Final main post

The project is done and I am happy to say has been very successful. Run for Africa and PADI have managed to build 13 improved local wells and one bore hole which will provide an estimated 2000 people with clean water from this point on. The bore hole should last indefinitely and the local improved wells should continue to provide clean water until 2017 to 2022 with a moderate amount of maintenance that the local communities are capable of doing with local materials and are aware of. Construction of all thirteen improved wells plus the bore hole took roughly one month and all communities where PADI chose to build were able to hold up their end of the agreement which was to provide, free of charge, a full lorry worth of rock (the bed completely covered), a full lorry of sand, and 400 bricks per well along with all the unskilled labor necessary to construct them. This resulted in roughly half the total cost of each well being paid for through in kind contributions by the communities where they were built. PADI is already planning out and surveying where to build during the next dry season (between next June and next November). The number of wells currently being looked at for future projects for next year and beyond is around 40 improved wells and four more boreholes (all at high schools that currently have no source of potable drinking water for students) in the Songea town municipality. Plans are also being made to do some surveying around Mbinga town (about 60-70 miles away and the next big town if you go towards Lake Malawi) which also has a huge unmet need for potable water. The current plan for next year is to divide the dry season into three rounds of building to simplify the logistics of working in multiple villages and allow the well experts a break in-between each round of building as they usually must sleep in the villages where construction is happening while working.

I would like to thank Run for Africa for their generous support and continued enthusiasm for this project. Anyone who is reading this blog and has found it interesting please think about donating to Run for Africa or competing in one of their events. PADI's plans for next year won't materialize despite good planning and community involvement without money. Run for Africa has promised to continue funding for this project next year if they have enough money. Even 20 bucks, if that is all you can manage, actually will make a difference since each of these wells only cost around 150-200 US dollars (not including in kind contribution from the communities of materials and labor) and donations to Run for Africa are tax deductible. Ok, enough of that. Starting to feel like Sally Struthers. Please do what you can even if it is just spreading the word to other people you know who might be interested in African water projects (www.runforafrica.org) or environmental education and student empowerment in Africa (www.itsmyworld.org). Thanks for reading this blog. I might add some more stuff after this but it will mostly be silly stuff like in the beginning.

Kwa heri for now.

What the actual project is doing

The well project:

The last two weeks have been very busy but I am happy to say that the project is essentially finished and later in this entry I'll review its status. First I would like to describe what I mean by "wells" and in a few weeks I'll add pics to further clarify.

The wells that the Ruvuma Mission to the Poor and Disabled (PADI for short) construct, and which Run for Africa (www.runforafrica.org) has generously funded, are not wells in the traditional sense of the word. The best way I can think of to describe them is hydrobattery. I'm not using the word in a technical sense so please don't google it or anything. I am simply using it descriptively as it is the best mental image for what the wells do which is separate the ground and surface water.

When you dig a traditional well or bore hole you are starting from a point somewhere above the water table and digging/drilling down to the water table. After hitting the water table you continue down to create a large airspace at/below the water table and ideally line it with some substance (rock/cement/PVC tubing, etc) that will prevent the surrounding earth from caving in since earth at the water table is unstable. You leave part of it open to the surrounding earth so that water can seep into the airspace and you either lower a bucket of some sort or place a pump in the "airspace", which is now filled with water, to draw the water out. These types of wells have the advantage of being able to be placed almost anywhere. The only technical limits that I am aware of are bedrock above the water table or a water table that is so deep as to make the option unpractical though technically feasible. The other two main disadvantages I am aware of is price for boreholes which cost 2 grand and up a piece and the intensity and danger of the labor when digging a normal well that you think of when you here the word well. This project did include one borehole at a new secondary (high) school but all other wells built do not follow the above model.

I have previously described the region of Tanzania where we are building as consisting of rolling hills with small mountains interspersed throughout the area. In the low areas between hills there are lots of small streams but no rivers worth mentioning. Within a roughly 2-3 mile radius from the center of town there is piped water (though not into individual houses) that is now treated, a bad but present electrical grid, and a decent road system. People in this area live in an urban African environment. There are lots of small stores, power (sometimes), bars, 1 room restaurants/food stalls, dala dalas (essentially a public transportation system where you are crammed into a minivan with around 20-30 other people for roughly 15 cents), etc. There is more to it than that but it would take another whole entry to really describe so I'll stop there. The water project focuses on the Songea municipal area outside of this radius where there is no power grid; no piped water, no real roads, no dala dalas, and people live in small groups of houses loosely set on village roads and paths and are known as villages in Songea rural and as "streets" in Songea Municipal. Any group of 2-5 houses often are related to each other through marriage or blood and the next group of houses is usually not more than 300 feet away and is often less. Most of these streets run along the top of the hills in the area with people using the low areas near the streams for year round gardening and the produce is either eaten or sold in town which is only a roughly 1-1.5 hour bike ride from the main area of construction. The streams are anywhere from 20 feet below the houses to over 100 feet below. Despite these sometimes steep inclines the vast majority of villagers get their water from "local wells" which are shallow holes (usually 2-3 feet deep) dug next to one of the streams. Water seeps into the hole from the water table (wherever there is surface water such as a stream that means the water table is only a few feet below the ground) and fills the hole. The water is carried in any available container (usually a 20 liter plastic bucket) up the hill on women and children's heads which is a sight to see as they have spectacular balance. Since the source is open and shallow it is a public health disaster. Children can play in it, livestock and wild animals can drink from it and bath in it, people are constantly sticking their hands in it as they scoop water with small cups or buckets, etc. Along with this the water is often muddy as only the initial pass with a bucket is clean and after that the currents formed will briefly stir up the mud and fine clay making the water muddy and undesirable to drink. All of the above is minor compared to when the rains come. Since these wells are all dug in low areas they are the final destination of surface water after it rains. To get a rough idea of what this means, imagine yourself after you've mowed the lawn in the middle of the summer on a dusty day as the ground here. Take a shower. Look behind you at the drain. Now imagine drinking that water that just ran all over your nasty body and carried away all that sweat, grit, and oil. Now toss in human and animal waste, pesticides, fertilizers, and mud. Welcome to a local well during the rainy season. Some of these wells get so bad people just have to stop using them and have to travel even farther for their water. The general average I've gotten from the few people I've asked so far concerning how many times a day they have to get water is 5 so any increase in distance is a severe hardship. All of this leads to lots of GI (gastrointestinal i.e. pooping) infections such as a variety of worms, giardia (amoeba that causes some of the nastiest diarrhea you can imagine along with lots of gas and "sulfur burps"), dysentery (bloody diarrhea that can be deadly), cholera, etc. At best these diseases moderately to severely exacerbate endemic malnutrition levels, especially in vulnerable populations such as children and the elderly, and at worst they can kill through dehydration and, in the case of dysentery, through breaking out of the gut track and causing a massive systemic infection. Malnutrition also weakens the immune system and makes people much more susceptible to other opportunistic infections including the 800 pound gorilla that is malaria. For any SNL fans please cue the debby downer noise as this is obviously a bad situation that is clearly unacceptable. Now comes the obvious question of "what can we do about it" and the answer is actually quite a lot at least concerning infection.

The water project run by PADI focuses on building "local improved wells". What we do is dig a 15-20 foot long trench that is roughly 3-5 feet deep (at the water table) starting from where the original "local well" was. At the lower end of this trench we build a cement retaining wall with 3-4 pipes sticking out of it. At the bottom is the clean out pipe which is a large PVC pipe about, above it about 2 feet off the ground (i.e. high enough to get a bucket under) is 1-2 metal pipes for use, and about a half a foot above that is the overflow. Behind the wall we place rock in a manner that resembles stone henge or the symbol for pi along the length of the trench we dug with a large pile behind the wall. This creates an air space in-between the rocks and thanks to physics a think stream forms in the airspace since water will follow the path of least resistance. Clay is put on top of this and against the back of the retaining wall to prevent surface water from seeping into the well and help protect the retaining wall. The whole thing is then filled in with earth and a shallow trench is dug at the top of the well to redirect contaminated surface water during the rainy season to further protect against seepage. Villagers must agree to no longer farm or build any outhouses above the new well. By the end of August I will have reposted this with pictures so please return if you are confused.

The way the wells work, and the reason I call them hydrobatteries is that the thin underground stream hits the retaining wall and begins to pool behind it. As the water level rises it eventually reaches the level of the middle pipes which are plugged with sticks. People remove the sticks when they wish to use the well and water flows out into their buckets. They then put the sticks back in the pipes and the "well" recharges as the continual flow of the small underground stream again raises the level of water behind the wall back to what it was. Thus the water the people drink is coming ONLY from the groundwater which is free of infectious agents. The entire project costs about $500 dollars but half of that is in kind contribution from the community. On average a well only costs PADI roughly $150-$200 dollars and they last 10-15 years when maintained correctly.

As a final note, it has been argued that the main innovation that put infectious disease on the defense recently in the western world was not the discovery of penicillin, vaccines, or even the germ theory. As important as these things are the main thing that changed the landscape was the advent of basic sanitation. As environments, especially water sources, became clean rates of basically EVERY infectious disease dropped thanks to the elimination of a major vector for infection (dirty water), and resulting better nutrition that comes with not having chronic diarrhea. Again, for anyone interested in donating please go to www.runforafrica.org and donate their as they are planning on continuing this project next year but nothing will happen without funding. Thanks for reading.

oh ya donations =)

One of my college professors brought it to my attention that I should probably put up a link to the NGO that is funding this project for any of you who would like to donate. The NGO is called Run for Africa and you can donate at their site which is www.runforafrica.org

For those of you who are more interested in education and social justice issues another great NGO is It's My World which was started by two fellow Peace Corps volunteers and myself. It's main purpose is to make sure Tanzanian students have access to the natural wonders that all the tourists come here to see like the Serengeti and Kilimanjaro. We fund class trips to Kilimanjaro (we plan on expanding) with the goal being to integrate the experience into the classroom, increase interest in basic sciences, and build self esteem within the students. You can donate at our site which is the following: www.itsmyworld.org

Fear traffic not Ebola

Mpumbavu means fool or idiot in Swahili. It isn't used very often as it is very rude but I met one last week. To be more accurate one drove me home at 11 P.M. along with 4 other current volunteers. To be even more accurate one drove me and four current volunteers off the road at 11 P.M. on Wednesday. We are all fine and it was completely ridiculous so I'm going to rant a bit about it. So first the setting.
The road to where I am currently (an area known as seed farm) is paved the entire way but has a massive hill on it, a couple decent curves, and is lined on both sides by drainage ditches roughly 2.5 to 3 feet deep. In other words it is a very good road and there is NO EXCUSE FOR DRIVING OFF OF IT!! Hell Tanzanians tend to drive in the middle of all roads anyway since there is so little traffic outside of the cities so its not that hard to stay ON THE ROAD. It's not rocket science. You have a gas peddle, a brake, and maybe a clutch- bas (that's it). Stay on the paved area between the two ditches, roughly on the left side, and you are good to go. The problem is that I doubt most taxi drivers actually have licenses, the cars are often in less than optimal condition (I've watched the road go by between my legs once), and it was 11 PM so this idiot may have been drunk.
So as I said there were 5 of us. Since I was here they have put volunteers up in the mountains outside of a small town named Mbinga and put one back at a small school called Namebango along with volunteers near Songea. All of the sites outside of Songea are totally in the middle of no where. The guys up in the mountains outside of Mbinga don't even have cell coverage (this will probably come as a surprise to all non-volunteers reading this but Tanzania actually has pretty decent cell coverage). Their sites are supposed to be gorgeous but with nothing to do so two of them had escaped for a bit to the bustling metropolis that is Songea and then there was Ariel (the guy at my old site), and Matao (mat) who is over at Peramiho. They are all Education volunteers and interesting guys. For RPCVs reading this, one of the mountain crew was a third year with a rocking Grisly Adams beard that I think could go toe to toe with Andy's. For future reference. None these guys are small. Minus Matao they are all around 5'10"+ and of your average athletic build so around 170-180 pounds. Matao was only a little taller than me but probably in the same weight range as he has fairly broad shoulders. For those of you reading this who have never met me I'm fairly hobbit like. I'm a 5'7", pale, and kinda "stumpy" in my overall build. So four of us cram into the back of this taxi with the last guy in the front and its tight. As in clown car tight. As we are going home, all of a 5-10 minute drive, we are all talking and not really paying attention to the road when we get to the top of the main hill. Our driver is flying along as though he is in the indie 500, even going so far as to try and "beat the turn". None of us really paid any attention as this as it is all standard fair here on paved roads since Tanzanians love to drive fast. Just after the top of the hill though we all notice at the same time that this idiot is WAY to close to the edge of the road and his trajectory is not so much going to "beat the turn" and he is coasting. No brake. I'll say that again. No brake despite the fact that anybody can see that we have no chance in hell of coasting around this turn. It's strange what goes through your mind when you're in a bad situation. I remember my sister saying that all she could think of was the black knight from monty python's Search for the Holy Grail in the initial moment she came across a car accident where the driver had lost his arm below the elbow and he was hemorrhaging blood all over the accident site as she tried to get access to him (he lived...go EMT training). My brain all of a sudden became British. I have no idea why as I can't even do a good British accent but that's what happened. I just sat there, stunned, thinking in my bad British accent "Surely he'll use the brake any moment now!" About a half second after the exclamation point my side of the car fell 2-3 feet into the drainage ditch at probably 40+ miles an hour and I thought for a second that we were going to flip. We didn't and for about a quarter of a second I was happy. After that initial moment of bliss when I new I wasn't about to die or get horribly maimed I was repeatedly crushed by roughly 400+ pounds of manflesh as we bounced along half in and half out of the ditch for the next 50 feet (the idiot still hadn't hit the break). Maybe his brakes were shot. I don't know or care as being crushed repeatedly by 400+ pounds of manflesh in roughly about as much fun as it sounds like it is. My ribs basically were turned into a spring for everybody else which hurt and Ariel's elbow (I think) hit me hard enough over the left kidney to bother me the next day. Ariel smashed his face on my shoulder which he was less than happy about and everybody else seemed to escape unscathed. When the car finally stopped thanks to the laws of friction our "driver" literally ran away without turning the car off. This is not as strange as it may sound. In Tanzania, if you hit someone in a car accident and stop to help you will be pulled out of your car and beaten to death on the spot. Peace Corps actually warned us about this in training. So this guy was probably beyond terrified that we were about to kill him and Tanzanians usually rent a car for the night to drive so what was left of the taxi wasn't his anyway. So jackass McGee is nowhere to be seen and 5 extremely angry and slightly paranoid white people are milling around like chickens with their heads cut off outside of a beat up taxi half in a ditch with a tail light hanging behind it like a little car tail. Matao, who doesn't realize that jackass has already run off is politely, but very firmly, requesting in swahili "FUNGUA BOOTI" (open the trunk). I am swearing up a storm mostly in English but with the occasional Mjinga (another word for idiot but not as bad) thrown in. Ariel is swearing up a storm as well screaming about his face. Grisly Adams is just chillin as he has been the whole night and as would be expected of someone who had grown a beard with such presence. The guy in the front was apparently scanning the area for thieves as he thought the guy actually planned this and that we were about to get jumped by people hiding in the bushes. At this point my medical "training" kicks in. The only thing that will make you more paranoid than Peace corps is medical school. You get to study all the various things that can go wrong with your body in excruciating detail for 4 years. The funnest ones are the ones that aren't symptomatic until to late like colan cancer or car accident injuries where you damage some internal organ and its bleeding but you are to hopped up on adrenaline to know it (plus lots of internal organs don't have nervous innervation for typical pain sensation).
Thankfully I was to angry for my brain to get to far. I did a brief "everything working ok?" check, decided I'd check and see if blood came out of anywhere it wasn't supposed to next time I went to the bathroom, and proceeded to start cursing at the darkness (I knew the driver was out there somewhere) and helping the others look for a way to open the trunk since are stuff was in there. The thing is cars from Tanzania all have interesting histories. You never know where they came from as most are refurbished models that are resold here so they come in configurations from all over the world and they have often been "modified" by mechanics here when some part or other breaks and needs to be replaced. So three of us start combing the car while Grisly Adams tried to simply peal back the trunk hood. He actually started making progress and I figured the lock might be busted up, plus I was angry and felt like taking it out on something, so I decided to help him out. Jumping up on the back bumper I proceeded to get a grip on the lip of the trunk and pull up with everything I could muster. It was extremely therapeutic. Ridiculous looking as my face flushed beat red and I made various groaning noises while the trunk didn't budge an inch but none the less therapeutic. Someone finally found the realise and that was that. The whole thing ended completely anticlimatically with us throwing his keys into teh bushes and walking teh rest of the way home in the dark. Ariel and I were a bit sore the next day and I was kinda dizzy that night (must have hit my head harder than I thought) but minus a sore back the next day that is gone now none the worse for wear. Took the next day off anyway just to make sure and since then I've been heading out to take pictures of the wells every day without any trouble. Next entry I'll try to actually try to talk about the wells which are being built even as I write this.

Songea is a beautiful place of rolling hills and occasional small mountains. Just a few miles outside of town the land becomes mostly savanna with thin patches of forest covering the mountains and small villages everywhere. These villages are mostly connected by village paths which are little more than hiking/mountain biking paths that criss cross the hills and are constantly intersecting with each other making a sort of rust colored web. Walking or biking on them is a truly unique experience, especially for a westerner, as these paths at times will literally pass within a foot of people's houses and cut right through people's farms. As a rule of thumb for every ten minutes I bike on one of these paths I greet around 10-15 people as you are constantly passing people sitting in front of their houses cooking, sewing, fixing bikes, drinking, or just gossiping and it's considered a bit rude to pass people, even ones you don't know, without at least saying hello as you fly by on the bike. This is a huge advantage over actually walking as when walking you'll have to refuse coming into eat, have a drink, or food on a fairly regular basis. Just as an example I stopped to speak with a friend of mine from when I was a Peace Corps volunteer and like 6 other people came over. I tossed out one of the two greeting I know in the tribal language here to an old man and he answered me, shook my hand, and said "Please wait here" and wandered off without further explanation. Even the Tanzanian I was biking with at the time had no clue what was going on so we just sort of shrugged and sat there waiting for him to return. After about 5 minutes he came back with two eggs and said "You know tukuoni (the greeting I had said). Please take these." and handed me the eggs. That same day we had to refuse lunch and promise to eat with them another day twice as we were behind schedule on surveying. It isn't a hard and fast rule that you MUST greet everyone you pass or they will hate you or anything but when you are walking within feet of people who are sitting on the doorstep of their house even in the US you would at least have to throw out a head nod, wave, or something so the same rule applies here just a little stronger and you are doing the above every 2-3 minutes if not more often instead of driving by in a car with the house hundreds of feet away and the people who live there inside it watching TV. It's just very different and depending on what mood your in is amazing or very stressful as sometimes your not really all that interested in a cross cultural experience and just want to get your work done for the day or enjoy the beautiful scenery and get lost in your own thoughts as you bike along. Since I haven't been here for almost four years I was thankfully in the mood for a solid cross cultural experience both times I went out with Joseph Mbawala (the well expert we're working with) and it was an amazing experience. It was like Peace Corps light. I already speak the language to a tolerable level, I already know more or less what I'm doing culturally, funding is already secured, and everyone I'm working with at the NGO has already done this twice with me and once with the PCV who replaced me so we are all on the ball and know our roles. All I had to do was cruise along on my bike with Joseph and take "before" pictures of all the sites and occasionally repeat what Joseph had already said concerning the fact that we will only come once with the lorry so it is very important that everything that needs to be moved to the well site be ready on that day and that it be somewhere where the truck can get to it. As you'll find out in a later entry that last requirement is really more pleading than a real request. Wandering around villages is always fun as you never really know what is going to happen but it is far more special in my mind when you can do that within a context. Having actual work to do gives you a reasonable answer when people ask you what you are doing there (out of curiosity not hostility) and automatically gives you a reference point for interacting with people which I love since I'm not very good at "how is the weather" types of conversations. As much fun as the Serengeti safari was I went on when I first got here (we saw a leopard from like 4 feet away and our truck was literally attacked by a heartabeast both of which are unheard of events) I think this was more fun.

Coming home isn't always all that much fun

Today I was going to write about biking around the villages and surveying all the proposed well sites. It was a good time but it has to wait. A few of my friends from the HIV drama group I worked with when I used to live here tracked me down last night. It was Agesh and Eric. When I first lived here I used to do HIV work with the drama group 3 days a week for about 2 hours each meeting and most of the Swahili I learned was thanks to that group (which is why I know so many dirty words in the language =) ). I was really excited to see them as I had planned on going down to where they used to hang out today anyway to say hello and find out how everyone is doing. The answer turned out to be not so well. Three people from the group I knew, one of them being someone I would call a friend, have died since I left from HIV. Another one I was pretty close with before I left I haven't seen yet as she is in Njombe right now but I've heard she is kinda sick which means I'll probably get more bad news in the next two years if not this year and two more I knew reasonably well are also getting sick off and on. None of them is much past 35 and most are probably closer to 30 than 35. I didn't sleep well at all last night thinking about all of it. Reading about high risk groups, infection rates, and death rates turns out to be way different from excitedly asking what your friend is up to and hearing "Amefariki" (he/she died) or "Anaumwa kidogo siku hizi" (he/she is a bit sick these days). I'm glad I know now but....it is an experience I could have done without. It was kinda like getting punched inthe stomach over and over. I did go down today to see the ones who are still living in Songea (some have moved to Njombe and Dar) which was fun. Everyone was really excited to see me and they are still trying to do HIV education though the group has splintered into two or three thanks to some internal drama I haven't sorted out yet and some embezzling I think. It was great seeing all of them and I'm sure I'll head over there again but it still hurts knowing what's happening. I guess that's all I have to say today.

getting a bike

As I said before on this blog things rarely happen quickly in Tanzania. One of the first things I did on getting to Songea was trying to arrange to get a bike off one of the current volunteers. The NGO I'm working with has an extra mountain bike but the local ones are all Chinese and not very strong whereas all the PCV bikes are treks from SA with front shocks and everything. Songea is very hilly and most of the village paths are steep, narrow, eroded, and covered in sand traps all of which makes for some really sweet biking but not on a bad bike. My original plan was to use the bike of the current PCV at my old site at least for the week since he was planning on going to the coast on Wednesday. As I said in a previous entry his plans changed as he had to do some correcting but he said there was a brand new trek in Peramiho (a nearby mission) at a PCV storage site that I could use. A few hours after he told me this I saw him in the internet cafe and he said the new bike wasn't going to happen as he didn't know where the storage place was and the PCV that did wasn't around. Another PCV was with us whose site is at Namabengo (about 20 miles outside of town) piped in at this point and said I could use his bike as he never did. So he gave me his key, the name of the person at his site to give it to, a rough map of how to get to his place from the dala dala stop, and wished me luck. After this the three of us met up with a Tanzanian who is a good friend of mine and Ariel's (the current PCV at my old site) named Maulaga at a bar. Ariel and I (the other PCV doesn't drink) proceeded to spend the rest of the night drinking to much by accident. One of the Tanzanian doctors kept buying rounds before we could say anything and I ended up 4 hours later asleep on Ariel's floor.
The next day I obviously did not greet the day with a smile on my face and a song on my lips. The ride out to Josh's site made me glad I had a window seat because my stomach was not a fan of the rough "road", I use the term loosely here, or the constant swerving of the dala dala as the driver tried to stay on the best parts of the "road". I got to Josh's house without much trouble after that only to find that the bike was a mess. It only had one gear combination that didn't skip, the breaks had seen better days, and most importantly the seat was really loose. I also couldn't find any of the tools I needed to fix it in Josh's house. "Well at least it won't swerve on me" I thought as I started out for Ariel's house where I figured I could get it fixed as Ariel knows a lot about bikes. Oh yes something else I forgot to mention about the road. It's Kali (harsh). There basically isn't a flat part on it. It consists of going up steep, long, eroded hills and then going back down them only to go up another one. You also get to play chicken with massive trucks and buses as it is completely covered with massive ruts and sand traps (it's basically a wide village path) so you kind of have to guess what section of the road the driver thinks is best and then get the hell off it before he gets near you. I got pretty good at it by the time I got back into town but the first couple passes got my heart going as I hadn't figured out the rules yet. Oh yes, and then there was the seat. Since the seat was loose, whenever I sat on it for more than 2 minutes the back of it would slowly slide down angling the front of it up and I would slowly begin to slide backward off of it (especially when going up hills). Along with making me look like a reject from a silent movie this is a less than comfortable position for men to ride bikes in. This meant that every few hundred feet i had to get off the seat and wail on it as hard as I could until it would flatten out again. Repeat for 20 miles.
After about three hours I managed to get to Ariel's place and he tightened up the seat, fixed most of the gears, and got the bike in reasonable working order. I spent the next two days putting the bike through it's paces on village paths looking at proposed well sites. More on that next time.