Together We Cried

Her tears of gratitude overflowed from the bed she had not moved from in 2 months.  She was joined by her 10 year old son, Namaste, and her aging mother.  Together, we cried.

Gladys and I met Namaste on a walk to clear our heads after delivering a day of energetic and challenging training for nine Ethiopian Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Trainers.  We have been exploring the town of Shashemene, one half an hour walk at a time, right before the sun disappears.  Today we chose a new direction and walked towards the busy part of town.  As we walked we introduced ourselves to a young boy carrying a small pot and lid carefully wrapped in a plastic bag.

Between our small amount of Amharic and his small amount of English we found out some information from Namaste, such as his age, his grade and that he was going to buy food for his mother.  He told us that his dad died.   He told us he is sad and that his mother is sad.  We were drawn to this little boy with his quiet voice and his calm presence.  We stayed with him rather than continue our walk.  We all patiently waited at the restaurant for the food to fill the pot. 

As we walked back the way we came he grabbed hold of Gladys’ hand tightly and kept saying ‘house, mother’. So we followed him through a small gate along a tiny uneven pathway past his neighbors’ houses.  All the neighbors came to meet us and he introduced us to his mother, who did not rise from her bed. 

One neighbor spoke English and told us that Namaste's mother had fallen sick, there was something wrong with her leg and she had not moved from the bed in 2 months.  She had been at the hospital, but they ran out of money and she returned home.  He asked us to pray.

As a most eloquent Christian woman from Zambia, Gladys bowed her head and led us all in prayer for the healing of this woman. We prayed together in this tiny dark room holding a bed, a bench and fireplace.  Emotion whelmed all of us and our eyes became moist. 

Namaste walked the 45 steps back to our hotel with us.  We said goodnight and then went in to have our supper.  Our supper was plentiful to say the least and we were left with half a dozen buns and a pile of roast lamb - ‘enough to feed a family’ were our exact words.  So we decided to do just that.  We wrapped up the food and walked the 45 steps back to Namaste’s home.  

The gift was met with overwhelming thanks and gratitude for a seemingly small act of kindness. We sat in the second-hand glow of next door’s light bulb - mother, son, grandmother, Gladys and I.  Together  we  cried.

A Video is Worth 10000000000 Words

Although my writing and a few pictures can bring some of my experiences to life, a video is WAY better.

I want to share this video that I shot on my last trip to Zambia and thankfully had a professional video editor volunteer to edit it!  This video was shown at CAWST's 2012 Lift Off event in September.

You may recall my posts about developing a community health promotion program (you can dig back to March 8, 2011 - not really a lot of digging, I haven't posted too many blogs).  The story you are about to watch is about the chain effect of the work I do.   The surprise of it all of for me was that I actually didn't know who I was going to interview before going to the community. It turned out that I already knew the women! The women I interviewed were the participants in the pilot of the community health promotion program SHIP and CAWST co-developed in September 2010.

Enjoy!

Taryn

PS.  Heading off to Ethiopia for the month of November. You'll be hearing from me again shortly!

Heck while you are at it! Watch the next one too! This is probably one of the best videos that Olivier (Director Communications) and I (communications moonlighter) have ever done!

Fill her up with $2.50 of gas!

I had a wonderful conversation with my new taxi driver friend Diamond last night.  I thought I would share it as a mere glimpse into another culture (this post has nothing to do with water).  This isn’t the first time I have come across this practice but it’s the first time I have ever had such a thorough explanation.

Since this post is about a glimpse of another culture. I think I should start by setting the scene of Ndola, Zambia just a bit.  It is a thriving city. It is still quite small and relatively quiet, but there is an obvious middle class sprouting up. In the past year, they got a pick n pay (grocery store, they already had 2 but none so nice), a subway, a nandos chicken, debonairs pizza etc. in a brand new shopping complex.  There is currently a new building going up in the downtown area very modern with all glass. There are even some roads that are newly paved and smooth as can be.
 Now that I have set this lovely scene of urbanization don’t get carried away or anything.  There are still sellers lining the main streets with vegetables, live chickens, and used clothing.  There are buildings with paint peeling, cars puffing out black smoke, and potholes that would eat your car on most streets.  There are thousands of homes without electricity, sanitation or water (okay I just couldn’t help myself).

Back to my new friend Diamond, sporting the ever so popular acronym of YMCMB (a friend on facebook tells me this stands for Young Man Cash Money Billionaire – I asked Zambian men wearing the acronym but they didn’t know or just made up something).  I hop in the car, start a little chat, ask if he likes drinking (a safe thing to ask before getting in anyone’s taxi at night – I don’t usually go anywhere after dark but I just got off a bus from Lusaka) and we set off.  As an aside, Zambia has started to severely crack down on drunk driving which is awesome!  We went 100 meters in the direction of home and he pulls off to fill up with gas. Fill up wouldn’t actually be the phrase I would use in this instance.  He put a whole $2.50 of gas in the tank – which he tells me will take him approximately 17-19 km as he resets his odometer.

You might be thinking why so little? And then you might jump to the conclusion that he just can’t afford more.  Well that’s not true, although he might not be able to fill it all the way to the top in one go, he can certainly afford a little more than $2.50!

The answer that he gave me was that it is for theft prevention.  If anyone is to steal his car (the thieves mostly come from Congo and from Lusaka – capital of Zambia), they can only go up to 19 km before they have to stop and get more gas.  And he has every number of every gas station within 25 km.
Lots of love from the land of frequented gas stations,
Taryn

PS.  We finished making our new hand pump repair workshop last week and started piloting it this week.  Stay tuned for a story on that experience and some of the amazing people I work with!

Let there be water (again)!

It's been at least 6 months since this handpump in Twapia, Ndola, Zambia has produced any water...

The SHIP trainers and myself were on our way to help in our mission to learn all about hand pump repair.  A sight to see, since we were mostly women come to fix a hand pump!

We had a few observers join us.

One in particular is the Chairman of the community and said he wanted to learn to do this too! So I gave him my gloves and hard hat.

Soon, some of the women from the community got involved making sure that the pump area was clean and that the soak pit (the place where extra water runs off into a big pit of rocks so as not to create standing pools of water) was clear of rubbish and debris.

The children will no longer have to go to a further borehole to collect water

And let there be water!!!!!! 

Why should they have to wait 6 months??? Some might answer because there are only 3 guys at Seeds of Hope that are repairing hand pumps and therefore you wait your turn.  I would answer that they shouldn't have to wait, they can learn to do it themselves! And that is exactly what I am doing here.  Next week is hand pump program development week, where I will work with my awesome team seen here to create a hand pump repair workshop for community members.  Stay tuned!

Lots of love from the red earth of Zambia.

Taryn

Repairing Zambian Hand Pumps

And she’s off again! Last you heard from me I was in Nepal… I never got around to a final blog closing up my journey to Nepal, and didn’t even tell you about Cambodia (I was there for a week to co-facilitate a learning exchange with CAWST’s WET Centres from around the world – it was pretty spectacular.  You can catch the excitement and inspiration by watching this video I put together) and now I am about to land in beautiful Zambia.  It’s been a few fairly busy months and by busy I mean AWESOME!

http://sohip.org/water/ - not my photo because I haven't got there yet... 

• What now? HAND PUMP REPAIR! 
• Why hand pump repair? It is estimated that at any given time 1/3 of all hand pumps in Africa are broken.  Think of the neighbors on either side of your house – one of you will not have any water. You did at one point, but now your tap is broken and nobody knows how to fix it.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could just call up one of those neighbors to fix it or better yet fix it yourself?  This is the state for WAY too many communities and is endemic to most drilling projects (33% percent failure seems like a lot don’t you think?) .  Drilling a well and putting in a pump is not a silver bullet. So next time you get asked to give to a program that is drilling wells, I challenge you to look at the full program – if they don’t have adequate local training in place you might want to think about putting your money into a more sustainable project that is going to give someone more water for your dollars – or better yet fund the knowledge and skills for them to get their own clean water! (How about CAWST?! – shameless, I know, and you might get more of it in the coming months as we go into a big fundraising push).
• What am I doing? For the next 3 weeks I will be with SOHIP (Seeds of Hope International Partnerships) working with their trainers and pump repair team.  Together we will re-develop their hand pump repair program to make it more effective and longer lasting. It’s going to busy and it’s going to be intense and it’s going to be wonderful.  Hopefully I will find a little bit of time to keep you updated with some of the fun from the field and get some pictures up!

Lots of love from the Johannesburg airport!
Taryn

The Children of Nepal

He is 24 years old. His wife is 20. His first child is just past the age of 2.  He lives in a 3 story house. The first floor is where the cow lives, the second floor is a bedroom where the big brother lives, the third floor landing is the kitchen, and the third floor bedroom sleeps 3. The bedroom is stuffed with a bed, piled up bins which I am guessing hold household treasures, a couch, a small television and probably 200 flies.

This is the family whose latrine I was helping to build. Not that I can say I helped a whole lot, every time I tried to do something someone would jump up and do it.  So between trying to be helpful, taking pictures, asking questions and documenting the process I got to know the family and a few special members of the community.  Families here are large and close.  I got to meet many of them during that day. Mom, who had a particular liking to my nose and then tried to pressure me into indulging in some afternoon local spirits… Grandpa, an ancient and quiet man just checking in to make sure everything was being done right.  The 26 year old brother, who is part of the army, has a wife and two kids (this was particularly interesting as I reflected on the differences between us at the exact same age).  Best of all though I got to meet all the local children. 

Sometimes with the work that I do I get wrapped up in the technical parts, the institutions I am working with and the educated people that I am collaborating with. On this day however, I got to step down, step back and play with the people we are really doing this work for – the next generation. When talking to people in workshops, presentations, airplanes or restaurants about what I do, I talk about children and the effects of poor water and sanitation on their health.

Here are a few of the facts:

• Unsafe water affects children’s ability to absorb nutrients which does not allow them to develop into healthy adults.
• Every single day 4500 children die because they don’t have access to safe water.

I sometimes say these things without conscious connection to those children and you probably hear them without conscious connection.  So lets connect.

Meet some of the beautiful children of Nepal. They want to practice their English and hear stories about where you live, they want to see pictures of themselves, they want to do exactly what dad does, they want to squish mud through their toes and then put it into buckets for no apparent reason, they want to dig holes and move dirt into piles, they want to pick flowers, they want to ride bikes and they want to chase cats.  They were exactly as you were as a child, they are exactly as your children are and like every child in the world they should have a bright and healthy future.

PS. Sorry if there are too many pictures, I just couldn't choose!

Namaste

Taryn

Giving Back to Nature What Nature Gave to You

If you could save money, increase crop yields, and do something positive for the environment by using one technology, would you?  Well, a lot of people in Nepal said they will and are doing exactly that. Its called ecological sanitation (ecosan) and that is why I am here.

I am here to build a new workshop for CAWST on ecosan, an area that has been garnering more interest in the last few years from the WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) sector. It will be a 4-5 day workshop teaching people how to implement ecosan projects. It will take lots of research, creativity and hundreds of hours of writing, reviewing and piloting.  The workshop will then be shared in countries around the world. 

Before,going any further let me get you up to speed.

Urine Diverson Pan (this is for squatting, you can make  seated ones too)

Quick Ecosan Tutorial

• Ecological sanitation is taking urine and feces and using it as a resource rather than waste.
• Urine and feces contain Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium (NPK – the same 3 nutrients you find in fertilizer).
• Urine is a particularly rich source of Nitrogen and Phosphorous for plants (the world’s phosphorous reserves are quickly being depleted and some believe that it could be depleted in the next 50-100 years or so).
• One of the most popular ecosan technologies is called urine diversion – the toilet is set up so that urine is separated from the feces.  Urine is used directly as fertilizer on the plants and feces is composted into soil and then applied as a soil conditioner.
• Urine is sterile which is why it can be used right away and not affect your health in any way.

So far, the experience of creating this workshop has been amazing. I have had the opportunity to do and see incredible things. I have been out to a place called Gundu, where a project has been recently completed and I interviewed families who are using ecosan technologies.

He uses a biogas digester - you put human and animal waste in and  it generates liquid fertilizer and gas

I have been out to a place called Sidhipur to a farm where they have been using ecosanitation for 7 years and do experiments showing the superiority of urine to traditional fertilizer.

Planted at the same time - plant on the left fertilized with urea (chemicals)  plant on the right fertilized with urine

These are pumpkin plants, you guess which one was fertilized by urine.

I am spending this week building a latrine with a family from the ground up. 

But probably my favourite part of all this is when I got to meet the father of ecosan in Nepal. It was an impromptu stop and he was very generous to take the time to see me.  I walked into the office to find a joyful man in a jaunty hat.

He is often credited as the man who brought ecosanitation to Nepal, but he quickly points out that ecosan has been in Nepal for generations. He attended a conference in 2000 where they talked about ecosan, since then he has been applying urine to his rooftop pot garden with incredible results. He only wants it to become more widespread.

He is one of those people you could sit and listen to for hours and hours not wanting to interrupt him. His passion for ecosan is fathoms deep. His enthusiasm is infectious and his fervent belief that ecosanitation can transform the people is astounding.  I wish I could bundle him up and share him around the world to spread the word of ecovalue (giving back to nature what nature gave to you). However, in lieu, I shall endeavor to capture his learnings and his passion and incorporate it into my workshop.

Anyone gardening this summer???  You could get 4x yield on your tomatoes.

With love,

Taryn

Dream Big, Do Big, Start Somewhere!

Namaste.  Welcome to Nepal! (Pretty stunning huh?)

‘Dream big and do big'.  Last night I heard these words uttered by a mother to her two children (I am guessing boy age 11, girl age 14) and husband, eating their first dinner in Nepal. They were talking about it in the context of traveling but I think this simple sentence reaches beyond the confines of seeing new places and eating new foods. It reaches down into the heart of everyone of us and challenges us to make a difference in our world. This one sentence is especially poignant seeing as today is World Water Day. 

Last year I spent world water day at the festive celebrations in Lusaka, Zambia (You can read the post below... yes, the last time I posted on this blog was one year ago).  This year I spent it at an all day symposium in Kathmandu.  I’ll be honest, this morning I woke up and was prepared for a bit of a snooze fest (powerpoints and lectures while battling a 12 hour time change just didn’t sound like a recipe for excitement).  I was wrong.  No, it wasn’t particularly energetic, with singers, dancers, booths and a parade like last year, but it was inspiring.  I sat in a room amongst some of the most brilliant minds in Nepal as they shared the latest findings on groundwater research and the imminent water shortage facing the Kathmandu valley.  I won’t bore you with all the details so to sum it up it looks something like this. 

•  Over 50% of the water used in Kathmandu valley is groundwater.
•  Due to urbanization only about 6.5% of rain makes it back into the ground to recharge the aquifers.
• Currently the 2.5 million people in Kathmandu valley are depleting the aquifers faster than they are recharging.  There is a deficit of 213 million litres of water per day.
• The ground water is contaminated, they have traced much of this contamination back to poor sewerage.

This storyline is not unique to the Kathmandu valley.  This is a story being told all over the world.  So what exactly was inspiring about all this???  The overwhelming resolve that there are solutions – forced groundwater recharge, stronger government regulations on groundwater extraction, coordination amongst stakeholders, improved sanitation, etc. Not one person got up there, showed all these very scary facts and then said ‘well that’s our sad story, it’s a massive and complex problem so hoard your water and enjoy it while it lasts’. No, they had ideas to make changes and one professor put it perfectly “We have to start somewhere”.

‘Dream big and do big’ might be a bit daunting for some people, how can you possibly make a difference in this world, especially when some of the issues we face are as complicated and daunting as access to clean water for all people. I say you can make a difference and so do the 70 other Nepalis I sat with today. All you have to do is start somewhere.What's your big dream?

Happy World Water Day!

If your reading this from Calgary and want a dose of inspiration from little people (school groups) making big differences go to CAWST’s WorldWater Day Celebration at Bankers Hall 4:30 – 7:00pm.

With love,

Taryn