Nicaragua January 2012

This was my first trip with a different NGO www.livingwater.org .    It was rewarding to get back to a developing country to help make lives better.    I had never seen an active volcano before, but there are several with one smoking continually while we were there.

Poverty in Nicaragua did not seem as severe as in Africa and Asia, but life could certainly be better with safe drinking water.   Living Water has a different approach that appears to have helped them weather the recession.  Their WASH trips are more for people who want that first time missions trip.   The indigenous drilling crew was quite experienced and in fact was telling us what to do and how to do it.  Accordingly, we had some college students with great hearts and a fun spirit.

 The drill crew knew almost exactly where they

would hit water.    I had been trained to bail water out of the well by hand until it cleans up.  This crew was so well equipped that they had an air compressor to blow the drilling mud out of the hole.   Needless to say, those with a younger mindset than me, had a great time playing in the water.

Some great relationships were developed.  It was a great time and a worthwhile cause, but I hadn't added any expertise. 

a pause

I stopped posting to my blog after the 2010 trip for two reasons:   spam messages were coming in almost daily with anonymous comments that appeared to be in Asian characters that I couldn't read.  Also, the recession had dried up project funding,  with a result of no trips in 2011. Feeling like a benched player who had so much to offer, I started networking and found other NGO's willing to put me back on the playing field. 

It is March 2014 and suddenly the spams have largely stopped and constructive comments are coming in, so I decided to catch up by reporting on  three trips each in 2012 &  2013 from oldest to newest.   It may take a  a few months to get to trip14.   As of 3/17/14 all but two trips have been posted.   It never occurred to me when I got involved in WASH Education that I would feel so called to so many volunteer trips. My hope is to do this for another ten years, so this could turn into a very lengthy blog. 

For the last few years, I have been speaking to classes in the Denver Public School system about the WASH crisis.   The talk usually starts with a very short video clip showing a toddler dipping a water bottle into a sewer and drinking it as he stares intently into the camera.  After pointing out that the water isn't just muddy,  I have their attention!  

Hosanna Project - Great news!

Initiated in February 2007, the Hosanna Project targeted ten rural communities (kebeles), with a total population of 55,800. Four Lifewater teams trained indigenous trainers who trained community leaders. According to government surveys, the independent baseline sur­vey, and the final project evaluation, the Hosanna Project boosted latrine coverage in the project area from 60.9 percent to 97.2 percent. Not reflected in these numbers is the significant improve­ments made in 5,390 old latrines, many of which had been count­ed in the baseline survey but were deemed inadequate. The local government health offices responsible for monitor­ing public health reported that acute watery diarrhea, which had been the number two health risk to children dropped completely out of the top ten. In one survey conducted at the project’s conclusion, only 16 of 396 families with children under five years old had an incidence of diarrhea in the past two weeks (4 percent). In the baseline survey, the number was 63 (43 percent). For more details go to www.Lifewater.org

March , 2010/ Lifewater trip #8/ SE Asia

While looking out the window of our turboprop in the Bangkok airport, I remember thinking: “I hope that bald tire doesn’t blow.” It was beyond bald; the core was showing. And, when our ride from the airport quit running half way to our final destination, memories of my first trip to Uganda came back. We had stopped about 7 times in the middle of Uganda to refill the radiator until it wouldn’t hold anything. This time the truck quit right across the street from a mechanic. He spent something under an hour fixing it -- just good enough to get us about 5 miles out of town. But, with God on our side, we found humor in our situations. Some locals who were watching us trying to push start the truck and laughing about it, came over and laughed with us a while before telling us of a (better) mechanic a few miles ahead.

Our training partner is required to operate as a for profit business, so we had to conduct this sanitation training in a way that complies with the country’s rules. Do you know how many engineers it takes to design & build a latrine? We didn’t either, so there were four of us on this trip. We even had a retired judge as part of our team to act as mediator. We ended up building (you got it) four different latrines at a village with a school of about 140 children and no functional latrines. All of our Asian students had at least a high school education, and an Australian, who will be working with them, has a degree in a related field of engineering. We told our students we wanted them to have a tool box full of options to fit different situations. About the time we were finished with construction, we took the students to lunch at the river. The restaurant apparently didn’t have enough food, so the hostess plopped a line over the side and had a good sized fish within seconds. I wouldn’t wash my hands with that water, so no telling what trace minerals that fish added to my diet. With the temperature over 100 and humidity close to that, a couple of them jumped in for a quick swim.
The people were amazingly friendly. It is absolutely fantastic to see the economic progress the country has made and why it is becoming a popular ecotourism destination. Our partner cannot simply provide subsidized sanitation as in Africa, so we suggested that they consider Jesus’ teaching of a person who build his house on a solid foundation (Matt 7:24-27). The analogy is that, while WASH (WAter, Sanitation & Hygiene) will not make you rich, you cannot be prosperous without the good health and other benefits of WASH. As with all the prior trips, this was an incredibly gratifying experience. You are missing a life changing experience filled with wonderful memories if you haven’t helped people in a developing country.

Sept 09 Cholera / advanced sanitation Zambia

You haven’t lived until you experience the joy & gratification of helping others in a developing country. It only became clear to me just prior to this trip that cholera is a pervasive problem in Africa. It’s hard to get donors and foundations excited about projects with goals of constructing latrines, but cholera and other diseases can be eliminated with effective sanitation practices. The UN has designated 2009 as the international year of sanitation, yet there’s very little funding for sanitation projects. Even the indigenous people we help while training our students don’t realize that sanitation practices reduce mortality rate more significantly than providing them safe drinking water. It’s not very glamorous, but somebody’s got to do it.

For the last two weeks of Sept 09, three Lifewater volunteers went with me to Ndola, Zambia to teach advanced sanitation training. Our primary goal was to teach students how to construct latrines in waterlogged areas so that they wouldn’t over flow, collapse or otherwise fail during the rainy season. It became very clear on our first day there that there were a multitude of problems. The solutions were often simple, but most Zambians (or even schools for that matter) don’t have enough money to correct the problems. One solution seemed intuitive yet we had to point it out: construct the latrines on high ground (or build a mound to make high ground) rather than construct in low lying areas. We suggested eleven solutions to the latrine failures like composting, larger overlap of slabs over the pits and roofs.

We constructed demo latrines at a new school that had no latrines for the students or teachers. Lifewater provides development training rather than relief, so we required the school to provide community support. Local women helped us dig the pits and construct one of the slabs for the latrines, but the local men refused to help even when asked.

Memorial Day'09 - Training the Trainers.

It was a privilege of helping to train more Lifewater sanitation trainers. Even better - three of them will going to Zambia with me to help solve the problem of cholera outbreaks after flooding overflows their latrines.

Back to Ethiopia

13 Months of SunshineFour of us spent two weeks in Hosanna, Ethiopia teaching sanitation. The Ethiopian calendar actually has 13 months and their new Millennium began Sept 11, 2007. Even their clock is different with the day beginning at 6 am so that 1 pm would be 7 hours. Their rainy season was supposed to be winding down, but it rained hard all but the last 3 days day of the 3 weeks that we were there. Addis Ababa is above 8000 feet and Hosanna is only slightly lower, so we were wearing jackets most of the time. Pneumonia is a common problem there and it was easy to see why with many people walking barefoot or nearly so in cold, pouring rain.

The first week we taught sanitation promotion to 10 school directors (principals) of basic schools that ranged from 1000 to 1500 children and 10 sanitation promoters hired by the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY). They each represented communities of 500 to 800 people. Sanitation promotion may not sound important, but it was the most critical training since many people have never even seen or used a latrine. One rainy day, we traveled 2 hours to one of the schools to practice sanitation promotion with a target group of fathers. It is hard to convince people that their health depends on good sanitation. The fact that improved health will cost them less money and allow them to produce more income is a more convincing reason to them to practice sanitation. We learned that the project was a partnership between EECMY, Lifewater International, and USAID. The goal is for EEMCY to assure that 10 latrines are constructed in each school and one in each of 10 communities. If you do the math, the project should directly improve the lives of something on the order of 19,000 people.
The second week, we taught actual latrine construction to the 10 promoters and 10 community leaders. We discovered that they didn’t realize that maggots weren’t innocent white worms when we discussed how a latrine could control flies and odors. We constructed a VIP (Ventilated Improved Pit) latrine structure from locally available materials (structure from Eucalyptus & mud) and had them participate in construction of a portable, cement slab.

The students seemed to grasp the statement that I had heard: safe WAter reduces mortality rates by about 17%, Sanitation reduces it by about 35%, and Hygiene reduces it by something like 25% but the combination of the three (WASH) reduces mortality by about 65%. EECMY repeatedly points to its holistic ministry (promoting good health along with evangelizing), so they were quick to embrace the need for WASH instead of just safe drinking WAter.
Ethiopia may sound like a hopeless place with its over-population, famine, and poverty problems, but actually we were very surprised to see very positive signs of development since I was there 2 years ago (new roads, new buildings, and improved infrastructure). We were asked by the urban planning commission of “Hosanna town” to discuss sanitation with them. They mentioned a high death rate among children and the problems you would expect for a town of 77,000 people with no public latrines. We made some recommendations that included a promotion campaign followed by constructing public demonstration latrines in high traffic places like the bus station. They should require what amounts to 1 cent to use them, so someone could be paid to keep them clean. This is a picture in the heart of town.

One weekend we visited the Ajora falls which according to their register hadn't been visited for a month -- Ethiopia has great tourist potential. Two rivers come together here and fall over 900 feet.