January 25, 2010 - Ddegeya

This morning was a rare sunny day, and as a result, we set out the solar cooker tests for the final time---using Kevin's EasyLid box model as well as the cooker that Jawadu's family helped putting together yesterday. The WAPIs this time were inserted right side up. By the afternoon, both WAPIs melted successfully and fell to the bottom. The water was patently too hot to touch. This is certainly an encouraging sign, and an indication of the possibility that the solar cooker might work in the sunnier dry season.

In the morning, Dave and Kevin walked over to Joseph's home with buckets and sieves, attempting to repair the damaged sand filter, while Mike unsuccessfully looked for a second carjack. First we took everything out---much of the sand had indeed become intermixed with the gravel to a deep level, perhaps because the sand we used was somewhat fine. Given this information, we are not sure about the lifetime of the sand filter before the same sort of thing happens again. This is something that we will have to play by ear and find out later. Fortunately, as described below, the overhaul maintenance is actually not as complicated as we imagined it would be.

Having removed as much fine sand into a bucket as we could, we started loading the small gravel-sand mixture onto the sieve with small pores bought in Masaka. Then we loaded the bottomost mixture of large gravel, small gravel, and sand onto a sieve with larger pores. Water, gathered from BH1, was poured over both sieves and could be reused. We also poured water from the effluent pipe, just to wash the sand accumulating in the pipe. Then we put everything back together and started feeding water from BH1 through it. The flow rate was restored. At first the water was yellowish in colour (though transparent), then clearing up significantly (though perhaps not perfect---we washed everything in the much cloudier BH1 water, and it might take much longer for the filter to start working properly). Finally, we moved back the filter into Joseph's home again, declaring it ready to use. The whole repair process took about 3 hours. Dora said farewell to us and gave Kevin a list of phrases to write down in Chinese before we left.

In the afternoon, Mike and Dave cleaned up most of the engineering mess in the backyard. Kevin went with Joseph to visit another brickmaker down in the valley quite near the Nalongo. However, having waited for about 20 minutes with no one showing up, we decided to give up and maybe come back later. According to Joseph, the bricks made here are higher quality, but the final product still sells for about 60 shillings apiece. We saw large piles of firewood in the slope above the stacks of drying bricks. When the time comes, this firewood will be intercalated with the brick stacks and set alight.

Then, Kevin took a boda boda to Kinoni to look for some sawdust. Having visited two carpenter shops, he found what he was looking for near the other end of Kinoni. The asking price was 2000 UGX/kg, and Kevin bargained a bagful down to 500 UGX. We will be unable to do any tests within the remaining time in Ddegeya, but we will try to bring back clay bricks and sawdust. He also brought back Dave's sought-after rolex (egg on chapati bread).

After a gigantic rain, Dave, Mike, and Kevin set out to look for the elusive MTN airtime. Having visited about 10 stores, we finally gathered about 20000 UGX worth of airtime for Dave, Monica, and Kevin. We must have almost exhausted Ddegeya's supply of MTN airtime cards.

In the evening, we showed Monica and Joseph how to conduct the two tests on Biosand filter (flow rate and bacterial counts). We have trust that Tom/Monica will follow through with the Biosand filter left at the clinic. We also left many Petrifilms to Joseph and asked him to bring plated samples to the clinic, which he visits every day.

After nightfall, we had a long chat with John regarding the future prospects of EWB's project. John seemed to want to distance himself from the community involvement aspect---which is understandable since his primary concern is on the Engeye clinic. We also agreed that the community's most immediate need is not necessary on water purification via filtering or solar pasteurisation techniques, but rather on the supply of adequate water. As an anecdotal note, while repairing Joseph's filter this morning, Kevin went with a 20 L jerry can to BH1 to fill water. It took him 6 minutes to fill about two-thirds of the jerry can. After about every 40 strokes, he had to wait for half a minute or so for the water to fill up. Despite the slow rate, there was a long line-up at the borehole nonetheless. This indicates that many villagers appear willing to wait for a long time for higher quality water, though this waiting time can be significantly cut down if new BHs can be drilled/digged. We asked about the price of digging a BH, and John gave us an estimate that BH4 took 4,000,000 UGX for the entire thing---labour, supplies, etc. He also gave an estimate for the price of the rainwater roof gutter as about 5000 UGX/7 ft, which is much cheaper than the price we asked in Masaka (9500 UGX/7 ft). I am closing now since the computer is almost out of power supply (and we are leaving Ddegeya hopefully in 3 hours, after doing some wrapping-up business with Joseph), but we will certainly have a lot more to discuss with MIT-EWB when we get back, in light of what we have seen and learnt.