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