From Davis: Reflecting on an Absorbing Experience

 Last summer Terri Harris had the privilege of going to East Africa with the Global Women’s Water Initiative. At the Making a Difference panel, she shared with the audience the three greatest things she learned during this experience: the technologies, working in the field and building relationships.

"The Technologies--When I first found out about this project, what most attracted me to it was the opportunity to get hands-on experience with Rainwater Harvesting Tanks.  I think that rainwater harvesting is very important -- anywhere!  I think we should be doing it here in the States. I think we should do it everywhere possible, because not only is it a good way to get water (without the heavy metals of groundwater) but it also mitigates some of the environmental damage we cause with all our impermeable surfaces.

I was excited to get my hands on the technology and hoped to get a better understanding of what it takes to do rainwater harvesting.  I could not have asked for a better teacher than the one I had at the training -- Mildred Mkandla.  Mildred is 65 years old and she likes to say she is “retired but not tired.”  No kidding.  That woman can mix cement better and longer than anyone I know and that takes some real physical strength!

During the advanced training, several of us went with Mildred to prep the site where we would be building a tank the following week with the grass roots organizers from various villages in East Africa.  When we arrived, the materials Mildred expected us to work with were not there.  Mildred wanted to teach us about rainwater harvesting, and she was not about to let the lack of materials stand in her way.  She looked around the schoolyard, which had some materials there in preparation for the projects that would be built the next week.  There were also some materials that had always been in the schoolyard.  She threw some boulders and rocks onto a hilly slope in the schoolyard, added a bit of cement and an old gutter, put a bucket at the end of it and we had a small rainwater catchment system.  Next, we went to an area near the “kitchen,” an outdoor area with a roof over it where students cooked using wood.  There was a large pile of scrap wood, logs and boards (some with nails in them).  We cleared an area about 6’ x 6’.  

We dug holes and erected 4 poles, then placed poles across those to create a slanted area, which we covered with thatching, the same kind of thatching that many people in that part of Africa use on their roofs.  We covered the thatching with plastic and placed an old gutter along the bottom of it, put a bucket under the lower end of the gutter and thereby made another rainwater catchment system.  In just a couple of hours we had erected two rainwater catchment systems.  They were small, but it gave us the general idea. 

Mildred was so devoted to the notion that not one drop of rainwater should escape to the ground without being used that she even said, half joking, that we could be a rainwater catchment ourselves, wearing a hat in the rain and tipping it forward so water could run off of our caps and into a bucket.  I say “half joking” because Mildred is very passionate about how precious water is in that area of the world and gets tears in her eyes when she talks about how difficult life is when there is no easy access to water.  She began carrying water when she was 4 years old and dreams of the day when women in her village won’t have to continue carrying water from far away sources.  Mildred’s passion and devotion to this issue are inspiring.

I learned that the most important ingredients to making rainwater catchment systems are imagination and determination.

Working in the Field--I went to Katosi, a small fishing village in Uganda, to help construct Bio Sand Filters.  These required several different types of stones and sand for the water to run through.  We figured out exactly how much of each size of stone and sand we needed, and what our budget would allow us to buy of these.  When we arrived at the source for these, we found ourselves standing in front of a big pile of rocks of many sizes.  All our work to carefully determine how much of each thing and what we could spend on it was not very useful.  We had to guess how much that pile of rocks would yield for each of the sizes and types of rock and sand we wanted.  We loaded almost a ton of that material into  and onto the van we had rented to pick up the materials.  During the training in Katosi, we used various sizes of screens to sift the rocks and make piles of the various sizes and types of rocks and sand we needed.  Fortunately, our guess was correct and we had enough of each material to build 3 Bio Sand Filters.

When I arrived in Kisumu, Kenya, I discovered that the village there had a large pile of muram, which is a topsoil common in that part of Africa.  We were using the muram to make bricks for our rainwater catchment tank.  The muram that the village had was not the right consistency for our bricks.  We went to the market and negotiated with some people there to get a better quality of muram for our work.  We then went out to a muram mine and picked up the material we needed.

I learned that when working in a developing country, it is better to expect that things will not be the way they have been planned.  Again, as with Mildred, I learned that imagination and determination are key ingredients to getting projects done.

Relationships--I left East Africa late in August of 2011.  Since then, I have spoken nearly every Saturday morning with my partner in Kenya, Rose Wamalwa.  She and I are working with three communities.  Two of them are near Kisumu, Kenya, where Rose lives and one is in Tanzania.  We have gotten to know one another well in all this time and often share stories of her children and/or my grandchildren.  Each week we discuss what is happening for our teams and what strategies might be helpful for them.  We look at obstacles to the projects that each team faces and do our best to figure out how to support them. This has been an incredible learning experience for both of us, as we learn how to listen carefully to our teams and what they want and need instead of simply instructing them as to how or what they should do.  And we have experienced success!  All three communities have built a rainwater catchment tank and one of them has built two more, for a total of 5 tanks that have been built with our support.

This is, perhaps, one of the most precious aspects of the work I do with the Global Women’s Water Initiative.  There are a couple of reasons why this is important to me.  One is that Rose and I are developing a relationship based on friendship and trust, as peers working together on the project.  I have years of community organizing experience that are valuable to Rose and the communities we work with.  Rose has years of working on water issues in Kenya and she teaches me every week about things unique to doing projects in that part of the world.  I believe that relationships are one of the ingredients to truly sustainable work...work that can last and be replicated on the ground.

There are many stories and many experiences I could share about my summer in East Africa in 2011.  Upon reflection, I would have to say that there were three particular learnings that I will carry with me always:

1.   I now have a sense of how to use imagination and determination to make rainwater harvesting technologies available to many people in a wide variety of circumstances.

2.   I now have a sense of how to use imagination and determination to overcome material obstacles that are almost inevitable when doing work in disadvantaged communities.

3.  I now have an ongoing relationship with Rose Wamalwa.  This is a relationship of peers that I have only dreamed of being able to cultivate in this work, and a treasure to last a lifetime.

I look forward to continuing this work and know that I am only at the beginning of the learnings available to me and the opportunities to support people in obtaining something I take for granted -- easy access to clean water!"

Terri Harris, Community and Regional Development graduate student