DIY Biosand Filters

I was thinking that I should write about something that happens in the day to day of life, and not wait for big trips to the field. I could write about having to walk with zombie arms when going upstairs to the roof to bring in my dry laundry so that I don’t get spider webs in my face. (Of course, I still get them on my hands, but that is slightly preferable.) But that just took one sentence. I could write about sitting in the office and becoming irrationally angry at flies that buzz around my head, but that story is not very exciting and it involves a lot of swearing, and my mother wants me to pretend on this blog that I never do that. Fortunately, we embarked on the great biosand filter adventure recently, and it has given me an epic saga to narrate.

Biosand filters are tall-ish cement boxes that use biological and mechanical means to filter water. They can be made from locally available materials. They do not require replacement parts and they can last for around 50 years, serving about 10 people. A water engineer friend of mine once told me that she really hated them because she thinks they are overrated and don’t work as well as foreign practitioners (i.e. me on behalf of my orgs) give the impression that they do. I finally wore her down to this important question: “Ok, are they are least better than drinking water straight out of the river?” She admitted that they are. So that’s good enough for me. Also, I’ve drunk water from biosand filters and I’m still alive. Of course, I’ve also drunk water from the tap in Cairo, Egypt and I’m still alive, so I’m probably also giving a false impression of how relevant my ability to drink biosand filter water is to its actual level of purity. However, I do always feel the need to point out the fact that I may be overselling this filter, even as I really believe that it is a good and helpful tool, preferable to nearly every other water purification method I’ve seen in the field in the 3 countries where I’ve lived in Africa. (In Asia, it’s a different story that I won’t get into here, but if you really want to know, ask in the comments or send me an email—don’t worry, I’m not holding my breath. Though I do love discussing household water treatment options...)

In light of tenuous situations in South Sudan and Sudan, and in light of the fact that I elected to live in Chad to help IAS out and give me an excuse to be in a new language and new country, I’ve been trying to get a biosand filter project started here in Chad since last year. There have been many ups and downs, but finally I thought I had found a solution to my need to have a French-speaking trainer help us out. But I should have known better than to choose a Canadian. I forgot that they are trying to ruin my life, while I was appreciating their dedication to bilingual education. At the last minute, with many polite regrets, they backed out of the deal to come and train my guys. I explored various other options, and then decided, à la “The Little Red Hen” (a classic tale you should all be familiar with), that I would do it my own damn  dang self.

I recruited Herve and Kandos, two of my colleagues from IAS, who are always up for learning something new. Herve printed out the French manual, made it into a proper book, and read it cover-to-cover. Kandos also read it in detail, peppering me with questions I made up answers to for several days. I printed out the relevant parts of the English manual for me because I’m lazy and my spelling has gotten really bad since I’ve started reading in French. I skimmed through it, eyes glazing over whenever it detailed size of various gravel particles or specific fancy tools I was pretty sure we would not have.  My level of dedication clearly did not rival that of my colleagues.

How adorable is Kandos in this photo? He will hate
that I said that. He will also hate that I have this photo of him because
he doesn't like people to take his photo, but Herve took this one.
It doesn't matter because he is not on social media anyway.
Kandos is an awesome Congolese/Swedish logistics guy who knows everything.
He is essential to the well-being of my life in Chad.

This photo is a  great representation of Herve.
He loves photos, social media, and joking around.
He is also crucial to the success of everything I do here.
Note: I do not know why he and Kandos dressed up for
going to the welders. As you can see from the photos, I certainly did not.
Also, please excuse the multiple photos of me coming up--
Herve took them all. 

Djibrine in the white robe, laughing
at something I'm saying to the welder
(who is also laughing at me).

Finally the mold was done. In order to get this mold made, I’d watched youtube videos, translating into a mix of French and Arabic for the welder to understand. I also printed out the French manual for him. The mold looked good to me, but I wanted to try to build a filter in it before building a second mold that we would need for the project.  So Herve, Kandos and I went over to the welder’s to try it out.

An important note for this story: Djibrine is our local go-to guy. He is the guy who knows how to get things done. If I need anything I call him and he produces the required object or person or vehicle. He is amazing. When Mary Françoise sawed my lock off and we couldn’t fix it for twodays, I called Djibrine. He came over with a “friend” who fixed it in 10 minutes. When I scraped Naomi’s car backing out of her driveway, he found someone who matched the paint and fixed every other little spot on the car, even the ones that weren’t my fault. Djibrine is also the guy who found the welder who made the filter. And Djibrine is the guy we gave our list of ingredients to so we could make this filter.

Very accurate shot of me with my mouth open,
saying something that no one is listening to.

Once we got to the welders, Herve and Kandos seemed at a loss about where to start. This was disappointing to me, as I had counted on their gung-ho attitude to make this happen with minimal effort on my part. But I had to put in maximal effort instead. After a few minutes of wandering around listlessly, observing the welders in their daily work, I took charge with my English manual and a shovel. I started ordering people around and opening bags of sand and gravel brought in by Djibrine. As soon as people saw the white woman digging in the dirt, their chivalry was activated and they kept trying to grab the shovel away from me. But at this point, I was already into it and didn’t want to give up the shovel. (I really love manual labor, actually.)

We sifted sand and gravel using filters that weren’t exactly the right size, but I decided would work because we were already started and it was too late to change now. Since this bit is for the body of the filter and not for the actual interior filtration, it didn’t matter that much.

We scrubbed and oiled the mold with peanut oil—must be ‘edible oil,’ specified the manual.

Good times with a cold beer and a biosand filter mold.
Kidding. The peanut oil is in the green bottle.

See how shiny it looks? But the shea oil was so much thicker.

We measured liters of cement, sand, and gravel in a piece of plastic cut off from a water bottle that we were told was equal to one liter. It’s possible that it was. It’s also possible that I burned my hand a little on the cement because if everyone else could pick it up with their bare hands, I felt I could as well. I was right only because Chadian chivalry is not dead (at least in matters of construction work) and two men ran over to snatch the measuring cup from my hands and pour water and oil all over me so that I wouldn’t burn.

You can see the very accurate plastic 1 liter measure in my hand.
And my wallet that is sticking out of my pocket in case I needed to
buy other supplies, i.e. peanut oil.

It takes water to make water, as the saying goes.

OK-that wasn't the saying. But it does take water to make cement.

I was very doubtful here as to the consistency of the cement.
The manual was very specific about it.

Then we readied the mold—screwing it together and taping the plastic tube on the top. It was not easy, as the man helping me to oil the mold did not listen when I screamed at him “Non, la, no!” and oiled it anyway. Once oil is on metal, no amount of tissues will make tape be able to stick on it.

My face telling Kandos that the reason the tape wasn't
sticking was because no one listened to me
when I yelled, "Don't oil that!"

It worked somehow.

The little boys who hang around the welders were very interested.
Red shirt boy helped me explain the "high five" to the grown-ups.

Then we shoveled in the cement mixture and tamped it down with a long metal bar.

Action shot!

Look at my muscles!

Seriously, I'm so strong, and Herve took a million of these photos.

Why do you think he took this photo, though?

I like this sunset photo of us all working hard to finish before Maghrib.

Then we waited nearly 24 hours and went back to bust it out of the mold.

Everyone posing except for Kandos.
He's so stubborn.

Then I bragged about how awesome we are on Facebook. And people ate it up. And that made me concerned about how I present myself to the social media world, and I had some deep philosophical discussions with myself about my calculated image as someone who is always doing exciting things, but really there is no point in posting photos of me sitting at my desk writing emails and or collapsed on the couch after a hard day at work sitting at my desk writing emails. Anyway, I’m not that awesome, but when I have awesome moments, I’ll share them with the world, giving the world a skewed perspective on the level of awesome in my life.

I'm so awesome!
(Once in a while)

Then I worried that we wouldn’t actually be able to get the filter out of the mold after I’d bragged about us.

Reality sets in.

And it turns out I worried for good reason. Our first filter came out looking like this:

We had to smash it off the mold, which was actually kind of fun.

Oops.

In hind sight, I can see several things that we did wrong. First, me badly reading the instructions and allowing people to loosen the wrong bolts on the mold first. Second, peanut oil dries fast, and we should have used a different type of oil—we used shea oil on our second attempt (spoiler alert: it worked). Lastly, the extractor wasn’t made correctly. I discovered this while looking closely at the photo in the now-grease-covered print out. Unfortunately, when I told people that the bolt that was welded to the square on top was not supposed to be welded there, they ignored me. Everyone, including the wonderful Kandos, disagreed with my request to un-weld that bolt. They refused to believe that white woman would know anything that they didn’t know about building molds. In their defense, they were basically right. As a general rule, welding and construction (as well as crafts and creative projects) are beyond my skill set. But I can read and follow instructions. Now, usually I don’t. I almost never follow a recipe when I’m cooking. I find them restrictive and dictatorial. But when embarking on a project that I do not understand, I follow the damn dang instructions. I don’t think beyond that, trying to find better ways to make something, though I'm willing to cut corners as use 6mm gravel instead of 5mm gravel. Seriously, who is measuring? And finally, after several failed attempts, and much yelling over loud metal projects happening in the general vicinity (metal work is full of loud painful noises and I forgot to bring my ear plugs every time I went there) in French, Arabic and English (to relieve my feelings) the men agreed to listen to me. And wonder of wonders: my idea (taken from the manual) worked. But at that point, all the welding and banging and peanut oil and lose screws meant that our filter was doomed.

Five men who are all patiently ignoring me.
OK, fine-six. Let's be honest: that guy in the back who is not
doing anything was also ignoring me.

Unwelding and then re-welding.

Never fear, though, dear friends—Take 2 was a success! And not just because people suddenly started listening to me, but mostly because of that.

Yup. My way worked. Did I rub it in their faces?
Oh, absolutely.

Next phase: moving the filter to our office and putting the sand and gravel layers in it to make the actual filter part. I foresee many more good times, epic Facebook posts, and lots of multi-lingual yelling.

My level of confidence in Take 2 is reflected in my facial expression here.

It came out!

A look inside.

Timing the flow rate.

Group success photo!

Summertime at the Lake

This lake is not in Alabama

Once when I was in Alabama visiting the Neverthirst head office, I went with my boss and his family to visit the lake where they like to vacation occasionally. This was an interesting cultural experience for me involving RVs, fancy boats, and colloquial overuse of the past participle. I had fun swimming with my boss’s cool kids, though I felt a bit out of place since I’d forgotten to wear my American flag bikini with cowboy boots. For this most recent trip to Lake Chad, I again forgot my American flag bikini and cowboy boots, but I brought my hijab. Before leaving I was warned of the surrounding dangers by security people, who I’ve mentioned before often overestimate the dangers of certain places in an attempt to make their jobs seem especially relevant. I mean - but in fairness to them, it IS important to think about job security. As for me, I pay attention to warnings sometimes…when they don’t interfere with what I want to do. At any rate, I was encouraged to wear extra clothing, so I packed a long-sleeved shirt and my lifai/thobe (See, Mom—I can take advice!), but being the shameless exhibitionist that I am, I didn’t put the head-covering on until just before we drove into town. Once there, I noticed plenty of other women without head coverings and almost no one with long-sleeves. I took my cues from the natives and opted for shorter sleeves, helpful in the sticky muggy Lake side weather. I would have really appreciated an American flag bikini and a jet ski, but when I convinced some new friends to drive us down to the Lake shore we got in trouble with a local soldier. “This is a military area! Don’t you know?” (We did.) “You have to tell us when you are coming. We could have shot you!” (They didn’t.) Most of this conversation happened while we “yes-yes”ed him and continued to take lots of selfies. It’s important to use soothing words to people who carry guns.

Lake Chad--full of islands, at least on this side.

Herve's chosen pose with our driver, Ali Adam, photo-bombing.

The Assessment Team!

Lake Chad from behind where we were staying. You're not
supposed to be out after dark, so don't worry: we were just behind our
back yard.

The point of this trip was to assess the situation around Lake Chad, where there has been a large influx of displaced people, fleeing the islands of the Lake because of Boko Haram violence in the area. People are living in makeshift houses with some small support from various NGOs. Many of them are also suffering from recent rainy season flooding, which has destroyed some of the crops in the area. IAS would like to do some projects there (and possibly Neverthirst too), so Herve and I went up to check it out. (Now, when you’re reading this, I’m worried that you’re pronouncing his name like ‘Hurve,’ rhyming with ‘curve.’ But it’s actually pronounced ‘Er-vay’. It’s French, guys. Come on. And no, I’m not going to put that accent on the last letter because it takes too long, and I don’t feel like it.)

Sometimes camels ride in cars.

So bright and early Tuesday morning (“Definitely, I’ll be there before 7am,” said the driver who came almost an hour after that), we headed out. I love road trips and getting out of the office and visiting new places and large bodies of water, so I was in high spirits. The first part of the trip bumps over potholes and involves much dodging of livestock. I wasn’t driving this time, so I could just admire the fuzzy animals, but my most recent experience with donkeys has made me distrust them for life. I gasped once, à la my mother when my father is driving, after a particularly close shave with an unconcerned ass (literal use of the word, don't freak out, Mom), but after that, I just put on my seatbelt and stopped paying attention to the cattle, unless they were camels because camels are super cool.

Some photos from the various travels:

Riding camels makes people happy!
Or maybe being photographed by drive-by foreigners...

Run, run little donkey and you can catch up!

Love this father and son outing. :)

Camel butts.

Mirror selfie!

I also had a revelation: I should probably make it a point to wear extra sunscreen even when I’m anticipating a day in the car. Because often I will convince people to open the windows so I can stick my arm out and wave at the camels. Because of white girl privilege and Chadian chivalry, I’m usually forced into the front seat. I don’t mind this because I can see better where we are going and sometimes get good pictures. I usually end up with one arm slightly pinker than the other, though. This recent trip, I could have gotten really sunburnt if I hadn’t grown up on the equator, building up a resistance to prolonged exposure to UV rays. But even I can burn if I’m standing for hours in a pile of sand trying to dig out the car. Because since the second part of the trip involves off-roading it through deep piles of sand, that definitely happened.

I'd like to thank Herve for this photo of me taking a photo of the car.

Had to let some of the air out of the tires in an attempt to
wiggle free, but it didn't work and he let out too much, so we
had to change a tire when we finally got out.

Villagers and kind passerby stop to help push.

Posing for Herve.

While digging under the car with both hands, reminiscent of a dog in a flower garden, I managed to burn the top of my arm on the “something” part of the car that apparently gets really hot when stuck in the sand. Don’t worry: I’m not going to include any gross photos of bubbling skin, but here is a photo of my arm covered in toothpaste. “Why?” you ask. Because Herve says that’s what you do for a burn. He grabbed his from the top of his bag and squirted it all over my arm before I could protest. Not sure it made much of a difference, but the last scab just fell off yesterday and now I have only a shiny pink patch of new skin.

After I took this photo, I started helping.

Toothpaste heals everything.

Somehow, after dodging camels and potholes and scraping through the sand, we made it to Bol. We spent the next two days in meetings and searching for fish to eat (Herve’s request—he ate it for breakfast one morning too).  We popped over to Bagasola for a bit too and saw gazelles and monkeys on the way. I was hoping for elephants (Herve saw some back in February in the area), but I knew it was a long shot, as rainy season means animals don’t have to go near humans to find water.

Lake fish. This one was my favorite.
I think that is because of the chili powder.
Anything is good with that stuff.

I have eaten more fish in this desert country that I have in
my entire life, and twice I lived by the beach.
But these Chadians love their river fish--
or in this case, their lake fish.

I uploaded the wrong photo where you can't really see
the gazelle antlers, but it took me several hours to get these photos up,
so just look up gazelle antlers on the internet, lazy person.

We had some good meetings with other NGOs and UN agencies in the area. We also made sure to take some time to talk to the local population, including government officials and health practioners. My favorite time was speaking with local IDP (internally displaced people) communities. I took notes in three languages and learned a couple of words in local tribal languages. People love when you make the effort to learn something in their language. There was screaming and laughter, so good
times are possible even without a bikini and a jet ski.

Talking to IDPs, mostly in Arabic. Translating the numbers
into French for Herve, who speaks decent Arabic,
but gets confused with the chiffres.

Some of my notes. If you can't tell which is
Arabic and which is English or French,
that's normal. My writing is always terrible in every language.

The health center worker plus me. Thankfully the hijab is
hiding most of the car hair.

Herve and I spent our evenings being eaten alive by mosquitos and watching French dubbed movies on his computer until his battery died. We occasionally had moments of electricity during the day, but nothing during the night. We watched a movie entitled “Le Prince de New York,” which is the one where Eddie Murphy is an African prince looking for a bride. I have never seen it in English, though I know it is a famous movie. And I can’t remember the English title.  I do remember that Herve and I had a long conversation about how the female lead in the movie had a pretty face, but was way too skinny to be truly beautiful. “Amanda,” he said to me, “if you gain some weight, you could marry a Chadian man. We like to know that we are holding a woman when we have our wife in our arms.” So…I guess I better eat all of these gummy “sedans” that Leif brought me—Sveriges mest köpta bil! (Go find a Swede to translate.)

One of the evil spiders lurking in my room.
Fortunately, we had no electricity so I wasn't trying
to turn on the light. Herve killed him. Perks of traveling
with a man.

In conclusion, I was writing this in between writing the Needs Assessment and editing the proposal and discussing various aspects of the trip with Herve. Everything is done now but the question remains: will the internet be strong enough to post this?

Please enjoy the following photos that prove to you that occasionally my life is pretty entertaining:

Camel parking lot in Bol.

Flooding in village. Malaria is a huge problem right now.

Cool kid who rode up and insisted I take his photo.
I think it should be published.

Fortunately, Herve captured this whole moment on camera too.

Chad and America--international community.
People mostly like us here.

Selfie with the driller's daughter and niece.

My new friend, Paluma, a Kanembu IDP from the islands.

Firewood for sale.

This migrant village was moving to a new location.
We passed by them on the road and Herve bought some of the mats
they have rolled up on their heads.

I wish I could pull off this nose ring look, but the last time
I pierced my cartilage,  my ear swelled up and I had to get the earring chopped
out by a doctor. I really don't want to risk that happening
to my nose, which is already big enough.
Anyway, I like this Kanembu style.

Testing the water quality from some locally drilled bore holes,
no need for IAS machines, the terrain here is much easier to drill.
Sometimes the water is salty if not drilled well.
This water tasted fine to me--not salty at all.

Again, Herve photographing me photographing others.
But I like these little girls' smiles. :)

A funky new kind of hand pump, designed by an American man
who lived here for years, but caught some disease
and went back to America and died.
Legacy still strong in Chad, though!

I'm going to make this photo large because I love it.
I love how excited all these serious-looking men are to see their photo.
And I love that guy sleeping in the background.

Yeah. That's about right-Amanda talking to a bunch of men.

Herve to capture this important moment.

The final really important moment captured by Herve:
me picking the burrs out of my skirt after a bathroom break.
In the desert, if the only tree around has burrs, you still
squat behind it to pee because desperate times...

J'ai fini! Enfin!