We woke up to a rainy oddly quiet morning in Ddegeya -which certainly met my sad mood of leaving- got some soil samples, did some soil testing, collected bricks, gathered our things, and headed out.
Phew, what a trip. Coming into this trip I was nervous and as the week went on I got significantly more nervous. Things have gone up and down throughout this trip, but we pulled through and I’m really excited for the next stages of the project.
So to recap. The main goals of this trip were to work with Ddegeya and the water board to: develop a plan for increasing access to water, decide on rainwater catchment and on what scale, set up a system of project management within the community, decide on the design parameters of the system, and understand the cultural and social parameters that may affect the project. Surprisingly, I think we actually accomplished most of this and have good stepping stones to move forward on.
Going into our last meeting with the board last night-Daphne and I were neeerrvous. Well, Daphne was scared because she had to do most of the talking and my palms were certainly sweaty. We finished modeling various rainwater systems the night before, revised our rainwater model that morning, and spent the day, I’d say, banging our heads against a wall to piece together a coherent solid story for EWB. We decided how to present the prices, went over our agenda like a 100 times, woke Tess up at 5am to discuss the plan, and Daphne went out to meet with a few people beforehand to explain the goals.
Anyways, the meeting ended up going very smoothly. Turns out the modeling we did proved to be very useful in conveying a more concrete, no pun intended, image of what the various options would look like. Concerns about how some in the community viewed us as donors were discussed and the board decided to use our models to help further establish the partnership idea. Looking at prices and scale models of the individual versus community options, the board decided that communal systems made much more sense. Some questions were raised about whether people could afford individual tanks etc..it was interesting to see how the board worked through some of this. We decided on a cost effective communal tanks for 6 families each. The board members will be meeting with each cluster to set up the collection of resources and funds. We conveyed the need to do more R&D on the cost effective model and that the August trip will likely be a lot of prototyping and potential start of construction. They understood this completely and the need for Ddegeya to offer its ideas in making things cheaper. They were totally cool with the need for construction to continue until January. We agreed on a set of assignments for us and them (us –technical, them-setting up the clusters). I do believe we now have a contract with Ddegeya.
After they left, man were we all on a high-grins ear to ear etc. So to celebrate we hung out playing chess, checkers, and went out for roll eggs and sodas. I could let them off the hook completely, so we met that night to debrief and discuss the next steps moving forward. Mostly, the engineering challenge begins now that we have the design parameters set. Fun times!
Michael and I fly out tonight (him back to NYC and me to Switzerland). Thank you to Daphne and Michael for making this such a fun and successful trip. Daphne did an amazing job taking these complicated concepts, breaking them down, and communicating them to Ddegeya in a language that’s not even her native one. Michael was a phenomenal mentor, taught us both a lot, and really helped guide us in the right direction. It’s been a great week and I’ve really enjoyed working with you both and hanging out.
Now, let the real fun begin!
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