19th August: Springs, Schools & Special Occasions

At 8am this morning the troops emerged from their bunk beds; some with consciousness to follow a little later into the hour… We enjoyed a plentiful breakfast spread prepared by Ruth, Mark and family. In our daily evening meeting we spilt into groups for the days activities ahead. Both teams to visit the WATSAN offices; half to visit a gravity flow scheme project in a local village, going onto a beneficiary school for tea and the other half to hike down to a site for potential new gravity flow scheme project.

WATSAN Offices

It was great to see the WATSAN offices and become more familiar with the team & functioning of the projects. The team includes the soft work team (sanitation & hygiene), sustainability team, project managers & admin staff (finances & secretary). There is a really wonderful depth of faithfulness, humility & care for the work amongst the team; it is a real joy for us to see and experience.

Gravity Flow scheme

The team visiting the existing gravity flow scheme were taken round by Marius (sustainability officer). On a normal day he would be visiting existing projects, checking their maintenance & deploying needed improvements.

Alongside the gravity flow scheme physics & system, we learnt about some of the core values of WATSAN including community ownership, sustainability and the subtle but impactful ways in which the projects empower beneficiary communities to develop and gain agency for change. This included projects such as pooling funds to pay school fees etc. As a part of community project ownership we learnt that the beneficiaries will contribute to digging the trenches for the pipes. Amazingly the project we visited served over 2000 people, needing 17km of pipeline buried 3ft deep! Many beneficiary spokesmen have remarked on the benefit of unifying the community that the WATSAN projects bring. Differences aside - we all need water

A relaxed afternoon

Those with remaining energy reserves popped down into the town to explore the local shops. They returned with some new local phrases… Others took a welcome moment to sit & drink some tea and read a book.

Visit to Potential gravity flow scheme project site

Accompanied by Canon Eric, seven of us went to visit the site of a proposed gravity flow system (GFS) at Furuma. We expected quite a short walk, but it turned out to be a fairly challenging journey from the vans with lots of steep climbing and descending. There were three small water sources at the site, and a potential GFS could directly give 1,600 people in the valley access to clean water. Along with Ian and Canon Eric acting for WATSAN, the owner of the land, some local people and the MP for the area were also present. Once we’d viewed the site, there was a public negotiation between the owner of the land, Canon Eric and the local MP concerning how the project would be funded and how the work should be carried out. It was agreed that there would be a community buy in to the project, while WATSAN would fundraise for the remainder of the money. In total, 13km of pipes will need to be laid, in addition to the building the protection for the spring itself. It was incredibly interesting to see a project at its conception and to observe how WATSAN, Government representatives and local people work together on projects.

Dinner with the Bishop

During the evening we were hosted at the Bishop’s residence for an evening of speeches & food. By now we have become accustomed to individually introducing ourselves to the guests at dinner; this included a bit about who are and sharing a little about our lives. In return we enjoyed hearing the same from our hosts. The Bishop and guests did not let down! We enjoyed many stories from the Bishop; this included the tale of Idi Amin meeting the Queen… perhaps familiar to some? A special moment was the speech of thanks to Clair & the mother’s Union for their timely gift to the Mothers Union. We heard about how the local mothers union had lifted their plans for a new kitchen to the Lord only to later hear from Clair via email with an offer of support towards a project of their request. Overall a really special evening.

Thank you to Lydia + Henry for writing this blog