Providing Sustainable Water Access in Rural Tanzania Lisa Boyd, USA, Lehigh University

The lack of sustainability of community water systems is a huge setback in the effort to provide clean water access to all people in rural Tanzania. The goal of my project was to repair broken water systems and work with each community to develop new and innovative management techniques in order to allow for long-term sustainability of the systems. This project was also funded by a social entrepreneurship grant from my university called the Eureka! Social Venture Creation Competition. I was awarded grand prize in the competition last winter, and received $5,000 for my project in the Region of Tanzania. Because I have already finished my undergraduate degree, I will use this extra funding from Lehigh to stay in Tanzania until December or January in order to fully complete the projects that I have begun and follow through on all aspects of the community development. After completing research in the last summer, I was disappointed in the lack of attention being paid to issues of sustainability by local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the local government offices. As a result, I had expected to complete the majority of the project this year on my own, similar to the way that I ran a pilot project in Mbori Village last summer. When working alone, however, I found that I was very limited in the communities that I was able to work with. Not only did the village members have to have the correct community attitude for change and improvement, but their water system repairs also needed to fit within my budget constraints, which is difficult to find because of the high cost of most water projects. In addition, this independent method of work required me to hire a guide/translator to travel with me to the field at all times because, despite my close to fluency in Kiswahili, I am unable to safely travel alone through rural Tanzania. The more money that I spent on a guide/translator took away from the amount that I was able to put toward actual system repairs and training costs. Upon returning to Dodoma this summer, I was surprised to find that many organizations had finally become aware of the issue of sustainability and were focusing more on repairing broken systems instead of simply building new ones. I also learned of a new organization called Maji na Maendeleo Dodoma (MAMADO)—meaning “Water and Development Dodoma” in Kiswahili, the national language of Tanzania. When I first met with MAMADO, I learned about five new community projects that they were starting in , each of which would each include a water scheme rehabilitation project as well as community development and training. MAMADO already had close to USD$20,000 to do some of the system repairs and do capacity building; however, this amount was not adequate to complete the projects effectively. After visiting multiple of MAMADO’s other projects and being convinced of both the high quality of their work as well as their focus on sustainability, I created a formal partnership with their organization. I realized that it would be more effective to combine both funding and ideas in order to work with a greater number of communities and do a more thorough job of capacity building within those communities. In addition, MAMADO is a locally founded and run NGO, which is significant because I feel that all development work is better appreciated and more sustainable when implemented by local people at the grassroots level. My partnership agreement with MAMADO stated that I would be involved in all aspects of the community development and regularly visit the projects to help with management and planning ideas, as well as donate funds to the actual repairs of the systems and the village training efforts. Another positive result of this partnership is that it will leave a long term partner on the ground in order to check up on the programs and ensure sustainability of the projects after I leave Tanzania. Three out of the five communities we chose to work with had boreholes with motor pumps and required far more time and funding to repair than I had originally expected. We had planned to do all of the system repairs and implement the new pumps in August/September, while simultaneously administering community development. I soon came to realize, however, that to effectively complete five community projects in less than two months was not possible. Everything in African culture and work moves extremely slowly—and even more slowly in village life—which proved to be one of the largest challenges during my project. One of the other major challenges that I faced during my project was that MAMADO’s office completely burned down in an electrical fire last month. The organization lost everything, including four computers, a safe containing over USD$1000, all paper documentation, and much of their research that had not been backed up in outside locations. As a result, the loss of data put us back more than two weeks in our field work and continues to take up much of the staff’s time which could otherwise be spent on the programs. Despite this setback, I feel that the benefits of partnering with MAMADO were great and working with them allowed my project to be much more successful on the whole. On top of working with MAMADO, I also completed one project completely on my own— purchasing and implementing one additional pump in the same village that I had worked with for my pilot project last year. Mbori, in the District of Dodoma Region, is a very large village of over four thousand people and has five sub-villages within it. I was able to implement a private operator system last year and repair two pumps, but a large section of Mbori’s population was still suffering from lack of adequate water access due to the limit of water each well was able to produce per day. In addition, I did not feel like I had worked with the members of the local District Water Engineer’s office enough last year, and therefore wanted to use Mbori as a tool to further train the government workers in the importance of sustainable management systems. Because of the circumstances, I decided to purchase a new pump for one of the sub-villages and work with them to further improve the private operator system that I set up last year. I also organized to have walls built around each of the water systems to protect them from theft or inappropriate usage. Both the labor and materials were provided by the community members in order to prove their willingness to take ownership of the projects. Unfortunately, not all of my projects have been fully completed; however, all of the money from the Davis Projects for Peace grant that was set aside for the purchasing of pumps, implementation costs, and community training programs has already been spent. Of the five projects that I began with MAMADO, we have thus far completed two of them—in Chanene and Zajilwa villages—and are still in the middle of completing the other three—in Haneti, Izava, and Manyemba villages. Although I am slightly disappointed that I have not been able to finish as much as I had expected, I will be in Tanzania working with MAMADO for at least four more months. Therefore, I will be able to effectively aid in the implementation of all five community project without rushing their completion. Overall, the repairs of these water systems and the improved management systems will allow over 8,000 people in six villages to receive access to sustainable, clean drinking water within reasonable walking distance of their homes. By working with MAMADO and the local government in , I have been able to further spread the idea of using a private operator to manage community water systems. This change in methodology will have a long term impact on the way that local organizations think and will enhance overall sustainability of water projects in the Dodoma Region.

“Peace” is a state of mind and a state of community in which people feel both safe and content with their lives. This term is most commonly associated with a lack of war and fighting, yet I feel that there is much more to personal peace than there is to national or military peace. Personal peace can only be found when one does not need to struggle on a daily basis to find access to the basic necessities of life. One cannot live in peace when one is consistently worried about where to get clean water from, how to feed or school one’s children, how to get medicine for a sick relative, or how to afford shoes for one’s feet. These issues, common in the rural villages of sub-Saharan Africa, are the biggest obstacles for achieving peace. For this reason, I feel that development work in Africa is extremely important and can help to spread peace throughout much of the world. By providing clean water to the rural people of Tanzania, I have been able to bring peace to at least one aspect of their difficult lives and provide them with a sense of confidence in their futures. Furthermore, the world as a whole cannot be peaceful if people lack understanding of others who are different than themselves. I have now spent a long period of time in the rural villages of Tanzania and have created significant with the local people and communities. In addition to allowing me to grow as a person, these relationships have also enabled the local people to learn more about American culture and ideologies. Without these types of foreign interactions, people are unable to understand the complexities of life outside their immediate surroundings and cannot fully appreciate the different cultures of the world. My work in rural Tanzania has been valuable because it built up an understanding of project sustainability and created a focus on improvement of management systems for community water projects in the Dodoma Region. The most significant thing that I learned from this project is that development work is based on trust and commitment—whether that comes from building partnerships with local organizations or forming relationships with within one’s target community. It is trusting relationships such as these that will allow my project’s effects to be felt long after my departure from Tanzania.