Any help is greatly appreciated by myself and the community! Misaotra mialoha!
During the first three months at site I completed a diagnostic community survey. One of the questions asked people to rank the top 5 problems in the community. Broken public pumps by far was most often rated as the #1 problem the community would like to fix. Although, people wanted brand new pumps rather than fixing the existing.
One year later, I began looking into fixing the pumps. They were built by an outside NGO with no maintence plan or check ins, and nobody knows how to fix them. I then partnered with an organization with technicians to fix the pumps. As more meetings took place with community leaders, the chef doctor, and the ACs, we decided to fix the public well located at the market as well as build pulleys over that well and the public well at the hospital. The current well at the market does not have inner infrastructure and there is constant erosion making the water muddy and appear very cloudy. When looking at the logistics of the two broken pumps, we decided to dig trenches in order to control the flow of water to prevent flooding.
As for long term maintence plans, we formed water committees at each of the four locations headed by the president of each village and the ACs. The pump technicians agreed to train local carpenters on 'what to do when' scenarios for the pumps so that when they need upkeep in the future, there will already be local community members that know what to do.
Fixing these four public water sources will increase access to water by roughly 50% in my community. The community villages are all interconnected and the 2 pumps and 2 wells are located in high traffic areas benefitting a large portion of the population. This is an ambitious project and I would not have agreed to it if the community wasn't as motivated as they are. There have already been frustrations with determining the budget and I know there will be more complications in the future, but the community is willing to lead the transport and storage of materials, manage the construction and water committees, and even build gardens around the wells. I have already submitted the grant and have high hopes to begin construction in November.
You know you're a PCV when
-none of your plans go as planned
-you watch a tv show and get jealous of the food the actors are eating
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| The public well located at the main market |
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| Inside of the market well |
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| This lady brought her own water to the pump to wash with. She is using the pump to dry laundry |
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| The river people use to fetch water and wash. |
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