Water Works

A Canadian group helps map much-needed water in Malawi.

The communal tap in the malawi village where Owen Scott was staying was somewhat unreliable. Some days the water flowed flawlessly, others it shut off completely. Diagnosing the problem wasn’t easy—could be that a pipe in the system was broken, or lack of rain meant the volume in the reservoir was low. The only option was to pump water from the nearest borehole—a tubular hole drilled down deep to access groundwater, a common source of safe drinking water in the developing world. But the ‘nearby’ borehole was actually a kilometre away over rough mountainous terrain. “I remember one night the water went out when all the women in the village were cooking. You saw this caravan of women walking down the steep, rock-covered terrain, then a big lineup at the borehole, then coming back up the mountain in the dark.” That one trip, he says, netted each woman about 20 litres of water—enough for a bit of cooking and washing, but it took enormous time and energy to get. “It doesn’t go far,” he says, and when clean water is scarce it’s used sparingly and things like hand-washing are sacrificed.

As it turns out that’s quite a problem—washing hands, preferably with soap, is widely hailed by public health experts as a major deterrent to many illnesses plaguing developing countries: typhoid, cholera, diarrhea (a top child killer), eye and skin infections and influenza. One gram of human feces, says The Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing with Soap (which launched Handwashing Day in 2008) can have up to one million bacteria and 10 million viruses, germs swallowed by unsuspecting people who have little means to keep hands clean.

Access to clean water is a big issue for many in Malawi, a small country in sub-Saharan Africa where almost 85 percent of people live rurally. Yet changing this reality is absolutely doable, says Scott, who’s there as a volunteer with Engineers Without Borders (EWB). He’s not in Malawi to drill new wells or boreholes, though, but rather to help develop a viable system of water management and oversight. “Initially we were working with implementers, people building water systems. But we started to notice two recurring challenges. One was sustainability of infrastructure—at any time in Malawi, about 30 percent of water infrastructure is non-functional, and there are few people addressing that.” The other was its inequitable installation across the country, either due to poor planning or because systems are often installed for political reasons. Some regions, says Scott, have good access to water; others have little and are consistently ignored.

To address the two issues—sustainability and fair distribution of systems—last year EWB and WaterAid, a top water NGO based in the United Kingdom, teamed up to launch a pilot project in Machinga, one of Malawi’s 28 districts, to catalogue and map the existence and functionality of every one of its ‘water points.’ A water point is classified as a source that’s accessible to a community, and in Malawi it’s supposed to be maintained at the district and local level. Though each district has a Water Development Office, oversight is hampered across the country by a dearth of money, trained staff (water officers) and a proper protocol to monitor systems on an ongoing basis.

Most people in Malawi get clean water through one of three options: a drilled borehole; a piped-in system that retrieves water from a spring, river or reservoir, and runs it to village taps; or a well that accesses below-ground water, and are either hand-dug or drilled. “Groundwater sources are more reliable in Africa than surface water (ones),” says Vincent Casey of WaterAid, because the water moves through layers of soil and rock that naturally filter out microbes. Water in wells and boreholes doesn’t evaporate during the dry season, and both can be installed close by—so people have access to larger quantities, without having to walk distances to get it.

Creating viable and sustainable supplies is vital to Malawi’s—indeed all of Africa’s—progress, says Casey; their existence has a huge impact on productivity. If people have to spend hours fetching water, they don’t have time or energy to work their fields, go to school or take care of a family’s other needs. A nearby, safe supply means less time lost to waterborne illnesses and more time engaged in economic activities. But proper construction is necessary to making them viable, and repair and upkeep is essential. Hand-dug shallow wells (as opposed to deep or drilled ones), which are common in Malawi, can be problematic because people often install them on their own, cutting corners if they don’t have the proper supplies. Many, for example, don’t include a concrete well-fitted cover to block out contaminates.    

The lack of upkeep is now of great concern when water in Africa is debated. According to a 2009 report by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), while thousands of wells and boreholes are drilled across the continent every year, up to 50,000 are deemed dysfunctional, representing a loss of roughly $300 million. When a system breaks down—and it’s often just a pump needing replacement—both parts and mechanics are sparse and systems can sit for months or years in disuse. The IIED says there’s simply “no rationale for rushing” to install new supplies in Africa without addressing how they’ll be maintained and supervised.

In Malawi, WaterAid admits its focus is more on rehabilitating existing supplies than on building new ones. The mapping project with EWB will help set up a bureaucratic protocol that allows districts to determine when a system needs repair, or a new one is required to service a population. In fact, it’s WaterAid’s second attempt at doing so in Malawi: in 2002, it initiated a similar effort using geographical information system (GIS) software, which proved too much to master and ultimately unsustainable. This time, low-tech is key.

In Machinga, the pilot district, every water point was geographically pinpointed, then rated as functional or non-functional. The data were collected by simple surveys and logged onto an Excel spreadsheet, an easily updatable tool. The spreadsheet is linked to a table that calculates water coverage rates by subdivisions in a district; with the click of a button, the table is translated into a colour-coded map, depicting how much access to clean water in a subdivision. (The program was designed by another Canadian EWB volunteer.) Anybody can input data on a spreadsheet, says Scott, and it only takes a few hours to learn the graphic application. 

Most compelling is the simplicity of how the data are collected: districts already employ health surveillance assistants (HSAs) who go door to door every few months in assigned areas gathering information on a range of issues. While water usage is already part of their survey, a form on functionality was added—effectively creating a sustainable and updateable option for data-gathering.

With the pilot phase completed, mapping is underway in other districts. Edwin Mchirikizo, the water development officer for the District of Chikwawa, says “just by looking at a map we see which areas are in dire need of water, so when NGOs come in we are able to direct them.” While Malawi does have a national water policy—guidelines set one shallow well for 125 people; one borehole for 250—how access is calibrated is questionable. The government puts the percentage of the rural population (the majority of Malawians) with access to drinking water at 80 percent, since it includes all water points in its calculation, whether functional or not. EWB and WaterAid, who only include functional points, put it at about 50. Yet as the computer program can cross-reference points in a district with its total population, a clearer picture of access is bound to result. So far, mapping in Chikwawa has identified 50 boreholes in need of repair, says Scott. (Local committees are being formed to address the issue of oversight and repairs, the next step in the process.)

Mapping will also mean decisions can be based only on need. “A former cabinet minister came for support to drill boreholes in his constituency,” says Amos Chigwenembe of WaterAid’s Malawi office. “We responded by pulling out a map depicting distribution of facilities in his district”—far more than in his opponent’s. At which point he returned to his constituents with the happy news of his hard work.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 18th, 2011 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Travel Cares. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.