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.