Life’s not all Daisies and Hotdogs

Every problem is an opportunity in disguise.

John Adams

There was understandable excitement in the village of Ola Nagele when water started flowing into the large, black tank sitting atop its newly constructed wooden base. People had a nearby source of clean water; true, they had to collect it in the ubiquitous 20-liter yellow jerry cans and haul it back to their meager homes, but the trip was now one of meters, not kilometers.

Connecting to the municipal water line with a large buffer tank was a low cost, low tech, locally appropriate solution to the village’s water problems. Much of the cost of the tank and piping was provided by village sponsors and donors through Global Hope Network International. But, as the water came from the municipal system in Isiolo Town, there was a charge and the bill had to be paid monthly for this solution to be sustainable. The village water committee’s decision was to have each person drawing water from the tank pay a small fee, just a few Kenyan shillings, an amount of about 5 cents. The committee would then arrange to pay the bill on behalf of the village each month.

And thus, it was settled. Or was it?

Not long after everything was in place, the base collapsed. The tank, which, if just half-full of water, would have weighed 5,500 pounds, crashed to the ground, splitting asunder as it came to the dramatic and disheartening end to its all-too-short useful life.

A setback for the village

The tank was, without doubt, destroyed. The villagers? Dismayed, dispirited, despondent, distressed, disenchanted, disillusioned? How could they not be? During my 2011 visit to the area, after this setback, I met Priscila, an intern with GHNI and collecting data for her thesis work. She summed up the difficult life people in the villages faced this way: “Life’s not all daisies and hotdogs.” No ma’am, it certainly is not.

But there’s this thing:
Visits to Africa have allowed me to experience a variety of mishaps, one of serious significance, others not so much except for the magnifying effect of being in Africa, where I am at home about as much as a tuxedo at a square dance. I try achieving an appearance not reflecting internal turmoil. It is easier to pull this off as my African companions invariably exude calm. About the only evidence that something has happened is their smooth, easy shift from what was engaging us before to attention to the calamity at hand. The calmness is only surpassed by their problem-solving abilities; by themselves or with the help of “bystanders,” people not connected with our mission but who gather to help to set things straight. At times the “African Swiss army knife,” the ubiquitous mobile phone, is used to call in reinforcements.

Not being there, I cannot say for sure how things evolved, but the result tells me it was not much different for the calamity of the collapsing tank than for the lesser inconveniences I had seen incurred, attacked, and dealt with. First, GHNI and the water committee sought the cause of the collapse; it seemed the rather small, round poles used to support the base upon which the tank sat were too easily pushed into the soil; since not all the poles sank at the same rate, the base tilted until the tank, leaning beyond the point of no return, toppled to the ground.

It’s never good to have problems and for sure a big one in a place where every day is full of them. But, once done, it is best to extract as much benefit from them as you can. In this case, the village, GHNI, and local experts in the town identified the problem, determined an appropriate solution and executed the new, robust design in the dry soil of Ola Nagele.

   

A strong concrete platform atop rebar reinforced pillars sitting on deep, sturdy footings

New base, new tank and a new day for Ola Nagele

 Once again, and this time for good, water flowed into the village. Life’s not ALL daisies and hotdogs. But there are those special days …

When I arrived in Ola Nagele in 2011, the new tank was serving the village well; so well, in fact, that work had started on laying pipe from it to the location of a second tank. Some had already been put down with about 200 yards to go to bring it to the site identified for the new tank.

It was sunny, hot, and dry in the village. We walked along the road, wispy clouds of dust marking our footfalls. It seemed even the parched soil could not muster the energy to rise much above our shoe tops. It does rain in Ola Nagel. Not so often, though, and it is not unusual for what rain that does fall to come in on a brief, intense storm. We experienced this during our visit. The ground turns to mud - until the sun comes out and quickly bakes it back into the more familiar hard, cracked surface. 

Road in Ola Nagele

Occasionally muddy, it is most often this hard, dry, sun baked surface

We arrived to find the water engineer, retained by GHNI to handle a few of the technical details, busily engaged in preparing piping in anticipation of completion of the shallow trench. In the pictures below he is making a joint by heating the end of a pipe section; when it gets soft, he gently inserts a short section of pipe, prepared just for this purpose, expanding the warmed plastic to just the right size for it to fit over end of pipe already in the trench. Low cost, low tech, locally appropriate …

Preparing pipes with a small fire and homemade “joint sizer”

There were several people at the site when we arrived, but only the water engineer was busy. After introductions, Wubshet provided us a brief review of the project to date and expectations for the day. A group of men were to be here to continue digging the trench though that had obviously not happened yet. Wubshet and Habiba had conversations with a few of the women from the village and we waited. Eventually, a group of eight to ten men carrying rough made and well used digging implements arrived, but stopped short of coming all the way to where Wubshet was waiting.

So, Wubshet walked across the short distance and engaged the men in what would turn out to be about a 30-minute discussion. When he came back to where we were waiting, he explained that the men had said they needed to be paid for the work. They would normally go into town to get work, they told him, and what they made in a day was what they would have for food for their families the next. I cannot imagine this was news to Wubshet, but he engaged them in a negotiation, starting off by reminding them that the materials and the water engineer had been provided for water for THEIR village; and, the village had an obligation to participate as they were able. The question of how long the project would take them came up and, eventually, all agreed it would be a two-day job.

With that settled, Wubshet offered to provide them with the equivalent of one-day’s pay for the two days’ work. The men agreed.

Now, as this was going on, one of the women from the village picked up a shovel and started to dig. I cannot say for sure, of course, but I do believe she was sending a message ...

Digging at the trench ... and sending a message?

Soon the men were hard at it, making good progress towards the target of a second tank making water more easily available to all parts of the village.

Hard work it is, digging in the hard, dry soil under a cloudless sky

 A good portion of the trench was dug before the end of my visit and some of that saw the piping laid and backfilled.

The water engineer laid in the pipe as the trench was dug.

Later, the men filled the trench to finish up

 During the months after I returned home, the project was completed with celebration of a second tank in the northern part of the village and a plan to keep the village in clean water. Ola Nagele had found the opportunity in the problem, making a big step forward in their journey to a sustainable, self-determined future.

Coming up next: It's Complicated