big party.  Two school-age boys showed up with bread and kettles, and we all squatted on the ground to eat.  Out of the kettle flowed milk tea, which probably contained more salt than any other ingredient.  After we had all drank our bowlfuls of tea we all jumped back to work, all except the well digger who curled up to a boulder, rested his head on a pair of shoes, and took a nap. 

The forms completed and the well digger awake again, the afternoon sped along as we lowered the forms to the bottom of the well, and prepared to pour the first ring.  The challenge of the 35-meter well shaft became more clear to me while we did this.  As the well digger descended into the hole on a spool of rope, the spool had barely turned and he was already out of sight.  The spool turned over and over again until he finally reached bottom.  Then everyone held their breath and leaned toward the hole to try to make out what the well digger was yelling from the bottom.  Not to worry, he just needed a bucket.

By the time everything was perfectly ready for cement to start being lowered down the well shaft for the first ring, Harry and I needed to head back to town.  The day had been a success; I left with a real sense that this project was going to succeed.

Four days later, Harry and I were on the road again, heading back to check the progress on the well.  Harry had actually returned to check on the first ring the day after it was poured, and he came back reporting that everything was going well.  Now 3 days had passed since either of us had been there, and the well digger had been on his own.  Although we did not know what we would find when we arrived, the last thing we expected was for the well digger to emerge from the well wearing only a long shirt, hard hat, and a smile.  With complete confidence he told us that he had found an adequate supply of water, and the well was a success.  I was impressed that in 4 days he had dug another 1.5 meters, sinking 3 cement rings with him as he dug.  The new technique had worked!

On that day we began to run a 1” electric pump so that the digging could continue.  The well digger excitedly thought it was enough to have water up to his chest, but actually for this project we need to have a resting depth of 150cm water after 6 hours of running an electric pump.  So, he’s still digging, and the stack of cement rings in the bottom of the well has grown to 5.  The electric pump and control box that will automatically send water from the well to a reservoir in the village will be installed as soon as the depth of water is adequate.  I’m hoping this will happen next week, and if all goes well, I’ll post some pictures from the well for you here.  Don’t worry, I’ll make sure the well digger keeps his pants on for the pictures.

WASH Social Marketing – the ongoing challenge with Biosand Filters

 It’s time for another post about Biosand filters.  I started writing about these in January 2011 with this simple introduction:

http://positivechangebythepeople.blogspot.com/2011/01/intro-to-biosand-filters.html

I went on in the following months to write several more times about our work with the Biosand Filter, and if you’re real interested you can read the whole thread here (from newest to oldest):

http://positivechangebythepeople.blogspot.com/search/label/Biosand%20Filters

Well, one of the points that came out clearly in last week’s WASH forum is that our donor organization (that put on the forum) wants us to keep trying to get our Biosand Filters to sell in the private market.  The new concept is; “WASH Social Marketing,” which is closely related to another key concept: “Demand-Led WASH,” which is the opposite of “Supply-Driven WASH.”  Are you getting lost in the concept slogans?  Basically, the idea is to move away from plopping down free solutions (supplies), but instead stimulate social interest and demand in something that the local market can produce and sustain.  Yes, we agree with this, but, (sigh) it has been more difficult than planned.

Perhaps our biggest challenge is that we could not control the practice of other NGOs that distributed Biosand Filters (BSFs) in our province in the past 2 years.  They have distributed thousands of BSFs free, without training, without follow-up support, and without monitoring and evaluation.  As a result, many BSFs cracked in transportation and broke a brief time after use.  Many of the BSFs had been installed incorrectly, or could not be maintained because no one knew how.  One village said, “forget the sand filtration” and emptied their BSFs so that they could be used as gravity water spouts to clean dirty diapers!  This is a classic aid project that has failed everywhere but on the written report that says the distributed X filters.  So sad for the people that needed clean water and didn’t get it.  Now because there are so many broken and useless filters around, we do not have as much interest from communities, even though we do extensive monitoring and evaluation and over 90% of our filters are still in service. 

Another big challenge has been that marketing promotions have been difficult and confusing.  Some communities have misunderstood our attempts to promote an independent factory, and believed that we were somehow profiting from the filter sales at the factory.  Clearly, we are now at a point that promotion must be done by the independent factory mason, not by our NGO project staff.   The question is, will he rise to the occasion and work hard to sell his product?  He hasn’t needed to yet, because the orders that the project buys from his factory have been enough to sustain him.  As we push for more private market growth, we’ll have to shrink our orders from him, and encourage him to go after the additional sales he needs.  We have marketing resources we can give him: business cards, posters, radio ads, even a glass-front BSF.  Hopefully he will take our resources and be encouraged to go out and promote the BSF to communities that really need them.  I’m sure this is not the end of the BSF story…

Hurray for the women

Since the other foreign couple that worked in our community development project left in October, I have learned a lot about the women’s work.  My wife T comes over to the office to socialize with the women’s team, but for work matters, I’m the only foreigner left for them to voice their concerns to or get help from.  There are 8 women on the team, 4 that have been with the project since the start in 2005, and 4 that we hired new last March.  We doubled the size of the women’s team because their participatory tools, courses, and monitoring and evaluation is more time-intensive than the men’s often “one-off” style of working. 

In a culture where men and women seem to live in different worlds, our teams have found a smart way to work together.  Our men’s team assists our women’s team by being the sort of chaperons and gateway guards that women in this culture must have.  At least one of the men always travels with the women, and hangs out near where the women are working, to stand up for them if some trouble arises.  Before our women can bring any sort of material to share with village women (training materials and aides, films, etc), the men take samples of the material and have a quick sitdown with the mullahs and other big men of the village.  Without this simple explanation and introduction by the men, our women run a great risk of being labeled as proselytizers, harlots, or spies- all of which could get them stoned.  Once the men get the nod, our women can safely go ahead, and any gossip that starts will be stopped by the male leaders of the village.

Our women’s team assists our men’s team in return by being informants about the inner-workings of each village.  While the men can walk throughout the whole village (unlike the women), they cannot freely go into private yards, which are surrounded by tall mud walls.  The women, however, can and do go into private yards all the time, and so it is very useful for our men and women to have a discussion early on in their time in each new village, to compare the information they have about life and needs both inside and outside the walls. 

With all of this introduction out of the way, I am pleased to share some actual results of the women’s WASH (water, sanitation, advocacy, hygiene) work with you.  In the past month the women have been doing the first +1 year evaluations of their WASH courses.  This is our first chance to get a real statistical gauge of the learning and change that happened in the hygiene courses 1 year ago, and that which still remains.  The way that this evaluation works is that our women conduct a KAP survey (knowledge, attitude, practice) before the course, and then repeat the same KAP survey 1 year after the course has concluded.   The KAP surveys require excellent facilitators who know how to turn the list of questions into a fluid dialogue which elicits the village woman’s understanding and belief about WASH.  Then the skillful facilitator also weaves an actual walk around the yard into the visiting time, so that the WASH practices can be observed.  By doing the same survey before the course and 1 year after it, findings from both surveys can easily be compared to see the impact on the cognitive, emotive, and practical levels of WASH in each village where our women have a course.  Below I will give you a summary of the most significant findings from the first three villages we have evaluated:

Knowledge changes:

• Understanding that unclean water is the most common cause of diarrhea increased from 64%-100%
• Understanding the causes of diarrhea in children:
• Flies: 10% - 90%
• Germs: 25% - 80%
• Not washing hands: 25% - 90%
• Understanding how to prevent diarrhea in children:
• Washing hands after toilet: 45% - 100%
• Washing hands before cooking: 27% -100%
• Washing hands before and after eating: 19% - 89%
• Preventing and killing flies: 10% - 90%

        Attitude changes:

• ·      Reasons for washing hands:
• To avoid food contamination: 33% - 93%
• To keep good hygiene: 20% - 89%
• To prevent disease: 52% -100%
• ·      Reasons to have a latrine and keep it sanitary:
• Disease prevention: 38% - 97%
• Preventing flies: 26% - 100%

     Practical changes:

• ·      Pre-treatment of drinking water (boiling, filtering) increased from 30%-100% (this is in villages where drinking water is gathered from streams).
• ·       Handwashing with soap increased from 41%-100%
• ·      Treatment of children when they have diarrhea: giving ORS: 20% - 100%

And my favorite finding: Before the course, over of 90% of the women in the courses had at least one family member with diarrhea.  Exactly one year later, close to

90% of the women reported no diarrhea in their families at that time.

Certainly our work is not about stats, but this evaluation does help us to know that this course has been worthwhile, and worth continuing! 

In 2011 the women’s primary purpose was these WASH courses.  For 2012, this course will be continued by 4 of our women in new villages, and the other 4 have just started a training we call BLiSS (Basic Life Saving Skills).  The BLiSS course is a very interactive course for traditional midwives and mothers.  We feel this emphasis is also critical here, where maternal and infant mortality figures are still so disturbing.  In one of the BLiSS courses we just started, the women reported that just 3 weeks ago a mother and baby both died during labor at home, just a few kilometers away from the hospital.

Please pray and cheer for our women’s team to continue to serve the women of this country with excellence, and that lives would be saved and transformed because of their interventions.  

Popularity contest

Today we finally put some structure around a question that has floated through our project for the past year: “How do we make it popular?” 

Examples: Soap, toothbrushes, rubber gloves, biosand filters

Of the above examples, soap is perhaps the best.  In our hygiene course we make the point very clear that handwashing after using the latrine and before you eat is pretty much the biggest measure villagers here can take to stay healthy.  We don’t just tell this straight up mind you, this comes after a week or two of participatory games and things that lead the village women themselves to the conclusion that the lack of handwashing is a big problem for them.  Then we bring in soap and water and actually get them to practice a thorough washing, and they get to keep the soap.  Then after the course we visit the local shopkeeper with one of the locals, and together request him to make soap available at a reasonable price, because now people are interested in buying it. 

A few months after the course, we go back to evaluate each of the communities that took the hygiene course.  Our women visit with women in their homes, and men visit with men and the shopkeeper, to see if people have been applying what they learned.  One of the most telling parts of the evaluation is to ask the shopkeeper, “okay, really, have the people been buying soap or not?”  In some places, they have been, and we are extremely encouraged by this.  In other places, they have not, and this is disappointing.  A bar of soap sells for a few pennies, a price that even really poor people are willing to pay, for something that they want. 

This is why we keep coming around to this question, “How do we make it popular?”  What we believe it takes in this culture to make it popular is the following 3 things:

• ·      The people have to understand what it is, why it’s a good thing, and how to use it.
• ·      The local shops have to have it available, and for an affordable price.
• ·      The neighbors have to have it (or at least covet and talk about it).

We take various initiatives on the top 2 points, but still it seems that without that third point being present, it does not spread. 

So what do you think?  Is there more to popularity, and is there more we can do?  

Stories from our projects

Today I'm going to share 3 stories that our local staff have gathered from the communities in the past couple months.  I have had a very minimal, indirect involvement with these projects, so it was neat for me to read them and know that without foreigner input, the local staff are taking this programme forward.  I have left them just the way they wrote them, translated by our administrator.  Hope you enjoy.

Sakina’s clean latrine

“After I went to the hygiene course given by the CDP ladies team I am trying to make a lot of improvements in our hygiene, cleanliness of the household and our latrine.  We are now able to keep our home a lot cleaner and use the latrine properly.  After going to the latrine, we are washing our hands with soap and water, and we have made a cover for the latrine hole to prevent germs.  And I have stopped the children going to the toilet outside in the yard.  We have put fly screen up in our windows because we have learned about the way flies pass on diseases.

Our 4 children were always suffering with diarrhoea, and we were spending money all the time on visits to the doctor, medicines.  But now, by the grace of God, none of us has trouble with diarrhoea, and we are saving the money we used to spend at the doctor’s.  We are very happy that I went to the course, and learned all this.”

Gulabza’s Biosand filter

“My daughter Zeba is 17 years old, studying 10^th grade at the Girls’ High School in the village.  There never used to be any clean water available in our village, there weren’t even any wells.  Our family, like everyone else in the village, used to use water straight from the reservoir.  The two wells that were dug in the village were salty and bitter, so no one would drink from them.  My daughter suffered from stomach ache and kidney problems since she was small.  She couldn’t do her lessons properly because of the illness.  All the doctors in the city said she had kidney and bladder stones, and needed operations.  My husband died several years ago, and the money which I worked for was going on doctors and medicines.

When the ladies from CDP started a hygiene course I was part of it, and I learned a lot of good things on the course.  The most valuable thing was using a filter to get clean water.  My family is now benefiting from clean filtered water, because they have learned to use and look after the filter properly too.  Since she started drinking filtered water, my daughter’s kidney problems have improved day by day.  It is about 4 months since she needed to go to a doctor or take medicine.  I am so thankful that God sent you to do this work, it has made such a difference to her health, and I pray that you will keep doing this for a long time.”

Deadly reservoir changed forever 

“A young man Subghatullah, 18 years old in a nearby village used to operate a hand cart ‘karachi’ with his father for their living.  One day he went to the reservoir by the mosque to fetch a few jerry cans of water.  After a few hours his mother realised he had not come home yet, so she went out to look for him.   When she got to the reservoir all she could see were the jerry cans on the bank – there was no sign of her son.  She told everyone in the village that her son had gone out to get water and disappeared.  My first thought was that he’d fallen in the water – so I called a group of young men together and told them to jump in the reservoir and look for Subghatullah.  That is what they did, and they found his body in the water.  That is not the first time this has happened – I’ve been alive for 85 years and I’ve seen it happen quite a few times.  A few days later we had a general meeting of the village council to work out what we could do about this – but they couldn’t really think of any good ideas.  

Luckily for us, a guy called Usta Mohammad Hashem who had worked in a neighbouring country for several years came up with an idea.  Look, he said, this reservoir is a little bit higher up than the rest of the village – how about we ask some agency to help us put a pipe in to bring the water out at street level.  And then we should put a fence around the reservoir to stop people getting water from it and falling in.  And if we stop stepping in and out of the reservoir the water stay cleaner too.   Everyone though this was a great idea, and we got some money together between ourselves.  Then we went to ask the NGO to help us, as they had started doing other clean water projects around our neighbourhood.  They agreed to give us the things we were short of - cement, pipes and the fence.  We started the work as soon as we could, and now it is finished – the water coming from the taps is much cleaner than any other reservoir water around here.  As one of the senior whitebeards of the community, I would like to thank the NGO on behalf of all of us, men, women and children, for working with us to finish this project, with the help of God.”