Firing the Blog Up Again

    I suppose there's only one way to end my year-long hiatus from blogging: jump right in and throw in lots of pictures.
  Right now I'm in the picturesque and  bustling capital of Vanuatu, Port Vila. I've been enjoying the modern amenities for the past week while scrambling to get around town and find all of the pipe and other materials for our water and sanitation project back on Maewo.

  I just hopped on one of those mini-buses coming back from the chaotic scene at Star Wharf, where I joined the throng to get one last tow sack full of pipe fittings onto a ship, along with another sack full of groceries to hold me over for the next three months before I leave Maewo again.

  With everything on board and the freight paid for I can finally relax, thankful that I'm flying home to Maewo tomorrow and not accompanying my things up through the archipelago on the ship like many locals do. It would be a much cheaper option, but there are no actual accommodations on these freighters-- passengers just have to post up wherever they can, and my limited experience on local ships tell me that the three-day transit would be absolutely brutal.

  It's exciting to be at this stage of the project. Since the last time I posted to this blog we've come a long way towards getting clean water piped into most neighborhoods of the community. We made initial repairs and upgrades to the pipelines and added branch lines that have gotten water flowing into previously under-served parts of town.

  I've even gotten a tap at my own house--a big upgrade from the long-serving tippy-tap that I had set up when I moved in.

  Most families can now get safe, clean water from a public tap that's within a short walk from their homes, but at peak-demand hours some of the taps still tend to go dry. The big-ticket item of the new project is a half mile of 50 mm HDPE pipe that we will use to replace the smaller gauge pipe that currently makes up the mainline. We'll be taking out the smaller pipe and reusing it to upgrade two smaller water systems and to tap a new water source for a small neighborhood up in the bush above Marino where my good friend Richard lives. When we went up to survey that line last week he and his wife were in their kitchen making a manioc naolat. So delicious!

 These upgrades to the pipelines are going to increase the flow of water exponentially and that will make it possible for the community to take a dramatic step forward in household water access. As I mentioned, families now carry water in buckets from the nearest public tap stand to their kitchens. They dip into those buckets for drinking, cooking and washing their hands, and although the water at the tap is pure spring water, the likelihood of subsequent contamination is obvious.
  In almost every kitchen you find several big round pans fashioned from the heavy plastic floats that break loose from commercial fishing nets and wash up onto the eastern coast of the island. When cut in two, these floats become all purpose vessels for washing hands and dishes, filled with water in the morning and dumped out in the evening.

  It occurred to me to use one of these floats as the mold to make my own vessel sink using a sand and cement mortar, but also integrating a drain of PE pipe that can run to a soak-away pit outside.

 I ran a small branch line around the house and installed an inexpensive tap I'd brought from Port Vila. The prototype turned out even better than I'd expected and has been well-received by everyone whose come by the house to see it.

  I learned an important lesson in Panama: if you hope to influence people to change their behavior around hygiene, it's best to find innovations that closely match what people are already used to. And if the innovation is something that people can replicate themselves without too many imported components, that's all the better. Folks on Maewo are very proud of the ingenious ways they have adapted to their rugged island. As you might notice in the photos,virtually everything they use to build their homes comes from the bush, not from a hardware store back in the capital. That goes for even the massive community lodge, the Nakamal.

  Even when it comes to local entertainment, the essential instrument that plays the signature opening riff of every song by the local "string band" combos is always a home-made ukelele.

  So the reaction to a sink that we can make out here ourselves with just a little imported cement has been universally enthusiastic. Same goes for the shower that I worked up from scrap poly pipe using variations on the thermoforming techniques I learned as a volunteer in Panama.

  The third element of the household plumbing systems that we are introducing is the one that has been the biggest technical challenge--a water-seal toilet that will be an alternative to the pit latrines currently in use here. Again following the local norms, we're developing a squatting style toilet.

  The cement squatting pan shown above will be set into a slab and then it can be flushed into the pit below by simply pouring a pail of water into it.

  And continuing on the theme of self-reliance, we'll be building these 70 liter ferrocement tanks to store water beside the toilet for flushing as part of the toilet package the project will be offering families. Households will make a cash contribution to cover the cost of the taps and pipe fittings and provide labor for the installations. I've already started working with some eager local craftsmen on building all of these things and the results have been terrific.

  This post is already running too long, but for any readers who are interested in the technical aspects of these toilets, stay tuned. Now that I have working laptop again I plan to write up a detailed post about how to build your own pour-flush toilets sometime soon. And for everyone who's read this far, you might enjoy a little taste of the string band music that sometimes fires up out on the islands when the sun goes down. Check out the sweet sound of that ukelele.

  Thanks to everyone who got the chance to contribute to the grant and thanks to all of you for the moral support. Signing off for now from Port Vila in the old New Hebrides.