Trip builds foundation for African water project

Fri, May 29, 2009 |

A team of Valparaiso University students recently returned from a 10-day trip to Tanzania, where they launched what will be at least a five-year relationship with a village facing health and land degradation due to problems with its water canal system.

Alex Williams, president of Valpo's chapter of Engineers Without Borders and a junior civil engineering major from Fargo, N.D., traveled with seven other students and an engineering professor to the village of Masaera, where they assessed the scope of the project and sought to gain the support of its people.

"It was important to learn about the physical problems of the village's water canal but it was more valuable to learn about the culture and the real root of the problem, which is entirely social," Williams said. "It was essential to establish a relationship with the people of Masaera before starting any work. Africa has the 'aid bug,' as one of the villagers put it, and we want to help the community become as autonomous as it was before it had any western influence."

Tim Staub, a junior civil engineering major from Davenport, Iowa, said he and other students began their work by meeting with village leaders and members of its water council. Community leaders then took the team to the source of the water canal – built 75 years ago – to view the extreme erosion and leaks in the canal.

"The next day we had a meeting with the village where we told them why we were there and what our expectations and goals were, and they shared their own expectations and goals," Staub said. "The meeting was very exciting for us because the villagers expressed many of same ideas and opinions we had."

During their assessment trip to Masaera (located in northern Tanzania near Mount Kilimanjaro), Valpo's team mapped the canal area and conducted surveys to collect information on water quality, flow rate, canal breaches and other information necessary to develop sustainable solutions for the village's water problems. Students also worked with translators to ask villagers about their water supply, health, sanitation and culture to gain better overall understanding of the community's needs.

"The canal is the source of many problems in the village," Williams said. "Prior to our trip, we understood that no one was drinking from the irrigation canal, but we learned through our surveys that a majority of the people are drinking directly from the canal."

Increasing the village's supply of drinking and irrigation water and improving its quality isn't an overly complex task for Valpo's EWB chapter to tackle, Williams said. It will involve some major repairs to increase the flow through the canal during the dry season, as well as adding simple filtration or settling systems to improve water quality.

But the chapter wants to do more than simply fix the canal.

"The most complex aspect of this project will be in educating the villagers on how to maintain the canal and their health without outside aid," Williams said. "One of our main goals will be to instill a sense of community ownership of the canal."

Over the next year, Valpo's Engineers Without Borders chapter will research the best designs for improving the canal and create an educational program so the community is prepared to maintain the canal network themselves.

Valpo's chapter will return to Masaera next May to begin implementing its canal improvement plan and education program, but Staub noted that the chapter already showed villagers some problems that they can begin fixing themselves over the coming year.

While students are drawn to EWB because of the opportunity to help communities improve their quality of life, junior Laurin-Whitney Gottbrath said talking to community members gave her a new appreciation for everything that comes into one's life.

"My favorite day in Masaera was when we split up in groups and went around from house to house to learn about the demographics of the village," said the television-radio communication major from Louisville. "When we were at each home, the villagers were so appreciative that we were there and so proud of their homes and land. Despite maybe having dirt floors, or barely any furniture in their homes, you could tell that they took the time to take care of everything they had."

Masaera is the second community in Africa that Valpo's EWB chapter has worked with. In 2008, the chapter completed a five-year project constructing drinking and irrigation water systems for the village of Nakor in Kenya. As a result of the project, the rate of waterborne illnesses in Nakor has dropped substantially and the problem of chronic malnourishment in the village has eased.

EWB-VU was the first university chapter to begin a project in Kenya and it was named a Friend of Kenya by the country's ambassador last year. Valpo's chapter won the Engineers Without Borders-USA Educational Achievement Award in 2005 and members have presented information about its Nakor project at several conferences, including the World Education Colloquium in Rio de Janeiro.