Clean Water & Sanitation

One of my (Ginny's) big projects during our time here is to see how the water project can assist Mabaan women.  I've developed a set of questions to determine three things: 1) Felt needs  2) Water Usage and 3) Comprehension of water and sanitation.  The idea is to go into a community, interview 3 or 4 women, and then do a follow-up session.  So far, I've done a test a run with the local Doro church women.  I had two interviews, with two ladies answering the questions in one of them, and today had a follow-up session.

We invited all of the Doro church ladies to come at 2 PM for a discussion/teaching/outreach about water and sanitation.  7 ladies showed up, which was about ideal for what I had planned.

First, we had a great time using some of Living Water's health teaching materials.  They have a set of line drawings showing various sanitation-related practices, some of which are good and some of which are not so good.  Each of the ladies got a handful of pictures and took turns describing what was happening in one and then determining as a group if it was a good or a bad practice.  There was some quite lively discussion, but my Mabaan is far to limited to understand all but the occasional word - I picked up on "pwatchin" - good, "yeya" (or yaye?) - bad, and "pieg" - water quite a bit!

Handing out pictures

Katarina explains her picture

Now it's Elizabeth's turn (children, of course, are all around - especially when you're with the women!)

  

Second, I had some photos to show of some water testing I did to try and explain about keeping the containers for water clean.  The ladies seem to at least have a concept of bacteria, so I did my best to explain how we can test for it.  As I said this afternoon, we can put the water on special paper, add food for the bacteria, and put it in a warm place.  If the bacteria are there, they will eat the food and grow until we can see them.  They will look like spots on the special paper.  I didn't find it necessary to go into the more scientifically accurate details, such as there being all sorts of kinds of bacteria everywhere, they're not all bad for you, and the test looks for thermotolerant fecal coliform bacteria, and that the bacteria don't actually grow, they multiply so that what began as one or a few bacteria becomes a very large colony.  But I digress..  I first showed a picture of the test from the local borehole.  The water there is very nice, and there were 0 cfu's (colony forming units, counted as blobby bits on the filter paper after incubation) in 100 mL.  Then, I showed a picture of the test from one of the barrels we store water in on the SIM compound.  It had over 200 cfu's - not to be drunk without filtration, please!  I also showed three treatment photos.  In the first, I had heated water to nearly boiling, and it went down to 2 cfu's per 100 mL.  Much better, but still doesn't meet the EPA drinking water standard of 0.  (Not that the EPA really has jurisdiction in Southern Sudan...)  Five minutes of boiling resulted in 0 cfu's/100 mL, and chlorinating the water also resulted in 0 cfu's/100 mL.  I demonstrated the use of chlorine, as we were giving each lady attending one bottle.  We are able to make chlorine in the water project "lab" by doing electrolysis on water saturated with salt. 

Demonstrating proper use of chlorine

John Kiya, who was translating, explains that the chlorine should be kept out of reach of children.

Tabitha looks at the photos of water testing results

The next section was a short Bible study, being that we are a Christian group.  I read the passage on Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:1-26 in Mabaan (!) and expounded a little bit on the barriers Jesus broke by talking to her, and the great gift of living water that he offered her.  While preparing, I initially wanted to use a different passage, as everyone doing water work with a Christian organisation uses this passage, so it seemed a little cliche to me.  But then I read through the passage, and there were a lot of really good things in there so I stuck with it.  Read through it again and think about presenting it to a group of undereducated (but very bright!) women who work hard all day but are undervalued.  Good stuff!  Just yesterday, another SIM missionary - Debbie - began a literacy class for this same group of women.  Very exciting!  They still won't be able to read the Old Testament in Mabaan at the end of it, but neither can the most literate of men since the translation has not been completed.  I hear they have Genesis!

Reading in Mabaan!  Tabitha and Katarina may just be straining to pick up the words in my khawaja accent, but they seem to be listening...

At the end, we gave each of the ladies a bottle of chlorine and a bright pink bar of soap, and then had tea.  Stephen left before tea to prepare for tonight's Men's Bible Study, so I don't have any pictures of it, him being the event photographer and all.

Handing out the bright pink soap!

It was a great afternoon, and a lot of fun.  I enjoyed watching the women in their animated discussions of the pictures, and had some good reactions while reading 26 verses in a language still not entirely familiar to me!  My pronunciation is apparently decent, but I don't know half of the words coming out of my mouth. :D

Living in Sudan has been a great adventure, and doing this work with the women has been especially enjoyable and rewarding.