January 12, 2010 - Ddegeya

We had some more conversation with John and the other Engeye staff this morning, just to throw around ideas about the workshop. At the end, we have decided that it makes more sense to approach about three or four households who either are involved with the clinic (e.g. Eddie, Peter), or live near the clinic, such that the post-trip follow-up will be more tractable. For the workshop, we also plan just to hold it for these selected households to sketch out the water treatment options available, and gauge their interest in any particular technology. Since materials (sand, etc.) are pretty heavy to carry, we will probably visit the different households individually, carry the components (sand, gravels) with us, and work together with them in the household to build the prototype (they will still be the ones doing most of the assembling).
As for the 14 households we have already visited and mentioned about the workshop, it would look bad if we did not follow through with our "promise" of some sort of workshop. Joseph is of the opinion that these households would not mind if the idea of workshop were not followed through. However, in the case our separate prototyping with the other selected households are successful, we can then revisit these 14 households again, describing our workshop technologies to them and asking about their opinions on whether they would be interested in these if we were to implement them in the future (in the manner of another survey). This would also allow us to take some water samples from the households for testing (which we have not done in our initial survey so far), and possibly allow Kevin to conduct a PSC survey on Tish's behalf (on a variety of intermediate technologies, of which our water treatment is a subclass).

We found that due to the rain yesterday, the sand pile was still wet, so we could not do any sieving this morning. Instead, we performed a run of SODIS, using two big and two small plastic bottles. We gathered water from BH4 and from P1 into each of a big-small bottle pair, left those on the south side of the sleeping quarter's corrugated roof (thanks to Mike), and would see what happens (e.g. by colifirm count).

We then operated on a cardboard box to make a simple solar-based water pasteurizer. This was not overly complicated, mainly involving cutting the cardboard box to the right dimension, and layering the interior and flaps with Al foil. The intended container of water treatment is a 5 L jerry can, which we painted black using the black paint we got in Masaka on Sunday. The jerry can was left to dry in the sun. The black paint was awful---it was not water soluble; Kevin got a lot on his hands and spent about 30 minutes washing those off, with water, soap, sponge, and then finally some paint thinner.

We then made a turbidity measurement of the water from P1, P2, and BH4 using a turbidity tube. The results, though somewhat surprising, are given as follows:
P1 (Nalongo): less than 5 NTU
BH4 (Nalongo): less than 5 NTU
P2 (bamboo forest): about 10 NTU --- the sight is mainly obscured by floating hair-like algae.

We noted that after the heavy rain yesterday, the water-gathering traffic was reduced significantly. It would be useful if we could spend a day quantifying the water-gathering data, such as the sphere of influence of Nalongo (or the other sources such as BH6/P3). But this will take time and is something we might attempt only after the more important stuff (e.g. workshop, boreholes) has been carried through satisfactorily.

In the afternoon, we started sifting the sand again, which by this time was adequately dry. However, the little remaining wetness in the sand meant a slow and painful process. Joseph was supposed to show up at 3 p.m. or so to accompany us to the selected households. However, according to Francis, Joseph felt unwell today, so we asked Francis to accompany us. We first visited the house of Njagala Bendicto. The family collects water from Nalongo (about 5 jerry cans per day), and drinks about 20 L per day. Drinking is via both tea and plain water. Water is boiled using firewood, gathered at the family's forest. The family will be able to make the workshop tomorrow at 4 p.m.

The second family is that of Namagemse Jokieria, which has 5 people, including 1 child. The family uses about 6 jerry cans of water from Nalongo, 5 L of which is for drinking, 20 L, cooking food, and 20 L, washing utensils. The family drinks both tea and plain water. Drinking water is boiled using firewood, which is bought. The family will also be able to make the workshop tomorrow at 4 p.m.

We dropped by Eddie's house, but no one was at home, so we left Francis to pass the message onto Eddie. Francis would also want us to visit Peter's house tomorrow as the fourth household for workshop.

While we were moving around with Francis, Francis got a mobile phone call from John, informing us that two people have shown up for the "workshop" today. While during our previous interviews, we told the households that John would reconfirm the workshop time, our expectation was that the workshop would be held on Tuesday, and Joseph apparently acted on this expectation in his translation/communications. We told John to tell these visitors that the workshop will take place tomorrow. If more people than the four selected households show up, we will simply have to explain to them that we are limiting the prototype tests to those who live closest to the clinic (we simply do not have enough materials to build one for every house), though these people are welcome to stay and watch.

Having gotten back to the clinic, we discovered another pile of sand that John purchased for us (we have been using a wrong pile). We first tested the old sand (from the wrong pile) by building a toy model of the slow sand filter in a 1.5-L Rwanzori mineral water bottle (with the top cut off and holes punched into the base). We piled about 0.5 cm of gravel to the bottom before heaping about 5 cm of unwashed sand to the top. The water that passed through came out much more turbid than expected. The flow rate was about 1.5 L for 8 minutes, which was satisfactory.
We then got some sand from the new pile and washed it under BH4's water 8 times, until the sand-water suspension became much more transparent. We then built a toy model using this fine sand. The first 1.5 L, which took about 5.5 minutes to fill, was still dissapointingly turbid. However, the subsequent water became much less turbid. We kept the filter running for about 8 L of water, with flow rate of about 5.5-6 minutes per 1.5 L. This seemed a much better outcome. We also tested the turbidity of the water. The original water (from a blue rain-collecting drum with somewhat dirty-looking water) had a turbidity of around 7 NTU. The first passage through the sand filter yielded water with turbidity of around 20 NTU. Subsequent passages lowered the turbidity to around 10-15 NTU. Since we did this test upon sunset, we were uncertain whether or not gradually diminishing lighting could have affected our measurements.

Kevin finally remembered to pay John for the sand and the gravel today (totaling 250,000 UGX). For some reason, the clinic did not collect a lot of electricity from the sun today (even though the morning and parts of the afternoon were relatively sunny, and it did not rain), so in the evening we had to cut back our electricity use, walking about in our headlamps. Some people were trying to do some acrobatics on the front porch. Eddie and Dora wanted to learn Chinese from Kevin; when asked why, they said that it is so that they could watch and understand kung fu movies a little better. We learnt how to pronounce water ("amazzi" in Luganda) carefully (which sounds very similar to the Luganda word for feces). The phrase of the day is "Amazzi bwe bulamu", which means that "water is life". A scouting party was sent out to get some drinks, as usual, and dinner was had at about 9:30 p.m., with some usual fares plus some sensational pastegetti with tomatoes.