Caleb's Zamblog: The Well Restoration Project

When I tell Zambians that everyone in America has indoor plumbing, they can’t contain their astonishment. A Zambian woman (men are exempt from this labor) spends hours every day fetching water, and that water still might not be safe to drink. After telling them this, they tell me “in America there are no problems.” I follow this up by saying “Well…. we have obesity and people drive their cars too much.” At which point they are completely flabbergasted and silently add being ungrateful to their list of problems that Americans have.
My Peace Corps program's goals are to teach about small business and agriculture, but I do projects in community water sanitation because I believe you can have a larger effect on communities. One clean well in a village can keep people from being sick throughout the year. This can give them more time to work in the fields or attend to other things in their lives. Not to mention the number of people who die every year, mostly children, from lack of clean water.

The majority of the villages I work with draw water from shallow water holes that are fed by springs or groundwater, or from the local stream. The watering holes are not protected from animals or from runoff. Most are filled with frogs and the water has a milky with color to it. When the rains start, all of the feces from the surrounding area (including human) is washed into the water sources causing dysentery and even cholera.
I teach Zambians simple practices to keep their water clean: to renovate their wells, safeguard their watering holes, and treat their water before drinking. These practices are all within their abilities and require little or no financial investment. The important thing is for them to realize that it is their responsibility and that if they want something, they are going to have to be the ones who work for it.

My own village of Makambwe has just finished process of renovating their well. The borehole (A deep pipe that is installed to pump water from an aquifer) is often broken and, when it is, people go to the well which is the second cleanest water source. I started this project when I arrived in the village in May. Together with the villagers we have built a concrete floor around the opening, a new lid, and pulled out the garbage that has settled in the bottom of the well. In the dry season the water level lowers so that it is about knee high, but 30 feet down a hole. After convincing the villagers that the bottom of the well is not full of snakes and the village raising twenty bucks (converted from Zambian kwacha) to pay him, someone was found to enter the well. After 6 hours of raising buckets of contaminated water and garbage out of the well, here is an inventory of what was found: 4 tree trunks (not sure how on earth they got down there), 3 buckets full of bark rope, 1 blanket, 1 flashlight, 4 sandals (mismatched), and 20 broken plastic containers for drawing water. This process continued for three more days, and, as you can see in the pictures, pulled up a tremendous amount of dirt and garbage.

Getting people to cooperate to fix a well is like getting someone to scoop up dog crap at a public park, most people would rather just wait for someone to come by and do it for them. With so many NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) working in the area, people think that someone will come by and fix it by installing a borehole. Although boreholes are a good part of the solution, they are frequently broken, beyond most villages’ means to buy, and require significant training to fix. The well was a project that could have been completed in a week, but due to how many times the villagers failed to come to a meeting, didn't fulfill their promise to bring materials, or just being busy, it took 7 months. This rate of change can be excruciating to watch and try to influence. I savor every small victory: someone building a chicken coop or a hand washing station, or planting a live fence around their house.

For the first months this resistance to change used to bother me about the Zambian people, but then I thought about what it was like doing environmental activism in America. In a place where people’s actions not only affect themselves, but their carbon footprints and water usage can affect the world and wipeout wildlife habitats on a scale unimaginable here. I wish I could tell Zambians that Americans have our problems figured out and that we address them quickly and efficiently.

Convenience is king in America and our problems are pumped or driven away so far that we can ignore them and still keep our conscience clean. But when we look at our consumption and our lack of action on problems that are in our lives, what are our excuses? The excuses here are numerous and terrible: malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, lack of clean water, overcrowded or nonexistent schools. The lack of access to capital makes even small investments, like a bag of cement, make fixing a well or building a school a long process. How do we Americans justify our failures to address our problems?

People always ask me what they can do to help. The response I give (besides sending me coffee and sardines) is that I don’t know yet. Giving people money incentives begging and disincentives work. Shipping supplies does the same thing, and the carbon footprint of moving something across the world is tremendous. Real development takes time and a solid working relationship with the locals. For now, the best start at helping people here is looking more critically at our own lives and American policies that effect the world. We must take more personal responsibility for our actions and realize that money can’t solve all of our problems. That is as true in Zambia as it is in America.