Bye Mzungu!

We headed to Ddegeya this morning, picked up a few groceries en route, and got to the clinic in the afternoon. The clinic is pretty quiet right now as it’s just John and us. Also, the kids haven’t quite discovered that we are here yet..so it has been exceptionally quiet. We checked out the solar system, which has been functioning pretty well. They now have a series of netbooks used to track patient records in various clinic rooms. There’s also a new vaccine refrigerator- from Sundancer, which is pretty big. John had already organized a meeting with the water board for us this afternoon. They all showed up early! Overall it was a pretty productive meeting. They started out by saying they really liked the existing system and definitely want to expand rainwater harvesting. At first they just said they wanted more tanks . We worked to convey our goals for the trip and expansion-design a system and dissemination model-and they seemed to catch on to the idea. So they started discussing cost cutting methods and ways for the community to contribute. John was really into the community contribution idea. However, the board quickly became fixated on brick tanks. They raised issues of durability with other design options. They spent a lot of time thinking about how to get people to donate bricks. We decided to go visit the tank from last summer and check it out and so the “Bye Mzungus” began. I love walking through Ddegeya, it’s gorgeous. Anyways, the tank is certainly very hefty. It’s used by about 6 families who are supposed to get 10L of water each per day for just drinking. They weren’t sure if this was the case and were discussing what to do with people who used the tanks more often. The only problems were that the gutters were sometimes crooked and also caught leaves. We decided to focus our efforts on developing a plan that they could own. It is interesting that some of our project manager’s predictions did come true-the community initially did want to just replicate the old model. However, we decided that last year’s system still makes sense. The community clearly trusts us more and is more willing to work with us on revising the plan. Shared tanks are definitely an option right now. We have daily meetings with the water board set up. Tomorrow morning the three of us will be working on really outlining rainwater options for the community. We’ll start with options for the tanks since the water board wants to sort that out before working on financing and ownership, issues they are very aware of now. Also, we realized that Michael is the most experienced member of MIT-EWB, traveling to Ddegeya for a record three times now.

There’s nothing quite like brushing your teeth outside under a starry sky with nothing but moonlight. Good night! (I love the early bedtimes here). Also-comment on blogs! It’s nice way to get feedback on the trip and know people are reading them!