Hi everyone,

Esther and I talked to Guillaume about training and material he would need for it.
For the beginning, he would need several (probably 3) posters that would contain pictures and very little text about 1)cross contamination 2)how people get infected 3)what they can do to prevent it.
The posters would be used for trainings. Guillaume will check if he could find some nice pieces of clothes to print the posters on them.
We concluded that the existing designs of posters can be used for that, and need only slight adjustment, so hope Barb will be able to send us soon the changeable posters.

Guillaume thinks it would be good to also print posters to distribute to the families, so that they could attch them to the walls in their homes. We agreed that he checks how much that would cost so we have an idea if and when that could be done.

Your thought and ideas would be much appreciated.
I feel this education is very important not only because of cholera, but also to raise more awareness about good hygiene practices in general, to ensure that the community also better handle milk later on.

Sonja

Hi everyone,

Guillaume visited Sylvian Kimour Kalubi who is promoting solar cookers in DRC. Since he's in Kinshasa he has no means to come to demonstrate solar cookers in Walungu, but he would teach Guillaume to build and use them, so that Guillaume can demnostrate them himself. Kimour also said that solar cookers can be used for water pasteurization.

I'm attaching the photo of Guillaume with Kimour from the meeting.

Sonja

photo-Kahomboshi.doc

Hi all,

Just browsing the web and found a wonderful blog written by a lady named Virginia Echavarria who has set out to help sexually abused women in Eastern DRC, and has been based in Bukavu. One of her projects is the Fuel Brickettes Program. In addition to solar cookers, this may be something that could be used as a convenient and community made fuel source to cook, boil water, and pasteurise goat milk further down the track.

It's very late as I write this, so I intend to read more tomorrow when I'm more awake, but please have a look at the following sites when you have a moment:

http://soulens.wordpress.com/

http://www.legacyfound.org/

Hi everyone,

I notice that a few of us have read the post below, so do any of you see merit in fuel briquettes being used as a heating source in Walungu? Guillaume, what are your thoughts?

I suspect that there may be a lot of work in training and manufacture of both briquettes and cooking devices etc, but it is a sustainable, and community manufactured source of fuel, and appears to be more reliable than solar cookers alone. Who knows, there may be assistance in regards to training from Virginia Echavarria's team in Bukavu.

Let me know, and I'll try to contact Virginia personally to see if she has any plans under the Fuel Briquettes Program for distributing presses and training to Walungu.

Thanks!

Scott thanks for the idea and the links, I'll have a closer look as soon as possible and also inform Guillaume about it, I'm not sure if he read this already.

Looking forward to talking soon
Sonja

Dear neighbours,

I thought it would be good to sum up what we discussed here and what we came up with by now.

We discussed long and short term solutions for the problems with water in Walungu.

Long term solutions would be fixing the water tank in the village so that the water can be chlorinated. I posted the task on engineeraid website, but there was no answer by now.
Another thing we could consider are the filters. Raul was to contact CAWST that work with filters in Africa, but it seems he still didn't get any answer. I will check that.

What we can do in short term is to educate the community about cholera and good hygiene practices. Guillaume is checking if there are any organizations in Kinshasa that could give him some material to hold the training. Hope he'll find something so that we don't need to print them on our own.

Besides, Guillaume found out that soon in the area should be sold chloramine bags that can be used on household level to purify water.
We also discussed solar cookers and possibility to use them both for water pasteurization and cooking to decrease expenses for wood. Guillaume met Mr Kimour that works with solar cookers an Kinshasa and he's happy to teach him how to build and use them.
Lately, Scott suggested to check fuel briquettes, and he's about to contact the lady that works with them in DRC, to see if and how that could work for Walungu.

We found many possibilities. Hope we'll soon translate them into some concrete results that would contribute to decreased threat of cholera in the village.

Thanks a lot guys and keep up good work
Sonja

Hi Scott,

Any news about briquettes?

I heard from Esther, she hopes to be done with photos soon.

She contacted some Congolese organizations in Holland and found out about one that works in Uvira, SRDA, that aims at setting up training centres and farming industries, but it's difficult to find any phone number or email, so we asked Rolph to try to get some contacts, since he lives in Uvira.

I'm still waiting to hear from Guillaume about buying goats.

Take care,
Sonja

Hi everyone,

I just came across this interesting news about solar cooker
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/04/7-dollar-solar-cooker-wins-75000...

As for our activities with this task, they are a bit put aside since Guiom and others are busy with goats,but will definitely continue working on this problem. Guillaume is very interested to introduce solar cookers to the community and especially to help them get clean water and educate about cholera.

Sonja

Hi Sonja,

About the chlorination of the water in the tank, have you considered dosing the chlorine upstream of the tank, directly into the pipe? This would allow for extra contact time.

Also on the tank being constantly filled, have you considered creating an overflow to the tank, rather than a bypass? This is potentially mechanically less complex. Although it does raise the issue of where the overflow goes, bearing in mind this might be chlorinated water.

In any case, I'm happy to discuss further if you want.

Cheers,
Iggy

Hi Iggy

Thanks for the suggestions.

you mean to add chloramine before the water reaches the tank? How safe would that be?

Not sure I completely understand about overflow to the tank. How would that look like?

Sonja

Hi everyone,

Some time ago Tanja suggested to post the question about cholera and water supply to engineeraid.com

We got some answers, I'm copying them all here:

"Lawrence Thomas Engineer 07/04/2009

(--forwarded message--)

Hello, my name is Lawrence Thomas. I live in Malaysia. I'm a Chartered Mechanical engineer, but I did water systems in villages in Ecuador while in the US Peace Corps.

Where do you think the contamination is coming from?
Leaks are a very common means of contamination, especially when the water table is above the level of the pipes, ie rainy season. Even if you do more sophisticated things later, fixing the leaks normally needs to be done regardless, because leaks will undermine the good work that may be done with treatment and/or expanding the capacity of the system.
You may find that the system has significantly more volume capacity after the leaks are fixed.
How large is the village?
If possible, firstly I suggest doing a walk round assessment of the entire pipe system to see what you're up against. Interviewing the locals carefully can usually point you toward suspect reaches of pipe. Don't forget the taps themselves. These musn't leak. The walk round will also give you a chance to educated people to the importance of using water wisely. (You may find some people are leaving taps running, or using clean water for wasteful purposes.)
By the way, always engage the locals at every step. You want to see the commitment from them that will ensure that the system, and any projects you may do, carries on being maintained after you're gone. That's very important.
Is the terrain mountainous or flat, etc? Is the captation at the river in a low lying area, near livestock, farms, or dwellings?
Consider whether there is any merit in re-locating the captation up river to higher ground away from these things.
I don't know how big your system is, or how many taps there are, but another technique used is to have a public taps only, relatively few in number, located at strategic points in the village. This method may also allow locating the piping above the flood level, which will minimise contamination through any leaks. As well as control the cost.
Lastly, chlorination at the tank may be a good idea. I'm not an expert on chlorination, but I can do some research for you if you like. Do you know what chemicals are available for drinking water treatment in your region? Is it realistic long term, to have the chemicals purchased and brought in? Remember, big jumps in complexity generally have less chance of being sustained. A simple treatment system would be better than a complex one.
Good luck!

martc Engineer 01/05/2009

Hello,
I have had a look on the Nabuur website and read some of the comments there.
Cholera is usually a sanitation problem, to do with poor hygiene practices and badly sited or sealed toilets. The comments on hygiene training and water boiling are all relevant but it would be helpful to have proper plans of the community and its water facilities including the supply and sanitary arrangements, together with comments on practices such as whether there is defacation in the open etc. The terrain would be needed too to consider possible flow paths. It may be that provision of new, better but still cheap latrines might be a solution for example. Some testing may also be useful; after all it may be that it is the river source that is contaminated due to another community upstream.
Martin Crapper.

roflcopter Engineer 04/05/2009

Following Martin's comments, I've heard some good things about the CLTS scheme, which may be worth having a look into.

From what I've gathered it's a single-day training course for the local community which encourages them to think about sanitation and hygiene, and lets them come to their own conclusions about whether latrines are a good idea etc. All about changing hearts and minds so they want to build latrines, rather than forcing some toilets on them which they won't use.

nabuur Enquirer 05/05/2009

Thank you all so much for the suggestions!

Lawrence, thanks for bringing up the leaking question. I will talk to our Local representative in DRC about the questions you asked and post the answers.
What I know is that they have 2 tanks and several (public) taps in the village. The water from the river (going down the hill) is collected into a tank, which is constantly flowing. Our online volunteer (chemical engineer) finds it difficult to chlorinate the water since it does not stop to flow.
I could ask our Local representative to draw how it looks like if that will help?

We are certainly searching for a cheap and simple solution, with local people involved in every step.
We believe that education is very important - to tell them what causes cholera and why they have to wash their hands, boil water and not to build latrines near the river (which is also the case now and might be one of the causes of the problem).
I understood that chlorine is not difficult to get, but we can't do anything before fixing the tanks.

Martin and "roflcopter" thanks a lot for your comments. Do you maybe have a link or email where to contact about CLTS scheme to see if they could support a community in DRC?

Would anyone be interested to help us find the best solution to fix the tank for chlorination? And what info would you need me to get?

Or does anyone have any more ideas on how to tackle this problem in the most cost/effective way?

If you are interested and believe it would help you get more info, it's possible to organize an online chat with our Local representative.

We very much appreciate your help.
Thanks again.

Best,
Sonja, facilitator of Walungu village"

I will talk to Guillaume about this as soon as we get some time. Does anyone have any comment or suggestion?

Sonja

Hi everyone,

Please find the latest manual document attached on Water Disinfection. This is a draft at this stage, pending feedback on the French language contained within, and any other issues that you see. I look forward to hearing your comments!

Thanks to Esther and her Congolese friend who helped by providing photos for the illustration!

Cheers,
Scott

water disinfection.ai.pdf

Hi Scott,

thank you very much. It looks great to me. Looking forward to Guillaume's feedback.

take care,
Sonja

Solar cookers can be used to purify home drinking water. Solar Cookers International website has free plans. I have made box and reflector both. They are simple and any villager can make one.

Hi,

In addition to fixing the water system from the source to the end-users' taps, people in the village will need to be educated about a few basic and uncomplicated tasks, such as the following :

- Drinking water needs to be BOILED FOR AT LEAST 10 MINUTES, AFTER IT HAS REACHED THE BOILING STAGE. Removing the water from heat immediately or a few minutes after it has reached boiling point, is not enough to destroy germs.

- Hands to be washed with detergent before any meal. Washing with plain water is not enough.

- Avoid raw food including fruits during cholera outbreaks. Eat only properly cooked food. Also avoid eating stored or stale food, and eat freshly cooked food.

Let the campaign focus on ensuring one issue at a time, for example :

week 1 - boiling water for 10 minutes after it reaches boiling stage. Let a team monitor in several households each day during the week, and ensure that people understand the specific need and adopt this as a daily routine.

week 2 - washing hands with deterent before any meal. Visit several households daily, and ensure this becomes a habit.

week 3 - avoid uncooked food etc as above.

In about a month, it can be expected that the above 3 basic points become daily habits with the people. This is expected to have a quantum impact on reducing the incidents of cholera. Simultaneously, improvements and repairs of the water supply system can continue.

Vijai