Water and sanitation, practical pioneers - via the internet October 14, 2010

October 15th is blog action day and the topic is water.

What could I say about water?  I live in the UK. I have normal hot and cold running water. I haven't even got a power shower, dishwasher or fancy garden water feature - just simple household running water - nothing remarkable - just ordinary water - drinking water. What is there to say?

Ordinary? Drinking water? Running water? Drinking water running to my house? That's ordinary? The running drinking water that I have... that is normal?

Normal ... Water.. Drinking water.. Running water..  Running for water.. Fetching water.. Carting water..  Tom and water... In Kenya... The water shortage. The business he was trying to set up for the deaf boys that he helps - a business carting water. He needed money to build the hand carts.  We set aside one of our First Thursday online meetings in the chat room to discuss it. It wasn't a huge amount  of money he needed (but we have lots of friends from Africa coming to the chat room, and there are so many good reasons why people need extra money - one urgent need after another) We wondered if this could be a sustainable proposition - if it could be a request for a loan rather than a gift.

That's what the chat explored:  would carting water be a sustainable business for the deaf boys? It went into the details - right down to exact costs - cost of building the carts, the wages, profit margins and pay-back period. We even discussed the best kind of cart to build  - and why Tom didn't want to use the clever design on the Internet that was supposed to be the ideal solution.

That's what the blog should be about - I have the archive. It's a published google doc - "Kenya  - water problem and a local response" https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYl41estuotnZHZramdxbV8xMmZoZjltNGQ3&hl=en_GB  Tom called his water carts David and Goliath - and adopted the nickname Goliath for chat room chats.

The archive is unusually detailed - Tom Ochuka gives such precise local information. It would be good to see a photo of him There are a few taken during the post-election violence in 2008 when he was a peace activist. Here's the link http://phone4peace.blogspot.com/.

There is another brilliant story about Tom which is relevant to water and sanitation. It is "Tom, Ricardo and life saving learning through the Internet" and is about Tom in Kenya facing a local crisis about cholera, and Ricardo, in the UK finding an affordable practical solution. It includes Adam Hart Davies, a fundraising video for Water Aid made in a UK primary school and - the whole unlikely but true story is here http://learnbydoinguk.blogspot.com/2009/01/tom-ricardo-and-life-saving-learning.html
 
Water and sanitation are global issues - but issues that can be tackled on a small, personal scale. As the stories show  - when it comes to water and sanitation, we don't have to wait for the planners, politicians and middlemen to make a start on improving matters. We can work together on small scale projects, through collaboration and active problem solving.There is beauty in small and simple solutions, worked out in small groups, by people who are collaborating through the Internet. These pioneering projects bring small but real  improvements. They are small first steps - but steps  in the right direction and making a real difference. Of course the water carts aren't running water- but they do bring good water at a lower price (and livelihood opportunities for people who have no social security safety net). A pit latrine isn't a flush toilet, but it can reduce the incidence of cholera. These improvements were achieved with minimum expenditure, by friends who have never met,  linking together across thousands of miles to "rub minds" and take practical action together. The challenges are enormous, but with new opportunities to communicate with each other we have the chance to move things forward in ways we have never been able to do before. That is good news, and appropriate news, for blog action day.

Pamela McLean - http://www.dadamac.net/about/pam
Email pamela.mclean@dadamac.net
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