Water Development Projects

The woman in the picture below is digging in a dry stream bed located in Cameroon's northern panhandle.  She was one of many women who would walk down to the riverbed and dig a hole deep enough for the water began to seep into it.  They would then gently scoop out bit by bit with their calabas gourds (in her hand) and slowly fill up the larger ceramic containers (on the ground above the hole).

What was interesting about these painstaking efforts was that the presence of a new stainless steel pump that was located in the middle of the village.  The pump sat on a solid concrete platform and water flowed easily with a few turns of the handle.  But we rarely saw anyone use the pump, instead they would walk down to the river to dig.  When asked why the pump was seldom used, the most common reply was that the women and their families preferred the taste of the water from the riverbed over that from the shiny new pump.

I could easily understand this since.  I remember not wanting to drink the water whenever we visited my grandparents home.  Their water, to my young taste buds, was too warm and the mineral taste was a bit stronger than I was use to drinking.

My wife and I were spending some time in this village conducting research related to another water development project.  A couple years earlier a Peace Corps project built a series of small dams to create water-catchment areas to support local agricultural efforts.  The abundant standing water led to an outbreak of bilharzia (schistosomiasis) so the dams were destroyed and we were now there as part of a health project to monitor and treat the outbreak.

I am all in favor of projects to bring safe and abundant water to communities that need it.  But it is often worthwhile to learn from some of the projects that have not gone according to well-intentioned plans.  Perhaps no water project ever went awry as much as one that involved a UNICEF worker in southern Chad.

Ed was from the United States and had been a UNICEF worker for a few years.  One day he was excitedly putting the finishing touches on a simple PVC pipe water pump that he was going to install in a remote village.  He invited me to go along but I was busy with something else so my account of what happened is from a couple of Peace Corps volunteers who went with him.

Ed shows up to the village with his new contraption.  There are numerous villagers ready to volunteer to help install the new, reliable, and low cost pump.  Then apparently everything goes wrong and Ed gets really upset--I forget the exact details.  Anyway, to make a long story short, Ed ends up getting in his truck with nice big blue and white UNICEF symbols on the sides and tries to run over the villagers who had upset him.  Fortunately he didn't succeed, but unfortunately I do not have any photos from this wonderful "development" episode.

One Breast Curse on Kilimanjaro

My Toyota Land Cruiser was cursed by the left breast of an old Chagga woman while I was living on Kilimanjaro during the summer of 2002. 

I was living in the Marangu-Sembeti area with my wife and three young sons.  While she worked on her PhD dissertation, and the boys played soccer and argued in Swahili with local boys, I oversaw a dozen or so university students who were spending the summer living in several villages just below the National Park. Kilimanjaro National Park encompasses the mountain above 6,000' (below 9,000' having been part of the Forest Reserve).  Along the Park's boundary are approximately eighty Chagga villages.  The Chagga have lived on the mountain for four-hundred years and their access to the protected area and their relationship with the Park administration will hopefully be the subject of another post since this dynamic formed the core of our research on the mountain.

Several of us decided one day to see if we could drive around the entire mountain on a dirt road.  We had only driven for about thirty-minutes when we pulled over for some reason that I forget, and as most of the others were focused on something out the left side of our vehicle, my attention was taken by an older woman walking towards the front of the vehicle.  As she came closer I could hear her chanting as she took out her left breast and pointed it at me and squeezed it.  She, and her taunting breast, came up to my unrolled window and while still chanting she took out a one-hundred shilling coin from the folds of her skirt-wrap and reached in and placed the coin on the dashboard in front of me.  Fortunately, one student sitting behind me saw the entire episode and was able to provide a second witness to the rest of the party who had missed the entire affair.  We mused about it for a while and then continued on our journey.

An hour or so later several of the the leaf springs on the back right of the vehicle snapped in half.  Without the critical suspension part the back end of the vehicle sagged and created tremendous problems at any spead about a few miles per hour.  After examining the vehicle at length we drove slowly to the nearest village where we scoured the market for repair materials.  Several young men who saw our plight encouraged us to use strips of inner-tubes to wrap around the "lift-springy" to hold it.  We ignored this idea and found some heavy wire and after using two car jacks in opposing directions to compress the leaf springs we wrapped copious amounts of wire around them and it held quite nicely as we removed the two jacks.  But not wanting to push our luck we turned around and headed back home.  We only made it a few miles before the wire-wrap snapped.

After several long hours of driving back at only a few miles per hour we made it home long after dark.  The next day I took the Land Crusier to a local mechanic who told me I should have wrapped the leaf springs with the inner-tube straps.  He ordered some parts and while we waitied for them to arrive I drove around with the leaf-springs tightly held together by the rubber strips that the mechanic wrapped around them.

Lessons learned:

1. If cursed by an old breast and a 100 shilling coin turn around and go home.
2. If arrogantly ignoring lesson 1, then at least realize that inner-tube strips are rural Africa's version of duct-tape.

 Mbahe area looking towards Mawenzi (right) and Kibo (left)

Lunch with Jane Goodall

I arrived at Kilimanjaro Airport ("JRO" for airport code aficionados) early in the morning to catch the Air Tanzania flight to Dar es Salaam.  As I sat waiting for the flight Jane Goodall walked in and sat down.  "Excellent" I thought, "I get to fly on the same plane as Jane Goodall."  Little did I know that I was destined to spend a lot more time than a short flight with her.

Our plane was late.  Then it was even later.  Finally we were informed that our plane (one of three operated by Air Tanzania at the time) had taken off from Dar es Salaam and then engine problems forced it to quickly return where it had struggled to safely land.  So we all adjourned to the larger waiting room where I sat on a couch with Jane who was busy reading "The Poisonwood Bible."

Every so often someone would approach Jane for an autograph or a picture.  If an autograph she would borrow my pen (I was writing in my field book about sitting next to her) and if a picture she would hand me the camera while she stood up next to the person asking for the photo.  After a few of these interruptions I asked her if she minded being asked for photos and autographs.  She replied, "It seems to make them happy."

As the day wore on I was able to spend an hour or so eating lunch with Jane (provided by the airport).  And she was very interested in my students that regularly came to Tanzania.  During the previous ten years she had apparently spent no more than three weeks in any one place at a time as she tried to travel and speak about conservation as much as she could while she was still able.

Later in the day Jane sat outside under a tree reading.  Along with those of us trying to fly to Dar es Salaam where several dozen passengers who had planned to fly to Harare.  Their Air Tanzania flight had also been delayed in arriving from Dar es Salaam and when it finally arrived they departed out the door.  We heard the jet engines roar into flight and then a few minutes later most of the passengers came walking back in the door and rejoined us.  Apparently the pilot was concerned that too much fuel had been pumped into the plane and they were overweight so he flew off to Harare with a plane only half full of passengers.  The passengers who were bumped by the fuel were not amused.

There was hope that the regularly scheduled Air Ethiopia flight from Addis Ababa to Dar es Salaam via Kilimanjaro Airport would be able to take us.  But the authorities denied permission since this would technically be a "domestic" flight and Air Ethiopia was not licensed for domestic flights within Tanzania.  The Air Ethiopia flight arrived, many passengers deplaned, and then the flight took off for Dar es Salaam with many empty seats but none of us.  My collection of fellow passengers, who had all been at the airport for nearly twelve hours began to get much more agitated.  Our only hope now was the daily KLM flight from Amsterdam, but it was operating under the same "domestic" flight restrictions as had Air Ethiopia.

As the airport manager worked the phones on our behalf the would-be passengers crowded into his office.  Many of the people were frustrated and the room filled with the noise of angry voices.   Suddenly the room fell quite and the manager looked up and asked "How can I help you momma Goodall." Jane had walked back into the building and was standing in the door to the office.  She replied, "I just want to let you know how much I appreciate your efforts to help us."  She then turned and walked back outside to finish her book.  I have never felt anyone who had such a presence in my life.  Even after she left, the crowd in the room remained calm and relatively quite for the rest of our sojourn.

We eventually were allowed on the evening KLM flight and later that night I settled into my hotel bed in Dar es Salaam and realized how lucky I had been that Air Tanzania could not find a plane that worked.  I would be a day late arriving in Zanzibar, but it was a day with a woman I will never forget.

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Geography of Africa

Winter 2013