Its our last morning in Ndola with Seeds of Hope International Patnership (SHIP). This past week has been great. Almost everyday we've loaded in the van and visited communities around Ndola looking at their needs through the eyes of sanitation. We met so many wonderful Zambians and were always greeted warmly. The week gave us a chance to bond with Flavia and Obby the two SHIP staff who spearhead the hygiene and sanitation program. We are already missing Flavia and Obby as we prepare to leave for Livingstone. Our last post gave you a feel for village life in rural areas. Another type of community we visited were "compounds", unplanned urban settlements with increasingly dense populations. Compounds are quite large, often 50-65,000 people living in about a square mile or so. I wouldn't quite call them slums, but they're close. In my mind, an African slum has houses built of scraps of wood and plastic. In compounds people live in mud brick homes, most compounds we visited are located in lowland areas often near a seasonal marshland. During the dry season the water table drops a meter or so and allows gardening in the marshes which helps these families survive. The problem in compounds is that they are unplanned, that means no sewer system and no control on how dense the housing can become. Often as children grow-up and start having families, another little house springs up in the backyard and due to there being a taboo against using your inlaws latrine another latrine is built. Due to the lowland location the water table is quite high, often only a couple meters below the ground which means all latrines are dug into the ground water table. Some compounds have kiosks where clean water is piped in and available for about a penny per 5 gallons (20 liters), but many families dig hand dug wells a few meters down to get "free" water. However, as I learned in high school economics, there are "no free lunches" and this water comes with the high price of sickness since these wells are located a few meters from 1 or 2 latrines and the groundwater is badly contaminated. Its impossible to express the sadness Darcy and I felt when we watched children lowering their buckets down these holes. In the compounds there are no low cost sanitation solutions to the groundwater pollution that is occurring, that hurts too. Since they are unplanned communities the government has taken no initiative to build sewers. The solutions our classes taught apply best to rural settings where the population density is lower. There are two solutions that SHIP can offer to provide clean water. One is to drill deeper wells, which hopefully penetrate a deeper aquifer that is sealed off from the near surface aquifer and thus not contaminated. SHIP has two teams that are on the road every week drilling wells. The second solution is the production and distribution of biosand filters. CAWST , a Canadian NGO, developed the biosand filter, which is a hollow concrete box filled with sand that effectively filters water. Each filter is placed inside a home and can service that family plus a few neighbots. Lifewater is also educating partners how to construct these filters. Over the past couple of years SHIP has started distributing biosand filters in compounds as a way to purify household drinking water. Using these two methods changes are being made to people's health. Francis calls them "seeds of hope" since when a family is well its ability to make an income or grow crops is greatly increased. SHIP's biggest obstacles is distributing biosand filters. They have a well run production center where they can produce 2-5 concrete filters per day, however their is only one truck to distribute them and this is also the truck that is used to tow the 2 drilling rigs. Right now there are 100 biosand filters sitting in the yard waiting for distribution. If you'd like to help SHIP get a new vehicle contact them via their website.
