Site Opening

We travelled up North to Banteay Meanchey on Sunday afternoon for the Site Opening on Monday morning.  After a briefing on Sunday evening on the busy events of the next day we got our first insight into how things can not go at all to plan and I think it might take a little adjusting to.

Monday - 

Arriving at the site on Monday morning we found that the station was locked and the key nowhere to be seen, the pipe from the river to the station was broken in two places and the UV filtration box had been home to a cat and his leftover dinners for the last 3 months.

So the morning was taken up by replacing the broken pipes but without addressing the problem – they were only 7 or 8cm under the ground and so hardly very well protected and by cleaning out the station and breaking the lock. In this time we managed to learn about the logistics of the station and how it will benefit the school upon whose grounds it is built by providing free water and serving as a source of income.

Tuesday – 

Cleaned out the sand filter, installed the UV treatment system, set up a jar and an indicator test, labelled the bottles and finally by late afternoon we were starting to see the bottles of clean water piling up ready to be distributed tomorrow.

The afternoon, like Monday Afternoon, was spent recruiting new customers from the surrounding houses and it was really interesting to see their current methods in explaining the water treatment methods and benefits as this is something we will be working on helping them to develop in the coming weeks. It was really inspiring to see the community set-up:  a commune leader overseeing a team of community leaders and school and police board officers overseeing specific areas. No stone is left unturned.

Generally everyone approached by the Teuk Saat team was very excited about the project and the benefits for themselves and the local school. They didn’t take much persuasion but the main concern was to do with taste. The old station used groundwater which has a distinct taste of the dissolved minerals (an area we can look into improving in the education workshop) which is not generally liked. However we were able to reassure them that surface water will be used and activated charcoal is used to remove the taste. We are finding that most people here understand the health risks of drinking untreated water but their methods to treat it at home are not effective. 

Tomorrow the station will be open to the villagers so they can see the treatment in action and hopefully register for safe water!

Hiba, Sinead and Doug