Water Filters

There is a reason I am in Kenya. This is it:

In short: I'm here for seven weeks playing with mud.

Unabridged: I am conducting an experiment bridging engineering, ecology, health, and sociology (as I see it anyway, but we always see ourselves as a little more important than we really are). But with a focus on the health. I am looking at ceramic water filters, to see if they can be made effectively, sustainably and affordably here in rural Kenya. Emphasis on the affordably, as they should cost no money at all, just one's own labour. This methodology has been developed by a man in Australia, and I am just adapting and modifying it to local conditions. All it takes is clay, cowdung, and your hands. No fancy mills, machinery or kilns Its amazing really. With those simple ingredients one can construct a water filter that can eliminate up to 99.8% of the E. coli in drinking water, having huge implications for the health of children, where 21% of all child mortality in developing countries is caused by diarheal illness, primarily associated to water-borne pathogens. Just think how many times you have had diarrhea, but you are still alive. No big deal to us. Many people don't have that luxury.

So that is what I am doing. I am spending a fair amount of time watching clay dry, but am coming up against some interesting problems. However, the largest problem I foresee is not one I can fix with materials or sly of hand, it is a problem of marketing, essentially, and its scope goes way beyond this simple project. If there is no demand it doesn't matter how good these filters are, no matter how easy or free they are to make they will not be made by the people. The demand is lacking due to limited knowledge and thinking about safe drinking water (and potentially in some areas the resistance of having another white man tell them that what they have been doing for generations just isn't very good). My primary goal has evolved into one of perception. Every so often someone stops in to my work area who speaks English (yet another barrier) and I explain to them what I am doing. Maybe at some point down the road, consciously or subconsciously, they will associate water with their child's sickness and recall a faint memory or feeling of an easy way to help alleviate it. If such a thing happens, even if they don't build a water filter, but just think that little bit differently, then I think I have achieved something. Isn't education nothing more than having your perception of the world changed? Yes, information goes along with it, but information can be researched in a book. Education is not about facts and figures its about changing people's minds so that they perceive the world in a new way, hopefully a good way. And there's no going back. Once changed, however imperceptibly, a mind never regains its original form.

So there are some interesting problems associated with such a small thing as mud, that have implications reaching into the very fabric of the development process and beyond. Makes one think, thats for sure.

And thats it in a nutshell.

Peace.

[second image borrowed from Nick Lilly, fellow Kenya 2006 student.]