Food Security
One of the biggest problems in Mali is food shortages across the country despite the fact that the majority of society is involved in subsistence agriculture or commercial farming. One of the nights Shaka (the tech trainer) was in my village he decided to take a walk around the edge of my village. When he came back he mentioned that he was amazed at how much farmland there was in the area and how big our community garden is. He remarked that he was baffled at the fact that Mali experiences food shortages every year despite the amount/potential of food production. When I ask him to explain why he thinks this is he makes a hand motion to indicate the villagers and then points to his head and says, "no good". His point was that the farmers are capable of producing enough food for themselves and city dwellers, but don't understand the economics of farming or how important it is to store grains.
A Slithering Surprise
During the brick making process for the school well we ended up stacking the bricks into a large block for curing and so that it would be easier to spray them with water. When it came time to put them into the well we had to brush off excess concrete and dirt from each brick before carrying them to the well hole. While picking up one of the bricks I discovered a snake several feet long that had made its home between two bricks. I asked Shaka to take a look at it and he said to stay away. I had no idea if it was dangerous or not, but we both decided to err on the side of caution and not find out. So, I grabbed a nice long piece of rebar and effectively made sure there was one less snake to be found in the world. And if it's any consolation to the snake, it wasn't personal... it just gave both Shaka and I the hibbly-jibblies.
A Work Ethic Story
There are many times when Mali is a very confusing, frustrating place for me. One of the things I don't quite understand is the work ethic of villagers. When they do work, they do so with incredible vigor. However, actually getting men to come out of the shade where they have been drinking tea often proves to be very difficult. For example... My counterpart won't work in the afternoon. And he won't try to look for other people to work in the afternoon either... because people don't do work in the afternoon... apparently. Also, if there is a wedding... you get the day off. And since everyone goes to everyone else's wedding, you get a lot of days off. The same is true of baby naming ceremonies and funerals. All said and done, I'm surprised any work gets done in village most days. Clearly this is a work to live culture, not one in which people live to work. You are not defined by what you do, but simply by your existence and your interactions with others.
This is difficult for me. I come from the upper mid-west. A very German sort of place where what you do with yourself is important. You live to work. Productivity is valuable. Time spent sitting around with friends not "doing" anything is viewed as time wasted... and there's nothing worse than wasting time in America.
In village there is very much an attitude of "We'll get to it... eventually". I operate more under the premise of "Let's get to it now".
Friday, May 7, 2010
The 1/2 Epic Saga of a Well Construction Project
I spent the past month at site with the exception of a 12 hour trip to Segou to get my hair cut and swap my old, broken bike for a new, totally righteous one (it came with a water bottle, wow!). I used the month to execute the first half of my second PC project: well construction. I also had a visit from my PC boss and my grad school adviser on separate days.
My second PC funded project includes the construction of two wells and village training on how to use a new well construction technique. One well is being put at the village school, and the other is in the community garden. The training involved having a PC technical trainer come to my site from Bamako for about 10 days to help construct the first well at the school and use the time to explain how things are done. The idea was that the villagers would then be able to construct the well in the garden using the new technique on their own.
This entry is a daily accounting of what turned out to be a very frustrating few weeks. Regular text is a literal description of what happened or what was said. Text in italics is my own personal narrative of what I was thinking at the time.
A Brief Background
The common well construction practice in my part of Mali is to dig a hole in the ground as far down as possible into to water table and then lower 1/2 meter tall reinforced concrete cylinders into the well by hand to prevent the well walls from collapsing later on. Lowering the cylinders is extremely dangerous as they weigh several hundred pounds each and villagers often use old or damaged rope/rigging which sometimes breaks. This can lead to injuries or cylinders being dropped in the well shaft where they can break or become stuck in odd positions.
The new construction technique that we are using for this project uses circular (curved) bricks to line the well and a cutting ring to extend the well deeper than would be possible with the traditional method. This method is a lot safer because the weight of the bricks is far less than the cylinders and you have the ability to make the well deeper to ensure it doesn't dry up as easily.
The process involved is as follows. First, start making concrete bricks. While these are drying dig the well down to just above the water table. (if the soil is stable, you don't have to worry about lining the shaft as you dig, which is the case in my village.) Then you cast a concrete cutting ring in the bottom of the well. (This is a concrete ring with a triangular bottom that acts as a blade. All the bricks lining the well are placed on top of it.) Once the cutting has cured you start digging soil out from underneath it while placing bricks on top. By doing this the cutting ring will sink into the water table and the well shaft will be lined, which prevents the much more unstable, saturated soil from collapsing. When you have gone deep enough into the water table where water is preventing further excavation you line the rest of the well with bricks and backfill the lower half of the well with gravel. Finally you pour a concrete splash pad around the well head and cast a concrete cover with a door to keep things from falling into the well.
Early April
I had a meeting with my counterpart and the village elders to discuss the logistics of the project. We agreed that PC would supply funds to pay for skilled labor, the technical trainer, cement, rebar, and special construction tools. The village's contribution will be aggregate for making bricks and concrete (sand, gravel), materials transportation, unskilled labor, a barrel of water every day, general construction tools, and food/lodging for the technical trainer. The elders pointed out that I have budgeted too little money to pay the well digger. This is something my counterpart should have caught when we met with the well digger to discuss pricing.
From step one the project began on the wrong foot with my counterpart not doing his part to make sure everything was accounted for. As a result, we were beginning the project without enough funds according to our budget. Fortunately I over estimated on some things so I wasn't too worried about that.
Wednesday, 4/7
I ask my counterpart to arrange to have sand brought to the construction site at the school. He says sand will come tomorrow
Thursday, 4/8
I talk with Madu, who is the head of the village school committee, and ask if sand has arrived. We find out that four carts of sand (of an estimated 20 required) came that morning, but two we taken to the garden, not the school.
Friday, 4/9
I go to Dioro, our market town, to buy cement, rebar, and special tools, which are then brought back by villagers.
Saturday, 4/10
We start making curved concrete bricks (we need about 350 total). My counterpart told me several people were coming to help, but my counterpart and I were the only people to show up. I had also asked for more sand to be delivered, but none came. We make about 50 bricks, but our cement to aggregate ratio got messed up, so the bricks ended up being very poor. I ask for a barrel of water to be brought, but it shows up after we finish working. We end up getting all our water for making bricks from the old school well. Madu and Abudu (the school administrator) come to see our work and are very critical.
The well digger was supposed to start digging, but he and my counterpart got into a huge argument over the amount of money that should be paid to begin work. My counterpart refused to pay the digger's starting price, so we find a different well digger. He can't start until Monday.
Sunday, 4/11
I ask for sand and water, which is promised, but neither comes. I wanted to make bricks, but no one could work (all day apparently) because there was a wedding that day. I also ask my counterpart to have rigging and a pulley system set up for the well excavation. He says he'll take care of it.
Monday, 4/12
I again ask for sand and water. One cart of sand arrives, no water. Only my counterpart and I show up at the job site to make more bricks. The new well digger begins working. The well rigging doesn't show up. I ask my counterpart, he says he'll take care of it.
Tuesday, 4/13
I ask for sand, rigging and water. None comes. No reason given. I express my frustrations to my counterpart. He says tomorrow will be a productive day and that having water brought to the site is not a big priority because the old school well has water in it.
Wednesday, 4/14
I ask for sand, rigging, and water. Several carts of sand come. No water, no rigging. My counterpart tells me that rigging is not necessary because we aren't digging a well "that" deep. I tell him to get the rigging set up by tomorrow in anticipation for the technical trainer's arrival. Three villagers come to help make bricks. We end up using so much water that the old school well goes dry (which is why I wanted water brought to the site in the first place). At this point we have made about a third of the total number of bricks we need.
Thursday, 4/15
I ask for sand, rigging, water. Nothing comes. The well digger is now at a depth of 4 meters. So far the soil has been nothing but hardpan clay which is so difficult to dig through that the well digger has had to replace the handle on his pick axe multiple times because he keeps breaking it. The digger and my counterpart have a discussion in which the digger expresses his concern that we might hit a confined aquifer. If this is the case, when we hit water, instead of simply finding mud, it would be like punching a hole into a container under pressure. The result being that the well could flood several meters deep with water before we would have lined it with bricks to prevent a future collapse. My counterpart tells me that sometimes when digging wells they encounter a confined aquifer... something he neglected to tell me earlier, which would have been very good to know. Later that day the digger hit water at 4.5 meters, but the aquifer was unconfined... Thankfully.
The technical trainer (Shaka) came to my village. The plan was for him to take a bus from Bamako to Dioro and then have someone pick him up in Dioro with a motorcycle and bring him to village. The bus ended up running late and arriving at 10 pm. My counterpart's son went to pick him up, but after waiting for a while and getting confused about which bus to look for he came back to village without Shaka. We then had to scramble to find someone to go back to Dioro to get Shaka, who at this point was waiting in the dark in an unfamiliar place. He ended up arriving in village at 11 pm.
Friday, 4/16
I ask for sand, rigging, water. A few carts of sand arrive. No water. No rigging. Shaka asks me why there's no rigging set up at the well. I explain to him that I have had difficulty getting any kind of village participation on the project and that rigging had been promised the day before. Shaka's purpose for coming was to construct the cutting ring and then go back to Bamako while it cured. I thought we would be able to do all the work in one day, but because of a lack of village help that day we ended up only doing prep work on Friday.
Saturday, 4/17
We cast the cutting ring in the bottom of the well and made some bricks. More villagers show up to help and watch after Shaka complained to my counterpart. Shaka tells me that with all the difficulties I have had up to this point he doesn't think I should start any other projects like this once the current project is completed. After work that day Shaka went back to Bamako. His plan was to come back on Monday, the 26th, to help sink the cutting ring and line the well with bricks.
Sunday, 4/18
I ask for sand, rigging, water. Nothing comes. No work done.
At this point I'm starting to get very frustrated with my counterpart and village.
Monday, 4/19
Same as Sunday. Wedding given as the reason for now work or supplies. I ask my counterpart why barrels of water aren't coming to the job site. We need water there every day for making bricks and to pour on the bricks that have been made already to help them cure in the hot weather. (My counterpart is aware of this.)
My counterpart asks what we need water at the school for. I remind him.
Deep down I'm screaming at the top of my lungs, "What have we needed water at the job site every other day for up to this point?!" Unbelievable!!!
Tuesday, 4/20
I ask for sand, rigging, water. I actually got a barrel of water. No rigging, no sand. The plan was to make 200 bricks that day. The idea was to cast the rest of the bricks needed that day so that we would have a week for them to cure before Shaka would be back to start putting bricks in the well. Several people showed up to help, but after lunch we ran out of sand and only ended up with 120 bricks.
My PC boss did a site visit that afternoon to see how I was doing. I explained that up to that point I was having a very difficult time getting my village to commit to their end of the bargain with the project. After giving several examples of my frustrations, my boss (who is Malian btw) came to the conclusion that my counterpart was the cause of most of the problems. We ended up having a meeting with key members in the village where my boss explained that I was very unhappy with the way things were going.
During the course of the meeting my boss and I discovered that there are two committees governing business related to the school. Apparently the people in charge of these committees were not communicating with each other and as a result a lot of things were falling through the cracks. My counterpart was also organizing certain things on his own which were not being followed up by one of the committees. I had no idea about any of this before hand. I didn't even know there were two school committees. All of this was stuff that my counterpart should have communicated with me.
Wednesday, 4/21
I ask for sand, water, rigging. A few carts of sand show up. We need to make about 100 bricks today. We can't make bricks later on because they wouldn't have had enough time to cure. My counterpart and I are the only people who show up to work. We make 60 bricks by lunch time. My counterpart then says that he's tired and that we should stop for the day and make the rest of the bricks on Thursday. I explain that this is unacceptable and that I'm coming back that afternoon to make the other 40 bricks regardless if anyone else shows up, but that I expect him to find some people to help me. My counterpart explains to me that people in village don't work in the afternoon in hot season. When I ask why he is unable to give a legitimate explanation. I come back that afternoon with one other person and finish making bricks.
At this point I am absolutely furious with my counterpart and have no desire to work with him, but have to in order to keep this project going. I need to keep things moving to get ready for Shaka's return and ensure that all work on the first well is completed before I leave village for a few weeks of vacation in Europe.
Thursday to Sunday, 4/22 to 4/25
I ask for sand, rigging, water. Sand and rigging finally come Sunday... the day before Shaka is to return. The rigging my counterpart brings to the job site is undersized and inadequate. A few carts of the sand that showed up were not the kind we needed.
Monday, 4/26
Shaka returns. Same bus fiasco occurs. Bus runs late. Someone goes to Dioro to pick him up but gets tired of waiting and comes back without him. Shaka ends up waiting in the dark alone. When my counterpart finds out about this he has absolutely no urgency to remedy the situation. He doesn't even explain to Shaka what is going on when we call him. My counterpart takes the phone, asks where Shaka is, says the motorcycle came back to village and then hangs up. Doesn't say we're sending someone else or anything like that. Shaka calls his boss who calls me asking what the hell is going on at 10:30 at night and why don't we have our act together. All I can say is my village has dropped the ball yet again.
Tuesday, 4/27
We sink the cutting ring. The well digger comes to help with this. After about 1/4 meter of digging we hit a saturated sand layer. The sand was so plastic that it was seeping into the well under the cutting ring faster than gravity's ability to push the cutting ring down. As a result a cavern about 1.5 meters deep formed around the entire circumference of the bottom of the well. Essentially all the working area up on the surface at this point was suspended as a cantilevered ledge around the well. Not good. We had to stop digging and start putting bricks into the well and backfill immediately to safeguard against a possible collapse.
Wednesday to Sunday, 4/28 to 5/2
We line the well. The well ended up being about 5 meters deep and we were only able to lay about 1 meter of masonry a day because we had to wait for the mortar to dry before moving our work platform up the well shaft.
Monday, 5/3
We pour the concrete pad around the top of the well and cast the well cover. After 10 days of curing we'll put the cover on the well and shock the well with bleach to eliminate any contamination that might have occurred during construction.
Project Summary
Despite the frustrations, mistakes, and delays we got the first well finished on the last day I was in village before leaving for vacation. The new well has about 3/4 meter of water in the bottom and the water is clear, which is good. The day before I leave for vacation the well digger begins the second well. I leave the fate of the second well in the hands of my counterpart and another villager who helped with the school well. I'm honestly not expecting the second well to be finished by the time I get back to site (even though they will have plenty of time to do the work)... but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
My second PC funded project includes the construction of two wells and village training on how to use a new well construction technique. One well is being put at the village school, and the other is in the community garden. The training involved having a PC technical trainer come to my site from Bamako for about 10 days to help construct the first well at the school and use the time to explain how things are done. The idea was that the villagers would then be able to construct the well in the garden using the new technique on their own.
This entry is a daily accounting of what turned out to be a very frustrating few weeks. Regular text is a literal description of what happened or what was said. Text in italics is my own personal narrative of what I was thinking at the time.
A Brief Background
The common well construction practice in my part of Mali is to dig a hole in the ground as far down as possible into to water table and then lower 1/2 meter tall reinforced concrete cylinders into the well by hand to prevent the well walls from collapsing later on. Lowering the cylinders is extremely dangerous as they weigh several hundred pounds each and villagers often use old or damaged rope/rigging which sometimes breaks. This can lead to injuries or cylinders being dropped in the well shaft where they can break or become stuck in odd positions.
The new construction technique that we are using for this project uses circular (curved) bricks to line the well and a cutting ring to extend the well deeper than would be possible with the traditional method. This method is a lot safer because the weight of the bricks is far less than the cylinders and you have the ability to make the well deeper to ensure it doesn't dry up as easily.
The process involved is as follows. First, start making concrete bricks. While these are drying dig the well down to just above the water table. (if the soil is stable, you don't have to worry about lining the shaft as you dig, which is the case in my village.) Then you cast a concrete cutting ring in the bottom of the well. (This is a concrete ring with a triangular bottom that acts as a blade. All the bricks lining the well are placed on top of it.) Once the cutting has cured you start digging soil out from underneath it while placing bricks on top. By doing this the cutting ring will sink into the water table and the well shaft will be lined, which prevents the much more unstable, saturated soil from collapsing. When you have gone deep enough into the water table where water is preventing further excavation you line the rest of the well with bricks and backfill the lower half of the well with gravel. Finally you pour a concrete splash pad around the well head and cast a concrete cover with a door to keep things from falling into the well.
Early April
I had a meeting with my counterpart and the village elders to discuss the logistics of the project. We agreed that PC would supply funds to pay for skilled labor, the technical trainer, cement, rebar, and special construction tools. The village's contribution will be aggregate for making bricks and concrete (sand, gravel), materials transportation, unskilled labor, a barrel of water every day, general construction tools, and food/lodging for the technical trainer. The elders pointed out that I have budgeted too little money to pay the well digger. This is something my counterpart should have caught when we met with the well digger to discuss pricing.
From step one the project began on the wrong foot with my counterpart not doing his part to make sure everything was accounted for. As a result, we were beginning the project without enough funds according to our budget. Fortunately I over estimated on some things so I wasn't too worried about that.
Wednesday, 4/7
I ask my counterpart to arrange to have sand brought to the construction site at the school. He says sand will come tomorrow
Thursday, 4/8
I talk with Madu, who is the head of the village school committee, and ask if sand has arrived. We find out that four carts of sand (of an estimated 20 required) came that morning, but two we taken to the garden, not the school.
Friday, 4/9
I go to Dioro, our market town, to buy cement, rebar, and special tools, which are then brought back by villagers.
Saturday, 4/10
We start making curved concrete bricks (we need about 350 total). My counterpart told me several people were coming to help, but my counterpart and I were the only people to show up. I had also asked for more sand to be delivered, but none came. We make about 50 bricks, but our cement to aggregate ratio got messed up, so the bricks ended up being very poor. I ask for a barrel of water to be brought, but it shows up after we finish working. We end up getting all our water for making bricks from the old school well. Madu and Abudu (the school administrator) come to see our work and are very critical.
The well digger was supposed to start digging, but he and my counterpart got into a huge argument over the amount of money that should be paid to begin work. My counterpart refused to pay the digger's starting price, so we find a different well digger. He can't start until Monday.
Sunday, 4/11
I ask for sand and water, which is promised, but neither comes. I wanted to make bricks, but no one could work (all day apparently) because there was a wedding that day. I also ask my counterpart to have rigging and a pulley system set up for the well excavation. He says he'll take care of it.
Monday, 4/12
I again ask for sand and water. One cart of sand arrives, no water. Only my counterpart and I show up at the job site to make more bricks. The new well digger begins working. The well rigging doesn't show up. I ask my counterpart, he says he'll take care of it.
Tuesday, 4/13
I ask for sand, rigging and water. None comes. No reason given. I express my frustrations to my counterpart. He says tomorrow will be a productive day and that having water brought to the site is not a big priority because the old school well has water in it.
Wednesday, 4/14
I ask for sand, rigging, and water. Several carts of sand come. No water, no rigging. My counterpart tells me that rigging is not necessary because we aren't digging a well "that" deep. I tell him to get the rigging set up by tomorrow in anticipation for the technical trainer's arrival. Three villagers come to help make bricks. We end up using so much water that the old school well goes dry (which is why I wanted water brought to the site in the first place). At this point we have made about a third of the total number of bricks we need.
Thursday, 4/15
I ask for sand, rigging, water. Nothing comes. The well digger is now at a depth of 4 meters. So far the soil has been nothing but hardpan clay which is so difficult to dig through that the well digger has had to replace the handle on his pick axe multiple times because he keeps breaking it. The digger and my counterpart have a discussion in which the digger expresses his concern that we might hit a confined aquifer. If this is the case, when we hit water, instead of simply finding mud, it would be like punching a hole into a container under pressure. The result being that the well could flood several meters deep with water before we would have lined it with bricks to prevent a future collapse. My counterpart tells me that sometimes when digging wells they encounter a confined aquifer... something he neglected to tell me earlier, which would have been very good to know. Later that day the digger hit water at 4.5 meters, but the aquifer was unconfined... Thankfully.
The technical trainer (Shaka) came to my village. The plan was for him to take a bus from Bamako to Dioro and then have someone pick him up in Dioro with a motorcycle and bring him to village. The bus ended up running late and arriving at 10 pm. My counterpart's son went to pick him up, but after waiting for a while and getting confused about which bus to look for he came back to village without Shaka. We then had to scramble to find someone to go back to Dioro to get Shaka, who at this point was waiting in the dark in an unfamiliar place. He ended up arriving in village at 11 pm.
Friday, 4/16
I ask for sand, rigging, water. A few carts of sand arrive. No water. No rigging. Shaka asks me why there's no rigging set up at the well. I explain to him that I have had difficulty getting any kind of village participation on the project and that rigging had been promised the day before. Shaka's purpose for coming was to construct the cutting ring and then go back to Bamako while it cured. I thought we would be able to do all the work in one day, but because of a lack of village help that day we ended up only doing prep work on Friday.
Saturday, 4/17
We cast the cutting ring in the bottom of the well and made some bricks. More villagers show up to help and watch after Shaka complained to my counterpart. Shaka tells me that with all the difficulties I have had up to this point he doesn't think I should start any other projects like this once the current project is completed. After work that day Shaka went back to Bamako. His plan was to come back on Monday, the 26th, to help sink the cutting ring and line the well with bricks.
Sunday, 4/18
I ask for sand, rigging, water. Nothing comes. No work done.
At this point I'm starting to get very frustrated with my counterpart and village.
Monday, 4/19
Same as Sunday. Wedding given as the reason for now work or supplies. I ask my counterpart why barrels of water aren't coming to the job site. We need water there every day for making bricks and to pour on the bricks that have been made already to help them cure in the hot weather. (My counterpart is aware of this.)
My counterpart asks what we need water at the school for. I remind him.
Deep down I'm screaming at the top of my lungs, "What have we needed water at the job site every other day for up to this point?!" Unbelievable!!!
Tuesday, 4/20
I ask for sand, rigging, water. I actually got a barrel of water. No rigging, no sand. The plan was to make 200 bricks that day. The idea was to cast the rest of the bricks needed that day so that we would have a week for them to cure before Shaka would be back to start putting bricks in the well. Several people showed up to help, but after lunch we ran out of sand and only ended up with 120 bricks.
My PC boss did a site visit that afternoon to see how I was doing. I explained that up to that point I was having a very difficult time getting my village to commit to their end of the bargain with the project. After giving several examples of my frustrations, my boss (who is Malian btw) came to the conclusion that my counterpart was the cause of most of the problems. We ended up having a meeting with key members in the village where my boss explained that I was very unhappy with the way things were going.
During the course of the meeting my boss and I discovered that there are two committees governing business related to the school. Apparently the people in charge of these committees were not communicating with each other and as a result a lot of things were falling through the cracks. My counterpart was also organizing certain things on his own which were not being followed up by one of the committees. I had no idea about any of this before hand. I didn't even know there were two school committees. All of this was stuff that my counterpart should have communicated with me.
Wednesday, 4/21
I ask for sand, water, rigging. A few carts of sand show up. We need to make about 100 bricks today. We can't make bricks later on because they wouldn't have had enough time to cure. My counterpart and I are the only people who show up to work. We make 60 bricks by lunch time. My counterpart then says that he's tired and that we should stop for the day and make the rest of the bricks on Thursday. I explain that this is unacceptable and that I'm coming back that afternoon to make the other 40 bricks regardless if anyone else shows up, but that I expect him to find some people to help me. My counterpart explains to me that people in village don't work in the afternoon in hot season. When I ask why he is unable to give a legitimate explanation. I come back that afternoon with one other person and finish making bricks.
At this point I am absolutely furious with my counterpart and have no desire to work with him, but have to in order to keep this project going. I need to keep things moving to get ready for Shaka's return and ensure that all work on the first well is completed before I leave village for a few weeks of vacation in Europe.
Thursday to Sunday, 4/22 to 4/25
I ask for sand, rigging, water. Sand and rigging finally come Sunday... the day before Shaka is to return. The rigging my counterpart brings to the job site is undersized and inadequate. A few carts of the sand that showed up were not the kind we needed.
Monday, 4/26
Shaka returns. Same bus fiasco occurs. Bus runs late. Someone goes to Dioro to pick him up but gets tired of waiting and comes back without him. Shaka ends up waiting in the dark alone. When my counterpart finds out about this he has absolutely no urgency to remedy the situation. He doesn't even explain to Shaka what is going on when we call him. My counterpart takes the phone, asks where Shaka is, says the motorcycle came back to village and then hangs up. Doesn't say we're sending someone else or anything like that. Shaka calls his boss who calls me asking what the hell is going on at 10:30 at night and why don't we have our act together. All I can say is my village has dropped the ball yet again.
Tuesday, 4/27
We sink the cutting ring. The well digger comes to help with this. After about 1/4 meter of digging we hit a saturated sand layer. The sand was so plastic that it was seeping into the well under the cutting ring faster than gravity's ability to push the cutting ring down. As a result a cavern about 1.5 meters deep formed around the entire circumference of the bottom of the well. Essentially all the working area up on the surface at this point was suspended as a cantilevered ledge around the well. Not good. We had to stop digging and start putting bricks into the well and backfill immediately to safeguard against a possible collapse.
Wednesday to Sunday, 4/28 to 5/2
We line the well. The well ended up being about 5 meters deep and we were only able to lay about 1 meter of masonry a day because we had to wait for the mortar to dry before moving our work platform up the well shaft.
Monday, 5/3
We pour the concrete pad around the top of the well and cast the well cover. After 10 days of curing we'll put the cover on the well and shock the well with bleach to eliminate any contamination that might have occurred during construction.
Project Summary
Despite the frustrations, mistakes, and delays we got the first well finished on the last day I was in village before leaving for vacation. The new well has about 3/4 meter of water in the bottom and the water is clear, which is good. The day before I leave for vacation the well digger begins the second well. I leave the fate of the second well in the hands of my counterpart and another villager who helped with the school well. I'm honestly not expecting the second well to be finished by the time I get back to site (even though they will have plenty of time to do the work)... but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
It's not the Heat... It's the Humidity
I think that statement should be revised to read "It's the heat AND the humidity".
Hot season is definitely in full swing and the daily temperature average is expected to continue to rise. Yesterday it was 116 degrees F in my village... in the shade. Good news is it's not terribly humid... only about 72% humidity or so.
But that doesn't stop me from sweating while doing the simplest of tasks. Sleep, sweat. Wake up, sweat. Eat breakfast, sweat more because I'm cooking inside. Run an errand across village, loose a quart. Take a nap after lunch, shake off afterward. Sometimes I think my sweat is actually sweating as well. This is all terribly taxing on my integumentary system (which contains the skin and sweat glands).
I'm guessing right now I go through at least 4 liters of water a day. This makes for a somewhat vicious cycle as well because it means I am drinking more water than I used to every day, which means more trips to the pump, which means more sweating, which means more drinking, which means more trips to the pump, etc., etc.
All this sweating also means that I need to make sure I am getting enough electrolytes. Especially if I do something physically strenuous like make a 35 km round trip to my market town or help cast several hundred concrete blocks for a new well that's being put in at the school.
I have found changing clothes throughout the day is also smart... and not simply to avoid that "soggy" feeling. Wearing damp clothing in temperatures like these is a good way to develop heat rash or other skin maladies.
While it is definitely hot, it's not unbearable. I've gotten used to things by now. If anything it's more of an annoyance. Manual laborers only work about four hours a day now because it's so hot during mid-day. This means construction projects take longer to complete, and right now I'm trying to get two wells put in before May 1st. Easier said than done I'm finding out.
Hot season is definitely in full swing and the daily temperature average is expected to continue to rise. Yesterday it was 116 degrees F in my village... in the shade. Good news is it's not terribly humid... only about 72% humidity or so.
But that doesn't stop me from sweating while doing the simplest of tasks. Sleep, sweat. Wake up, sweat. Eat breakfast, sweat more because I'm cooking inside. Run an errand across village, loose a quart. Take a nap after lunch, shake off afterward. Sometimes I think my sweat is actually sweating as well. This is all terribly taxing on my integumentary system (which contains the skin and sweat glands).
I'm guessing right now I go through at least 4 liters of water a day. This makes for a somewhat vicious cycle as well because it means I am drinking more water than I used to every day, which means more trips to the pump, which means more sweating, which means more drinking, which means more trips to the pump, etc., etc.
All this sweating also means that I need to make sure I am getting enough electrolytes. Especially if I do something physically strenuous like make a 35 km round trip to my market town or help cast several hundred concrete blocks for a new well that's being put in at the school.
I have found changing clothes throughout the day is also smart... and not simply to avoid that "soggy" feeling. Wearing damp clothing in temperatures like these is a good way to develop heat rash or other skin maladies.
While it is definitely hot, it's not unbearable. I've gotten used to things by now. If anything it's more of an annoyance. Manual laborers only work about four hours a day now because it's so hot during mid-day. This means construction projects take longer to complete, and right now I'm trying to get two wells put in before May 1st. Easier said than done I'm finding out.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
A Messy Situation
**Warning: This entry is going to contain more engineering lingo than the average lay person hears in a lifetime. Prepare to learn something.
I went to the Segou mayor's office the other day with another Volunteer and a PC water/sanitation program assistant to discuss the possibility of a wat/san Volunteer working for the city in the future. Specifically, the mayor wants a Volunteer to help the city deal with trash. Segou used to be known as "the cleanest city in Mali", but now that it has become home to over 100,000 people... without much improvement to the city's waste management infrastructure... things have become somewhat messy. This is a concern to the mayor because a lot of tourists come through Segou, so first impressions are important.
Our discussion with the mayor taught me a lot about waste management in Mali and showed me that things here work about the same as in the US (with the exception that environmental hazards aren't considered). The waste stream has the same beginning... someone's house. From there, garbage men come with a donkey cart, pick up the trash, and take it to one of several trash depots (transfer stations) throughout the city. These depots are simply vacant lots where trash is dumped. There is no fencing to enclose the land, and no sort of impermeable clay or concrete "floor" to prevent hazardous liquids from seeping into the ground, which results in soil and groundwater contamination. There also aren't any restrictions or separations to remove certain hazardous materials such as car batteries, pharmaceuticals, oils, industrial wastes, or leftover mayonnaise.
From the depots, city dump trucks take the waste to a landfill several kilometers outside of town. At present, the "landfill" the city uses is actually an old excavation from a large building project that was never finished. Essentially it's a giant hole in the ground that is being filled with trash. There is no sort of impermeable layer to prevent environmental contamination. The good news is that the area is elevated enough that it doesn't experience flooding during the rainy season. That would mean all kinds of nastiness spilling out all over the place. However, since the waste is being put in a depression, all the rain that falls on the "landfill" gets soaked into the ground with whatever goodies it has managed to wash off.
The good news is that the city is currently building a new landfill about 12 km outside of town. The bad news is that they've run out of money and can't finish the project. I have no details on the design specifics of that project.
With this said, the city currently has several problems with waste management. There is trash everywhere! There are several reasons for this. One is that the population of the city has grown tremendously in the past few decades. This means a lot of people now live in Segou who are not traditionally from the area, and thus do not have the same attachment to the city as older residents. Many of these people come from villages where having trash laying all over the place is the norm, so they don't place as much importance on waste removal.
Another problem is that many people don't pay for trash pick up. They are supposed to, but don't. As a result, the garbage men don't come and people begin throwing trash in the streets. The system for collecting fees is also very inefficient and poorly set up, so many people are able to avoid paying for service. The result is that the city is short on funds.
Being short on funds means the city can't afford to pay all the personnel they need and there no money to make repairs to vehicles when they break. The mayor is also unwilling to raise taxes to solve this problem as raising taxes is not a very popular thing to do. It's also not practical to enforce payment for waste removal because if they did half the city would be in jail... this place isn't overflowing with cash.
On a slightly different note, a major liquid waste problem the city is currently facing is the failure of the city's septic tank pumping truck. There is one truck for the whole city and they can't fix it because they don't have enough money. Everyone here either has a pit latrine or septic tank. There are no piped sewers. Right now, to solve this problem, there are guys going around with tanks on donkey carts that are operated by hand crank pumps. So, the septic tanks are getting pumped, but not as quickly. And... where do you suppose the septage is dumped? Yep, you guessed it... into the river! There is a reason the PC medical officer forbids Volunteers from swimming in surface waters.
I guess the good news about all of this is that when I first came to Segou my first thought was "wow, it's so clean compared to other places in Mali". And that's still true. Despite problems, the city is still relatively clean, but something does need to be done to prevent the situation from becoming worse... and that means finding more money for the municipal government.
I went to the Segou mayor's office the other day with another Volunteer and a PC water/sanitation program assistant to discuss the possibility of a wat/san Volunteer working for the city in the future. Specifically, the mayor wants a Volunteer to help the city deal with trash. Segou used to be known as "the cleanest city in Mali", but now that it has become home to over 100,000 people... without much improvement to the city's waste management infrastructure... things have become somewhat messy. This is a concern to the mayor because a lot of tourists come through Segou, so first impressions are important.
Our discussion with the mayor taught me a lot about waste management in Mali and showed me that things here work about the same as in the US (with the exception that environmental hazards aren't considered). The waste stream has the same beginning... someone's house. From there, garbage men come with a donkey cart, pick up the trash, and take it to one of several trash depots (transfer stations) throughout the city. These depots are simply vacant lots where trash is dumped. There is no fencing to enclose the land, and no sort of impermeable clay or concrete "floor" to prevent hazardous liquids from seeping into the ground, which results in soil and groundwater contamination. There also aren't any restrictions or separations to remove certain hazardous materials such as car batteries, pharmaceuticals, oils, industrial wastes, or leftover mayonnaise.
From the depots, city dump trucks take the waste to a landfill several kilometers outside of town. At present, the "landfill" the city uses is actually an old excavation from a large building project that was never finished. Essentially it's a giant hole in the ground that is being filled with trash. There is no sort of impermeable layer to prevent environmental contamination. The good news is that the area is elevated enough that it doesn't experience flooding during the rainy season. That would mean all kinds of nastiness spilling out all over the place. However, since the waste is being put in a depression, all the rain that falls on the "landfill" gets soaked into the ground with whatever goodies it has managed to wash off.
The good news is that the city is currently building a new landfill about 12 km outside of town. The bad news is that they've run out of money and can't finish the project. I have no details on the design specifics of that project.
With this said, the city currently has several problems with waste management. There is trash everywhere! There are several reasons for this. One is that the population of the city has grown tremendously in the past few decades. This means a lot of people now live in Segou who are not traditionally from the area, and thus do not have the same attachment to the city as older residents. Many of these people come from villages where having trash laying all over the place is the norm, so they don't place as much importance on waste removal.
Another problem is that many people don't pay for trash pick up. They are supposed to, but don't. As a result, the garbage men don't come and people begin throwing trash in the streets. The system for collecting fees is also very inefficient and poorly set up, so many people are able to avoid paying for service. The result is that the city is short on funds.
Being short on funds means the city can't afford to pay all the personnel they need and there no money to make repairs to vehicles when they break. The mayor is also unwilling to raise taxes to solve this problem as raising taxes is not a very popular thing to do. It's also not practical to enforce payment for waste removal because if they did half the city would be in jail... this place isn't overflowing with cash.
On a slightly different note, a major liquid waste problem the city is currently facing is the failure of the city's septic tank pumping truck. There is one truck for the whole city and they can't fix it because they don't have enough money. Everyone here either has a pit latrine or septic tank. There are no piped sewers. Right now, to solve this problem, there are guys going around with tanks on donkey carts that are operated by hand crank pumps. So, the septic tanks are getting pumped, but not as quickly. And... where do you suppose the septage is dumped? Yep, you guessed it... into the river! There is a reason the PC medical officer forbids Volunteers from swimming in surface waters.
I guess the good news about all of this is that when I first came to Segou my first thought was "wow, it's so clean compared to other places in Mali". And that's still true. Despite problems, the city is still relatively clean, but something does need to be done to prevent the situation from becoming worse... and that means finding more money for the municipal government.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Tool Time - Home Edition
It seems like it's been a while since I've discussed the regular goings-ons of village life.
When I first got to Mali it was rainy season. This meant most people were out plowing and planting fields. December was cold season, which meant harvest time.
Now it's hot season. How hot? Over 105 degrees Fahrenheit every day. A cool dip into the 80s at night. At this point it hasn't rained consistently since early October, so it's been pretty dry. Everything is brown. Rivers and ponds have significantly shrunk or disappeared altogether. There is no agricultural activity aside from herding cows. Dust abounds. Sun is abundant when not obscured by the aforementioned dust clouds.
What do people do you might ask? This part of hot season might be more appropriately labeled "home improvement" season. It's all about fixing up or building houses...Unfortunately it's a little low tech for Bob Vila or Tim Taylor.
How does "house building season" work exactly? Well, first you need to hitch up a team of cows to your cart, head out to the fields and bring back a couple cart loads of nice, clayey soil. Then grab a couple of old oil drums, fire up that trusty cow cart, and head out of town to the irrigation canal for the rice fields and grab a few barrels of water. (You do this by simply backing the whole cart into the canal... water up to the cows noses.) When you get back into town, start making mud. Add some straw to the mud. Then grab your favorite brick mold and start making mud bricks like it's 1999 and there's about to be a firesale on home masonry to get ready for the Y2K glitch.
Stack the bricks and let them dry in the sun. Once dried, make some mud mortar and begin making the walls for your new house, concession enclosure, negen, shower area, sheep pen, or ice hockey arena. (The thermal properties of mud bricks are truly astounding. What an R-value!) When it's time to start thinking about a roof, find some large cross beams and throw those on top of the walls. Then lay a dense latticework of two-inch diameter sticks across the beams, coating the entire ensemble thoroughly with about a foot of mud. Let dry. (If you've got some extra cash laying around you can splurge on a tin roof.)
If you're not building a new house you'll probably still be interested in doing some fix up work. You'd be surprised at how easily a house made out of sun-baked mud can come apart once it's endured a few rainy seasons. Solution: some mud and a mason's trowel. Apply a liberal coat of mud to whatever wall or roof is in need of some patch work. Then find your favorite shady spot and drink tea for the rest of the day.
When I first got to Mali it was rainy season. This meant most people were out plowing and planting fields. December was cold season, which meant harvest time.
Now it's hot season. How hot? Over 105 degrees Fahrenheit every day. A cool dip into the 80s at night. At this point it hasn't rained consistently since early October, so it's been pretty dry. Everything is brown. Rivers and ponds have significantly shrunk or disappeared altogether. There is no agricultural activity aside from herding cows. Dust abounds. Sun is abundant when not obscured by the aforementioned dust clouds.
What do people do you might ask? This part of hot season might be more appropriately labeled "home improvement" season. It's all about fixing up or building houses...Unfortunately it's a little low tech for Bob Vila or Tim Taylor.
How does "house building season" work exactly? Well, first you need to hitch up a team of cows to your cart, head out to the fields and bring back a couple cart loads of nice, clayey soil. Then grab a couple of old oil drums, fire up that trusty cow cart, and head out of town to the irrigation canal for the rice fields and grab a few barrels of water. (You do this by simply backing the whole cart into the canal... water up to the cows noses.) When you get back into town, start making mud. Add some straw to the mud. Then grab your favorite brick mold and start making mud bricks like it's 1999 and there's about to be a firesale on home masonry to get ready for the Y2K glitch.
Stack the bricks and let them dry in the sun. Once dried, make some mud mortar and begin making the walls for your new house, concession enclosure, negen, shower area, sheep pen, or ice hockey arena. (The thermal properties of mud bricks are truly astounding. What an R-value!) When it's time to start thinking about a roof, find some large cross beams and throw those on top of the walls. Then lay a dense latticework of two-inch diameter sticks across the beams, coating the entire ensemble thoroughly with about a foot of mud. Let dry. (If you've got some extra cash laying around you can splurge on a tin roof.)
If you're not building a new house you'll probably still be interested in doing some fix up work. You'd be surprised at how easily a house made out of sun-baked mud can come apart once it's endured a few rainy seasons. Solution: some mud and a mason's trowel. Apply a liberal coat of mud to whatever wall or roof is in need of some patch work. Then find your favorite shady spot and drink tea for the rest of the day.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Here Fishy Fishy Fish
I want to start this entry out by paying tribute to those prodigal sages of wisdom... Bert and Ernie. How else would generations of Americans have learned about the necessary equipment for bath time or the most effective strategies for catching fish?
Last week I spent a few afternoons and an evening at my "site mate's" village helping to build a fish pond and soak pit. But first, to clarify, my "site mate" is in a village about 12 km from mine. She's the closest Volunteer to me, so we see each other fairly often, thus the term site mate.
The Volunteer that was at her site before her had arranged to have an Engineers Without Borders (EWB) student chapter from the University of Pittsburgh come and build a large fish pond in the village. They have visited the village a few times already, but last week was their actual implementation trip. They had an excavator and front end loader brought out from Segou to have a 120m x 30m fish pond dug in the middle of the village. It was like playing with giant toys in a giant sand box.
The point of the fish pond is to create... well... a pond to raise fish in. The village will then sell the fish at market or use it as a food source.
I'd say overall the project was a success, but there were a few snags along the way. The front end loader showed up a day late and then after a few days of work broke a large pin that prevented the machine from doing what it does best... picking up
copious amounts of soil.
Once that was fixed the translator that was working with the EWB students told us that there was a bit of a conflict in the village. Apparently the village chief and elders had approved areas of land to be dug up for the pond that other village members did not want disturbed. Fortunately this land was included in the portion of work that had been filed under "we'll get to it if we have enough time", and there didn't end up being enough time, so the land was left undisturbed. Just goes to show that community politics in Africa work the same way as they do in the US.
I ended up doing a bit of "consulting work" with the professional engineer that was with the EWB group while visiting the project and helped the group design and put together a soak pit. It ended up being a slow sand filter that drained into the fish pond, but who's really keeping track of specifics? In any case it ended up being a very "frumbling" experience.
In case you're not familiar with that term - it's a hybrid between frustrating and humbling. Frustrating because I was trying to get a bunch of unskilled village volunteers to help dig trenches, lay pipe, and move large amounts of soil and sand. They had no real concept of how the thing we were building would actually work, but still let us know that what we were doing wouldn't work. That was frustrating. So much so that after I while I just decided that everyone around me was an idiot and there was no point trying to explain anything. All I needed to do was coldly direct people to do what I wanted.
Fortunately my site mate had the presence of mind to tell me to stop being an ass-hole to her villagers and explain what was going on. This was humbling, but she was right. What's the point of doing a bunch of development work if you're not going to get the people who are using it to understand what is happening? There isn't one.
And for those would-be engineers out there... remember this fundamental truth. Water is lazy. It prefers going down hill. I'm not sure if that bit of knowledge just isn't understood as well here, or if people think they can just will the unlikely into happening, or if people are just wearing really unevenly souled shoes... but the idea of laying pipe so that water would flow though it in the desired direction took a bit of talking through.
The true test of success for this project won't come for about a year though. The water for the pond will come from the rains in a few months. There is some concern that a berm that was put in around one end of the pond will limit the amount of water that will get to it. There is also a concern about water quality. This pond will be a very tempting place for women to come wash clothes and animals to come drink. The soap from clothes washing and manure from animals could saturate the stagnant water with nutrients, which could cause algal blooms, which would result in depleted oxygen levels in the water, which would result in a poor living environment for the fishes. Only time will truly tell.
Last week I spent a few afternoons and an evening at my "site mate's" village helping to build a fish pond and soak pit. But first, to clarify, my "site mate" is in a village about 12 km from mine. She's the closest Volunteer to me, so we see each other fairly often, thus the term site mate.
The Volunteer that was at her site before her had arranged to have an Engineers Without Borders (EWB) student chapter from the University of Pittsburgh come and build a large fish pond in the village. They have visited the village a few times already, but last week was their actual implementation trip. They had an excavator and front end loader brought out from Segou to have a 120m x 30m fish pond dug in the middle of the village. It was like playing with giant toys in a giant sand box.
The point of the fish pond is to create... well... a pond to raise fish in. The village will then sell the fish at market or use it as a food source.
I'd say overall the project was a success, but there were a few snags along the way. The front end loader showed up a day late and then after a few days of work broke a large pin that prevented the machine from doing what it does best... picking up
copious amounts of soil.
Once that was fixed the translator that was working with the EWB students told us that there was a bit of a conflict in the village. Apparently the village chief and elders had approved areas of land to be dug up for the pond that other village members did not want disturbed. Fortunately this land was included in the portion of work that had been filed under "we'll get to it if we have enough time", and there didn't end up being enough time, so the land was left undisturbed. Just goes to show that community politics in Africa work the same way as they do in the US.
I ended up doing a bit of "consulting work" with the professional engineer that was with the EWB group while visiting the project and helped the group design and put together a soak pit. It ended up being a slow sand filter that drained into the fish pond, but who's really keeping track of specifics? In any case it ended up being a very "frumbling" experience.
In case you're not familiar with that term - it's a hybrid between frustrating and humbling. Frustrating because I was trying to get a bunch of unskilled village volunteers to help dig trenches, lay pipe, and move large amounts of soil and sand. They had no real concept of how the thing we were building would actually work, but still let us know that what we were doing wouldn't work. That was frustrating. So much so that after I while I just decided that everyone around me was an idiot and there was no point trying to explain anything. All I needed to do was coldly direct people to do what I wanted.
Fortunately my site mate had the presence of mind to tell me to stop being an ass-hole to her villagers and explain what was going on. This was humbling, but she was right. What's the point of doing a bunch of development work if you're not going to get the people who are using it to understand what is happening? There isn't one.
And for those would-be engineers out there... remember this fundamental truth. Water is lazy. It prefers going down hill. I'm not sure if that bit of knowledge just isn't understood as well here, or if people think they can just will the unlikely into happening, or if people are just wearing really unevenly souled shoes... but the idea of laying pipe so that water would flow though it in the desired direction took a bit of talking through.
The true test of success for this project won't come for about a year though. The water for the pond will come from the rains in a few months. There is some concern that a berm that was put in around one end of the pond will limit the amount of water that will get to it. There is also a concern about water quality. This pond will be a very tempting place for women to come wash clothes and animals to come drink. The soap from clothes washing and manure from animals could saturate the stagnant water with nutrients, which could cause algal blooms, which would result in depleted oxygen levels in the water, which would result in a poor living environment for the fishes. Only time will truly tell.
Friday, March 12, 2010
My First Project or The Most Annoying Sound Ever or How I Found the Son of a Bitch
This entry is the story of my first funded PC project. Before I get too far though, I should preface with this background information... Last year in one of my grad school classes that was specifically designed to prepare for PC my professor walked into the room, turned on the projector, and put up a slide that said, "Every village has a son of a bitch. Your job is to find out who that person is.".
My first PC project is a combination of hand pump repair and soak pit construction. The hand pumps are India/Mali Mark II and are about 20 years old. I think they were put in back when the Malian government was involved in a massive pump installment campaign funded by the World Bank. There are four pumps in my village. One was broken when I arrived. One broke in January.
To paint a better picture, the hand pumps are really important for the village. Most people have a hand-dug well in their compound or nearby, but many of these wells go dry during the hot season. Also, these wells are not lined or protected from contamination, so the water from them is often not safe if not treated... which no one does here. The hand pumps go much deeper into the shallow aquifer in the area, thus providing a constant source of water throughout the year and the water at these pumps is also much safer to drink.
If you don't know what a soak pit is... its basically a big, covered hole that water drains to so that it can soak into the ground without being a nuisance to the public in the process. A lot of people do their laundry at the pumps, and there is always water spilled when people fill buckets, which results in large pools of standing water next to the pumps. The soak pits are being built to get rid of this water to help "clean up the streets". (For those of you who care, the "soak pits" for this project are actually small drain fields that use a sand backfill and perforated pipe because the soil in my area has consolidated clays and a high groundwater table.)
As I said, when I arrived in my village in September 2009 one of the pumps was already broken. When the second one broke in January 2010 the village and I decided to remedy the situation. After several meetings with key village members we came up with a plan. The village would pay to have a pump repairman come from Dioro to look at the pumps and provide an estimate of the cost for repairs. I would then write a grant proposal to PC for money to fix the pumps and buy materials for the soak pits. The village would contribute some money for the pumps and labor and materials for the soak pits.
When the pump repairman came in late January he was able to assess the situation pretty quickly. He was even able to fix the pump that had been broken since I had arrived. Turns out a $0.25 link for the pump chain was missing. The repairman fixed the problem on the spot. This is something the guy in my village that is in charge of the pumps (pump tigi) could have fixed on his own... but he didn't. I asked the repairman if he would disassemble the whole pump to make sure the actual water lifting mechanism (piston) was in good shape, but he told me that since the pump was now lifting water everything was fine. He didn't need to take everything apart.
Then, when it came time for the repairman to get paid the pump tigi told me to pay. I said that the village agreed to pay for this (meaning the pump tigi). After a bit of "back and forth" the pump tigi finally paid the repairman, but not before I was pretty annoyed.
After the repairman left I had more meetings with my village counterpart, the village chief, the pump tigi, and other key persons in the village. I laid out a plan for fixing the pumps, building the soak pits, and how we were going to pay for all of it. Everyone signed off so I went to Segou, wrote a project proposal, submitted it to PC, and waited for the funds to show up from USAID about five weeks later.
During the waiting period we had a little work to get done. The village agreed to contribute the rest of the money needed to pay for the pump repairs. They did not have the cash readily available for this. The plan was for my work counterpart and the pump tigi to go ask each household that used the pumps for money to pay for the repairs. I expected to encounter some problems with this, so for two weeks before the pump repairman was scheduled to come back I asked my counterpart if they had collected the money. At first the answer was "We'll collect it tomorrow". Then after a while the answer was "Yes"... for several days in a row.
A few days before the pump repairman was scheduled to return my counterpart told me the pump that had been fixed during the repairman's first visit was broken again. When I went to examine it, it felt as though part of the pump cylinder was broken... something the repairman did not look at during his first visit because "everything was fine". The next day I went to Segou to get the PC funds to buy pump parts and soak pit materials.
When I returned to village I discovered that some preliminary work that the pump tigi was supposed to have done before the repairman came back was not finished. This delayed the repairman's arrival by a day.
The day the repairman finally came started off well enough. It was a cloudy morning, so it stayed cool longer than usual. While waiting for the repairman to arrive I overheard my counterpart asking everyone he encountered for money to fix the pump. Obviously the money he said was on hand to pay the repairman was not, in fact, on hand. I didn't worry too much though as it has his problem for not collecting the money beforehand despite a two week barrage of interrogation by myself.
While waiting I also went all over town making sure things were ready and that all the pump parts were accounted for. (When we took the pump apart to look at it we never put it back together and stored everything at someone's house). I discovered that some important bolts were not with the rest of the parts. When I asked the pump tigi about these he told me I needed to buy new bolts. I asked where the old ones were, but got no answer. This conversation was cut short by the arrival of the repairman.
We quickly got to work and had the first pump working again in about an hour. Miraculously the pump tigi showed up with the bolts I had asked him about... I could tell that he had come from his house. My guess is he wanted to keep them for himself.
When we had finished work on the first pump I told the repairman that the pump he had previously fixed was broken again. He agreed to take a look at it, so we went across town and took it apart. We discovered that the pump cups inside the cylinder had come unscrewed (this is unusual). No parts had failed. They had just come undone.
After tightening everything up and putting everything back down the well borehole we discovered that the plunger was not going back down after being pumped. This was a problem. Solution: disassemble the entire pump for a second time, go to the exact place where we had tightened everything, and replace two rubber pump cups that were a little "stiff".
During this process the repairman had gotten grease all over his hands from the pump chain and I had to suggest to him that he wash off his hands before handling the internal parts of a pump that provides drinking water to lots of people. Some things are just not as obvious to some as they are to others.
When we had finished, the next logical step was for the village to pay the repairman (pump tigi's job). The pump tigi told me to pay. I said that the village had agreed to pay. The pump tigi told me that the village was getting all the sand needed for the soak pits and that paying the repairman was too much... that I should pay.
I had just heard the most annoying sound in the world. The sound of a man 50 years+ complaining and refusing to do what he agreed to. This may not sound like a big deal, but in a culture where most people are illiterate, your word is your contract, and this guy was breaking the terms of our deal and essentially telling me it was my fault.
After going back and forth with this (in front of the repairman) I realized I wasn't going to get anywhere and needed to seek a higher authority. We ended up at the chief's house and interrupted a meeting he was having. The pump tigi did all the talking. Parts of the conversation I didn't understand, but at first they wanted me to pay the repairman right then and the village would pay me back a few days later. I said no deal. I told my side of the story. The chief then told the pump tigi he had to pay the repairman.
It became clear to me that the pump tigi had not collected the money needed to pay the repairman and therefore was not able to pay. It was important for me not to give in at this point, so I simply sat down and chatted with the repairman while the pump tigi went door to door to collect the money.
I was annoyed and incredibly embarrassed. The pump repairman ended up having to wait for an hour to get paid. That's not cool.
Obviously, after all this transpired I was more than a little upset with the pump tigi. He had balked at every stage of the project and tried to get me to foot the bill for things twice. Later that same day he even had the nerve to tell me that the next time I went to Segou I need to buy him new sandals. He wears size 11 incidentally. Ladies and gentlemen... I have found my village's "son of a bitch".
The worst part is I know I have to work with this guy in the future. He is an important person in the village and my counterpart hangs out with him all the time. There is no way I can avoid dealing with him and because he is much older than me I can't "bust his chops" so to speak without causing more problems for myself. I talked to my counterpart about this and told him that he needs to intervene the next time something like this happens and he agreed.
But, the good news is everything worked out. The pumps got fixed. The repairman got paid. The village paid their share. I was able to show that I can't be bullied into just throwing money at the village's problems. And... I found the son of a bitch.
My first PC project is a combination of hand pump repair and soak pit construction. The hand pumps are India/Mali Mark II and are about 20 years old. I think they were put in back when the Malian government was involved in a massive pump installment campaign funded by the World Bank. There are four pumps in my village. One was broken when I arrived. One broke in January.
To paint a better picture, the hand pumps are really important for the village. Most people have a hand-dug well in their compound or nearby, but many of these wells go dry during the hot season. Also, these wells are not lined or protected from contamination, so the water from them is often not safe if not treated... which no one does here. The hand pumps go much deeper into the shallow aquifer in the area, thus providing a constant source of water throughout the year and the water at these pumps is also much safer to drink.
If you don't know what a soak pit is... its basically a big, covered hole that water drains to so that it can soak into the ground without being a nuisance to the public in the process. A lot of people do their laundry at the pumps, and there is always water spilled when people fill buckets, which results in large pools of standing water next to the pumps. The soak pits are being built to get rid of this water to help "clean up the streets". (For those of you who care, the "soak pits" for this project are actually small drain fields that use a sand backfill and perforated pipe because the soil in my area has consolidated clays and a high groundwater table.)
As I said, when I arrived in my village in September 2009 one of the pumps was already broken. When the second one broke in January 2010 the village and I decided to remedy the situation. After several meetings with key village members we came up with a plan. The village would pay to have a pump repairman come from Dioro to look at the pumps and provide an estimate of the cost for repairs. I would then write a grant proposal to PC for money to fix the pumps and buy materials for the soak pits. The village would contribute some money for the pumps and labor and materials for the soak pits.
When the pump repairman came in late January he was able to assess the situation pretty quickly. He was even able to fix the pump that had been broken since I had arrived. Turns out a $0.25 link for the pump chain was missing. The repairman fixed the problem on the spot. This is something the guy in my village that is in charge of the pumps (pump tigi) could have fixed on his own... but he didn't. I asked the repairman if he would disassemble the whole pump to make sure the actual water lifting mechanism (piston) was in good shape, but he told me that since the pump was now lifting water everything was fine. He didn't need to take everything apart.
Then, when it came time for the repairman to get paid the pump tigi told me to pay. I said that the village agreed to pay for this (meaning the pump tigi). After a bit of "back and forth" the pump tigi finally paid the repairman, but not before I was pretty annoyed.
After the repairman left I had more meetings with my village counterpart, the village chief, the pump tigi, and other key persons in the village. I laid out a plan for fixing the pumps, building the soak pits, and how we were going to pay for all of it. Everyone signed off so I went to Segou, wrote a project proposal, submitted it to PC, and waited for the funds to show up from USAID about five weeks later.
During the waiting period we had a little work to get done. The village agreed to contribute the rest of the money needed to pay for the pump repairs. They did not have the cash readily available for this. The plan was for my work counterpart and the pump tigi to go ask each household that used the pumps for money to pay for the repairs. I expected to encounter some problems with this, so for two weeks before the pump repairman was scheduled to come back I asked my counterpart if they had collected the money. At first the answer was "We'll collect it tomorrow". Then after a while the answer was "Yes"... for several days in a row.
A few days before the pump repairman was scheduled to return my counterpart told me the pump that had been fixed during the repairman's first visit was broken again. When I went to examine it, it felt as though part of the pump cylinder was broken... something the repairman did not look at during his first visit because "everything was fine". The next day I went to Segou to get the PC funds to buy pump parts and soak pit materials.
When I returned to village I discovered that some preliminary work that the pump tigi was supposed to have done before the repairman came back was not finished. This delayed the repairman's arrival by a day.
The day the repairman finally came started off well enough. It was a cloudy morning, so it stayed cool longer than usual. While waiting for the repairman to arrive I overheard my counterpart asking everyone he encountered for money to fix the pump. Obviously the money he said was on hand to pay the repairman was not, in fact, on hand. I didn't worry too much though as it has his problem for not collecting the money beforehand despite a two week barrage of interrogation by myself.
While waiting I also went all over town making sure things were ready and that all the pump parts were accounted for. (When we took the pump apart to look at it we never put it back together and stored everything at someone's house). I discovered that some important bolts were not with the rest of the parts. When I asked the pump tigi about these he told me I needed to buy new bolts. I asked where the old ones were, but got no answer. This conversation was cut short by the arrival of the repairman.
We quickly got to work and had the first pump working again in about an hour. Miraculously the pump tigi showed up with the bolts I had asked him about... I could tell that he had come from his house. My guess is he wanted to keep them for himself.
When we had finished work on the first pump I told the repairman that the pump he had previously fixed was broken again. He agreed to take a look at it, so we went across town and took it apart. We discovered that the pump cups inside the cylinder had come unscrewed (this is unusual). No parts had failed. They had just come undone.
After tightening everything up and putting everything back down the well borehole we discovered that the plunger was not going back down after being pumped. This was a problem. Solution: disassemble the entire pump for a second time, go to the exact place where we had tightened everything, and replace two rubber pump cups that were a little "stiff".
During this process the repairman had gotten grease all over his hands from the pump chain and I had to suggest to him that he wash off his hands before handling the internal parts of a pump that provides drinking water to lots of people. Some things are just not as obvious to some as they are to others.
When we had finished, the next logical step was for the village to pay the repairman (pump tigi's job). The pump tigi told me to pay. I said that the village had agreed to pay. The pump tigi told me that the village was getting all the sand needed for the soak pits and that paying the repairman was too much... that I should pay.
I had just heard the most annoying sound in the world. The sound of a man 50 years+ complaining and refusing to do what he agreed to. This may not sound like a big deal, but in a culture where most people are illiterate, your word is your contract, and this guy was breaking the terms of our deal and essentially telling me it was my fault.
After going back and forth with this (in front of the repairman) I realized I wasn't going to get anywhere and needed to seek a higher authority. We ended up at the chief's house and interrupted a meeting he was having. The pump tigi did all the talking. Parts of the conversation I didn't understand, but at first they wanted me to pay the repairman right then and the village would pay me back a few days later. I said no deal. I told my side of the story. The chief then told the pump tigi he had to pay the repairman.
It became clear to me that the pump tigi had not collected the money needed to pay the repairman and therefore was not able to pay. It was important for me not to give in at this point, so I simply sat down and chatted with the repairman while the pump tigi went door to door to collect the money.
I was annoyed and incredibly embarrassed. The pump repairman ended up having to wait for an hour to get paid. That's not cool.
Obviously, after all this transpired I was more than a little upset with the pump tigi. He had balked at every stage of the project and tried to get me to foot the bill for things twice. Later that same day he even had the nerve to tell me that the next time I went to Segou I need to buy him new sandals. He wears size 11 incidentally. Ladies and gentlemen... I have found my village's "son of a bitch".
The worst part is I know I have to work with this guy in the future. He is an important person in the village and my counterpart hangs out with him all the time. There is no way I can avoid dealing with him and because he is much older than me I can't "bust his chops" so to speak without causing more problems for myself. I talked to my counterpart about this and told him that he needs to intervene the next time something like this happens and he agreed.
But, the good news is everything worked out. The pumps got fixed. The repairman got paid. The village paid their share. I was able to show that I can't be bullied into just throwing money at the village's problems. And... I found the son of a bitch.
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