Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink

“Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink.” This phrase seemed particularly apt this past week in Mahadevbesi, where although there are streams of water flowing almost everywhere making it almost impossible to leave the house without getting ourselves caked in mud, our tanks remained empty. Let me explain...

Actually not explain, because the truth is I don’t quite understand, so rather I’ll just elaborate. Nepal has one of the largest water sources in the world, in fact there is so much water that a large portion of it is used to generate hydroelectric power that is pumped across the border and sold to India. The irony of this is that Kathmandu suffers from such power shortages that it makes the load shedding we experienced is South Africa recently seem like a joke. Everyday residents of Kathmandu are without power for a couple of hours and load shedding is very much a part of daily life. But turning away from the electricity issue, I’d like to reflect a little on the second irony, that a country that has such an abundance of water suffers from substantial water shortage problems.

Mahadevbesi is perhaps a perfect example of this dichotomy. There is water flowing everywhere, the road is constantly caked in mud, water flows off the hilly landscape where ever you look yet drinking water remains an uncertainty. When we did an exercise with the kids in the school a few weeks ago and they had to speak about what they would do if they were President of Nepal, many brought up the issue of water. This week we experienced this problem first hand. Initially when we arrived here we had to go to the communal tap or well, down the road (or more like “down the swamp” at the moment) to get our water. After a week we had figured out a way to get water from a pipe from one of the Rai villages up the road. But every now and then the water flow stops and we have to go up to investigate. Usually a pipe has broken or someone has detached it for their own personal use. This week we returned on Sunday night, traipsing through the mud in the dark, to find our tanks were still empty. So Monday morning I went up with Prakash, one of the Nepali staff to find the problem.

We traipse up the mountain and find the first problem, one of the pipes has snapped, we will have to go up to the Bazaar to replace it. But that’s not the only problem because water is still not flowing through the pipe. So we find a young boy who takes us up to the tank at the top of the mountain to see what’s wrong. By the time we reach the top I’m sweating out of every corner of my body. Not expecting a hike, I’m still wearing my pyjamas which include: long johns, fleece pants, two sweaters, a scarf and a thermal vest. I am not exaggerating, this is what I sleep in every night, although its bright and sunny in the days, nights are freezing and since we live in a mud hut and there is an open window above where I sleep, it gets pretty cold, to put it mildly. (This year is actually the coldest winter Nepal has experienced in years, 5 people died in Nepal yesterday alone from the cold because they not used to such temperatures.)

Back to the water, unfortunately however when we get to the top of the hill, we find the tank empty. A Didi (Nepali woman) explains to us that there is no pressure and we have to go to another hill, half an hour away where there is another tank to see what the problem is. So off we trek again, she comes with us and on the way she begins talking to Prakash who explains that she has just come back from Saudi Arabia where she was working for 3 years. It was a bit of a surreal experience walking across the mountains searching for the water source and discussing Saudi Arabia. But the walk was beautiful and afforded an amazing view of Mahadevbesi

Unfortunately however our expedition was unsuccessful, we returned an hour later after going to two different tanks without finding the source of the problem. It’s been a week since and we still have no water despite making two subsequent trips up the hill. The problem is probably another pipe somewhere that’s been broken or cut and no one bothers to fix. Which brings me to another interesting topic, the Nepali villagers’ mentality.

In the Western world, when something is broken for us, we want it fixed immediately. If the electrician or plumber doesn’t come that day we are angry and frustrated and wonder how people are so unreliable. In Mahadevbesi the situation is quite different. For one, it’s not just a matter of a phone call to a reliable professional to get the job done, it could take a good couple of hours to fix such a problem and makes you really appreciate the water to begin with. However the reality is often it’s not just a couple of hours, it could take a couple of days or even weeks to fix such problems. Why? Not because the problem is so complex but rather there seems to be an attitude of “Ke Garne”, “What can we do?”, no one goes to check what’s wrong or fix the problem, they just accept it and hope someone eventually fixes it. Perhaps this is just a cultural issue, and we are to blame for having this attitude of “we need something and we need it now” yet it’s still weird for us, water is such a basic necessity and no one does anything about it. We go away for the weekend and come back and still nothing has been done and we wonder if we leave will anything ever be done?

It’s hard to know what to make of this attitude, is it a lack of education that gives people this apathetic outlook? Surely they realise they need water, of course it’s not that the villagers are sitting around doing nothing, they work hard, women wake up early to clean their homes and cook for their families, even children often work for a good couple of hours before school starts at 10 am and continuing to work after school ends at 4pm. However not having water, only adds to that workload because now they have to walk 15 minutes to fetch water form a well nearby. Wouldn’t it make more sense to just fix the pipe? Then there is the question of who built the system anyway. The fact that there is a water system to begin with is a step up from many villagers in the country but once you building it surely do it properly… One of the guys explained to me that the problem is pipes that were used are too thin and the water tank far too small. He compared it to his Yishuv in Israel and explained how a tank four times the size with pipes three times as thick would be used to supply water to a community a fraction of the size.

All this makes me wonder how do you change the mentality or can you change this mentality? Am I being condescending or politically incorrect even asking these questions? One thing that has certainly become clear to me over the past few months is that there is very little we can do until people learn to help themselves, to think for themselves and find their own solutions. This sounds obvious and maybe even clichéd, but in Nepal I don’t think it’s that obvious. There are thousands of NGOS working here yet as long as there are foreigners doing the work, I’m not sure they solving the core of the problems. We met a man from a Korean Organisation the other day who basically told us (in indirect terms) that all they do is hand out “stuff”. Rice packages, clothing etc, that’s all good and well and I’m sure their donors sleep better at night after seeing the photos, but it’s really not helping the situation. What happens when the rice is finished and people still don’t have food to eat, do they just wait for the next hand-out?

I like TBT’s take on all this, their approach is to not give out money but rather try to teach and empower people so they learn to help themselves. That’s not to say I think TbT’s approach is perfect, I think a lot could be done to make the volunteers more effective and our work more systematic. And of course there is no clear answers to the questions of how do you make people think for themselves; how do you give over ideas without imposing your own views on others or what knowledge to convey in the few short months we have here. All I can say is that this week’s water issues have definitely got me thinking, we only have three weeks of volunteering left, but it seems Nepal has a long way to go in its climb towards development.