The Road to Goma, Part 2: Bunagana to Goma

The missionaries left Rungumba in 1990 after the fighting in the area became too heavy. Their legacy however is surprisingly intact considering what's occurred here in the last 20 years; homes, schools and a hospital are still operating. But many of these buildings have fallen into disrepair, and those that are still in working order are a shadow of their former selves.

Bizi had taken me to this area to spend the night after crossing the border. The original plan had been to press on to Goma, but with night fast approaching it was no longer safe to make the trip. We wheeled of the main highway and bounced north on a narrow road near Bizi's home town. On the way to the missionary campus, we stopped by the river turbine built to supply power to the buildings. Constructed in 1929, the turbine had operated continuously but with declining output until 2006, when it finally gave up the ghost. The hospital up the hill, and the guest homes beyond now have little to no electrical power, and so must depend entirely on parafin lamps for lighting.

The guest house we were to sleep in is maintained by a small staff from town. The building itself looks just as it did when the missionaries left thanks to the cleaning and repairs the staff performs. The house sits on a hill overlooking a dirt airstrip once used by the Baptist missionaries. The field is still clearly visible, but small plots of farmland are encroaching on the strip itelf, making landings now impossible. Above the house stood a series of abandoned schoolhouses, bashed up by the recent fighting in 2008.

The night passed peacefully, and in the morning we set out carrying our obligatory batch of matoke and a sack of potatoes (a vehicle never goes to waste around here). The road south was covered in potholes, though not deep enough to slow us down too much. What did slow us down however were the police - we were stopped at least twice, and there may have been some sort of exchange of items (I swear I couldn't tell; I don't speak French or Swahili!). We also passed by trucks loaded to the brim with people, some carrying AKs. It looked like armed people, maybe army, maybe not, were mixing in amoungst people just trying to move from one place to another. Thankfully we were never stopped by anybody like that.

2 1/2 hours later we arrived in Goma. The city had installed a huge number of street lights since I had last visited in May. They were put up in advance of President Joseph Kabila's visit for Independance Day on June 30th. The sight was impressive, but it made me wonder what else the government was capable of if given the proper motivation.

The Road to Goma, Part 1: Mbarara to Bunagana

"You may pay if you want to, but you don't have to. It's up to you."

It was the first time I'd ever been asked for a bribe, and the police officer sure was nice about it. I was sitting in a small metal hut in Bunagana, Uganda, a few feet from the DRC border. I had spent the previous five hours driving across the hilly, dusty roads of western Uganda learning how to drive a stick shift and drive on the left-hand side of the road. It was easier than I had expected, though putting it into first was still tricky - quite a few locals got a chuckle out of watching the mzungu sputter out of a petrol station or a stop sign.

But now at the border I was at the final stage in a journey of emotions. When I had set out from Mbarara towards Kabale, I was moving fast, feeling the wind on my arm, and loving the trip. But after Kabale, I became less sure of the way. Excitment gave way to apprehension the longer it took to get to the border. I was afraid I was lost. But I finally reached Kisoro, and shortly after that Bunagana. I had arrived at the border.

My fear was not completely gone however because I still had to cross the border, meet a friend, then travel several hours south to Goma. And my fears were not relieved - my paperwork was not in order, and it took several hours to make it so (special thanks to Melissa, who emailed the documents. And special thanks to Zain, whose wireless internet made it possible to recieve them. Technology can be pretty amazing, even in east Africa). By the time I actually crossed the border, it was too late to drive to Goma before dark. And so my friend Bizi from HEAL Africa drove us to Rungumba and the abandoned Baptist missionary outpost that was to be our lodging for the night.

Click here to see a Flickr map of the trip from Mbarara to Goma.

Great Expectations (Dashed)

Yesterday I visited a Kampala supplier of power and water equipment to purchase items needed for a power backup system at HEAL Africa (I'll detail the system in a future post). Davis & Shirtliff is a Kenyan company with distribution outlets all over east Africa: Kenya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia. Their ads are dotted around Kampala, promising solutions to all your water and power needs. Just the kind of stuff I'm looking for.

I decided to purchase from Davis & Shirtliff because it seemed to have the qualities one needs when making a large purchase - informed salespeople, professional outlets and quality equipment. It certainly appeared that way from looking at their website and their sales catalogue. After looking over the second-hand equipment sold in Mbarara, the prospect of purchasing from a reputable supplier was reassuring.

So I walked into the store on Jinja Road with great expectations. After waiting a while I met a sales representative and explained to him exactly what I wanted to do. He detailed which products I would need and priced them for me. I hesitated when he told me I could use a charge controller designed for a DC solar system, when I explicitely stated I would charge the battery using the AC grid. But he assured me the model (Sundaya Apple 15 amp) could do both, so I agreed to the purchase. I left the store agreeing to buy a charge controller, battery and inverter. I planned to come back the next day to pick them up.

I arrived the next day expecting to just walk in and walk out. But looking over the battery, it turned out that it wasn't exactly what I'd asked for (unsealed, when I needed sealed. The sealed battery is necessary because it's maintenance free, which is very important in Goma). It then turned out there were no sealed batteries in stock at 50 Ah, which is a common size. The rep called a different retailer across town, but they didn't have the exact size. And then it turned out the other retailer was closing because someone hadn't shown for work. So no dice.

However, I still could buy the charge controller and inverter and get the battery from a supplier in Kigali. But now comes the part that really gets me: the charge controller was not the one I needed, after explicitly asking 3 times. I almost walked out of the store with the wrong equipment (a big deal when traveling to Kampala takes so long). When the rep eventually did find a model for my application, they only had one left, which was slightly scuffed and missing a cable. The rep sent someone across town to get a new one, and when he couldn't find it tried to buy a US plug and file down the ends to fit into the charge controller's DC outlet. Umm, not going to work.

And so after leaving the previous day excited with my pending equipment purchase, I walked out of the store empty-handed. I had chosen to go to Davis & Shirtliff explicitly to avoid a series of events like this.

The phrase "TIA" (this is Africa) was rattling in my head. One has to go with the flow or you'll never fit in and never get anything done. Things take time, and mess-ups will happen. True, and when appropriate I hold that expectation. But when doing business, one should expect a certain level of professionalism. Expecting an African business to be less professional than any other would be condescending. Building trust in a brand is a critical part of being successful. When that trust is broken, it's terribly hard to repair.

This small series of events is just one experience. Based on their size, Davis & Shirtliff appears to be a very successful company. But my trust is temporarily on hold, and I will be much more wary the next time I approach a seemingly professional company.

Sand Water Filters

Getting clean water at the HEAL Africa hospital is an intermittent affair. When all is operating as it should, city water pumps take water out of neighboring Lake Kivu and deliver it to paying customers by underground pipes, like most cities. The water is purified by chlorination, which is a very effective means of removing contaminants. However when the power goes out, as often happens, the pumps fail and the water stops.

HEAL Africa does have a backup, however. Large rainwater collection tanks dot the hospital campus, harvesting water from the roofs of buildings. This water allows the hospital to keep functioning, but only after the water has been purified. It cannot be used immediately because of the contaminants the water acquires while passing over the roof to the collection tank.

Currently, rainwater is purified by boiling before use. While this solution is very effective at producing safe water, it has several drawbacks. Firstly, it is difficult to scale up; boiling a few liters of water is easy - boiling hundreds (or thousands) of liters for an entire hospital is hard. Secondly, boiling water is energy intensive. It requires a large amount of charcoal, which fuels almost all stoves in Goma. The charcoal is expensive and its production is harmful to the local environment.

Due to these drawbacks, the hospital is seeking an improved solution for providing safe water during outages. There are many potential solutions, depending on the type of contaminants present. In this case, because the contaminants from the roof are all biological (there's no fertilizers or pesticides to worry about), slow sand filters can be utilized. These are extremely simple and effective, and should work well for HEAL.
The filters work by passing water through a bed of sand. As the water flows down, many contaminants are trapped in the sand. These contaminants then begin to form a "scum" layer on top of the sand. This scum layer is actually the most effective part of the filter - it digests other biological material as more water passes through the filter. Once the water emerges from the bottom, it is cleaned of all biological material (except viruses, which can fit through the sand and are not consumed by the scum layer. These will not be present in this case because the water is immidiately removed from the roof when it rains).

The filters have no moving parts, don't need to be refilled, and are low-maintenance. They do need occasional attention however to remove the scum layer when it becomes too thick. Because of this, the filters work best in an institutional setting where maintenance staff can be trained to care for the filters.

In July, we will be building a prototype filter for use in a small residential compound outside of town. Doing so will allow us to learn on a smaller scale before creating the larger filters needed for the main campus. I expect the filter to cost $100-$200 in materials, plus construction. Once complete, I will be performing a water purity test to verify the cleanliness of the water. Staff will continue to observe the filter before the next installation.

I'll be posting more pictures and updates about the actual installation as it proceeds. If you'd like to help support the prototype construction, please click on the link below. Thanks so much!

Support Water, Power and Health Projects at HEAL Africa

In an earlier post I described my trip to the hospital HEAL Africa in May. I came away impressed by the dedication of the staff there; but I was also impressed by the limitations they faced in doing their work. It's the little things that can get irritating - running out of necessary supplies, boiling rainwater when the city water shuts off, losing your internet connection when sending critical emails. These little things add up, and drain away from the time the medical staff could be spending on critical things - like healing victims of one of the most protracted conflicts in Africa.

But speaking to the staff at HEAL Africa, they described ways to alleviate some of these distractions. And so when I return to the hospital in July, I'll be working to implement a few projects that will do just that. In the next few posts I'll describe each project and explain what will be necessary to get them done.

But right now I want to ask a favor - can you partner with me to get these projects done? They're small and quickly achievable - but I need the finances to purchase the equipment. Batteries, sand, concrete, steel and plastic will build the filters, refrigerators, and communication backup that will let the medical staff focus on what they do best: saving lives.

If you'd like to give, please click on the link below. 100% of the proceeds will be going to purchasing equipment. It's not often you get a chance to contribute to a cause at such a low level - I will let you know exactly what you've bought and how it will be helping people in Goma. Thanks!

Silent for a Bit

I'm in India for the next few weeks, with some spotty internet connectivity, so the blog's going to be a little quiet. I'm sure I'll have plenty of thoughts on water and sanitation here, enough for a "Tales of Water in India." My hotel has a squat toilet with little to no flushing capability - so believe me, the reflections regarding water in India are flying!

Philosophies in Development

Rwanda is an amazingly beautiful country; words simply can't do it justice. Hills and valleys span every corner of the country from border to border, filled from top to bottom with terraced farms. 98% of the country is cultivated to support the densest population in Africa.

It also has a culture different from many others in Africa. When Rwandan leadership decides to do something, the population generally goes along with it. So when the current president, Paul Kagame, decided to move full-speed with development after the genocide, Rwanda moved into high gear. With money pouring in from the West, a lot has been done. Roads are paved and medians are filled with streetlights and flowers. Buses leave on time, roads have irrigation ditches and the terraced farms have steep gutters to channel water, thereby preventing erosion.

The safe environment is created by the huge international presence and the strong central government. Into this safety have come some entrepreneurs from the West, looking to do good and make some money. I met two on my way back to Uganda from Goma, and it got me thinking about the relative success of different approaches to development.

There are of course many, many approaches, and I can't hope to compare and contrast all of them. But there are two I'm thinking of now, and wondering - which is more successful? The first is what I'd call the current development orthodoxy. Let's call it "micro-enterprise." Essentially, this approach states that development best occurs when it's bottom driven by many small entrepreneurs. When they develop successful small businesses, their purchasing power is increased. They then spend their earnings in the growing economy, spurred by other micro-enterprises. In this way the entire society is lifted to a higher standard of living. This process is driven and guided by the people themselves, with little outside influence (perhaps only seed funding through micro-financing).

The second approach is more top-down in nature. The national government, an NGO, or the "international community" decides that a certain project is worth pursuing, and then mobilizes the resources to do so. There is less input from the affected people themselves (not necessarily no input, just less). Examples of this would include the two Americans I met in Kigali; both are working in partnership with the government. The first is developing a company to sell bio-digester systems to schools, and the second is selling solar systems. Both of these pursuits require more initial investment than is possible with micro-enterprise. They are implemented by the government and not by individuals. Lastly, their impact is communal rather than individual.

And that I think points to the answer - these approaches work best in tandem, one supporting the other. The local "context" will determine which is more appropriate, and which is more successful. And in reality, it's not appropriate to pit one approach versus the other - they are not mutually exclusive, and one improves the chances of success for the other. So why did I ask this question if now I state it's very premise is incorrect? Well, that question is what I've often asked myself, and the point of view I think many people have. Successful development depends on complex relationships, and unfortunately there's no simple solution.