Day 8: Aug 23, 2017. Wednesday In the middle of the night Rory woke me up violently puking in the bathroom. He kept at it till 1:00 am, went back to bed, and recommenced at 3:00 till 8:30 this morning. I, guiltily, slept fine and through most of his illness while he barely squeaked 4 hours. He is currently watching Chicken Run on his phone and appears to have stabilized, although is apprehensive about 20 hours of air travel for the next 24 hours, as is his right.
I sit here packing and taking notes, trying to gauge the success of our trip. Compared with earlier trips, we did remarkably well. EWB in the past has been plagued by poor coordination with villagers, shoddy NGOs and little communication; leaving this trip, we appear strong in all three categories. First, the villagers. Our relationship with the community, based on meetings with the chiefs, elders, teachers and ordinary citizens feels hopeful, and more assured that at any point in the past. Our MOU was met with the loudest applause when the section specifying village contribution and oversight was read out to them in Chichewa by Joseph. They feel engaged in the community, and in our closing remarks I told them that this project would only succeed if they believed in it, and if they thought what we were doing was something they truly needed.
On the second point, what more can we do than thank Joshua Orphan and Joseph for being reliable and resourceful to us as we stumbled through Blantyre and Solomoni. Every contractor we met, every NGO we interviewed, every villager we tried to have a discussion with was entirely buttressed and reliant on Joshua. Joseph came to be something of a friend to us, which is more than we could have dreamed given our past with NGOs who barely spoke English. The foundations have certainly been laid for a strong and stable relationship between Tufts EWB and Joshua Orphan on our water access project in Solomoni.
Lastly, our ability to communicate not just with the villagers but with Joshua, contractors, and even appliance stores has improved tenfold. We’ve been able to fill a short rolodex with emails, phone numbers and even snail mail with most of the NGOs and businesses we’ve met with. With Joshua on the ground, we are even able to drill in the dry season, November, the most important time to drill for water since that is when the water table is at its lowest. While we are still working on the details of the contract, should we pursue it, we would be mostly able to drill in peak conditions without having to actually be on site.
Progress on this project has exceeded all of our expectations; we’ve developed strong links and a constructive dialogue with Solomoni community (and even have the head teacher’s personal email), we’ve had a productive experience working with Joshua Orphan and are able to trust them going forward with future projects; and we’ve met with nearly a dozen other NGOs and businesses which will enable us to drill and construct a borehole and distribution system with entirely locally sourced parts and contractors. All this in the span of a week. We are, as it stands, in a brighter position to bring clean water to a desperate community and effect real change in the lives of more villagers than we ever have before.