Tale of Two Villages – Part 1

Yuan Jiang, above the clouds

Still playing catch-up, this tale begins a month ago. My heart, mind, and fitness were put to the test as I traveled south to work on two village projects: the first in 邓耳下寨 in Yuan Jiang county (元江), and the second in 密切地村各界组in Mo Jiang county (墨江). I have just returned from the second of two trips - each was about a week in length, and I visited both villages each time. 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…

There was a leader who gave a limp handshake, in a village near Yuan Jiang; there was a leader who gave a firm handshake, in a village near Mo Jiang.

It is the year of Our Lord two thousand and eleven. Spiritual revelations were conceded to Mo Jiang eighty years prior by Christian missionaries with white skin - not much else is remembered of them. Hope is had in great abundance, but toilets are very few (one). Water flows at the girth of a single chopstick, and communications of possible water contamination have yet to be received.

Yuan Jiang, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister village only a few hundred kilometers away, had grown accustomed to receiving gifts of money from corrupt local government officials and then spending it. Despite many wrong ideas held close by her people, to say they did not work piteously hard would be criminal.

Since I can’t keep it up forever, here I must break from Dickens and return to plain old Kao.

Just before the New Year came, we left Kunming for Yuan Jiang. I took turns driving with Mok, leader of PIH - the community development branch of the group I work with. With us was Li Ju-Do, a stocky jolly Hani (ethnic minority) guy.

Upon arrival in the village, we met Vice Village Director Bai, and he led us to a groundwater source used by people for over a hundred years, where water flowed from inside a cave. Located a few kilometers from the village, they now wanted to bring the water to the village. A hillside stream was a second water source, and we saw a villager drinking the untreated water directly using a segment of bamboo.  We found they had no concept of water contamination, and therefore no plans for protecting the spring or treating the surface water. A perfect place for our ceramic water filters, you would think.

 

Villager drinking cool, but untreated water on a hot day

We sat down to meet with Bai, whose full name is Bai Fu, and another elected leader named Li. Li was a fat, kind man, but un-opinionated; he had nothing to offer to this first discussion nor to future ones so I won’t spare words on him from here on. Bai Fu was the took responsibility for the project, but he was skeptical about our claims that his water sources were likely polluted and sitting open for more dangerous future contaminants. He only cared for the problem he and the others could see: a lack of water. If only people could see bacteria bathing in their drinking water… We tried telling him about our partner company’s ceramic water filters, but he remained unconvinced.

Bai Fu called (literally – by shouting through a megaphone) for the villagers to gather for a meeting, and to my surprise, Mok asked if I wanted to lead it. In my head, I reeled. I hadn’t planned, prepared, or practiced, and he wanted me to lead a village-wide meeting to forty complete strangers in Chinese?! Of course, I said “of course.” I kicked off the meeting and found my voice quickly. Water is just about my favorite topic to speak about, so I was not at all lacking in material. Getting villagers to participate is crucial to their learning, so I made good use of the silence that followed my questions, pressuring them to think and show me their knowledge or ignorance. Their accents were hard to understand, and I’m sure my Putonghua (standard Mandarin) was not easy for them either. Mok helped me out. Through his vast project experience with many different villages in China, he has developed a knack for understanding and even imitating various regional dialects. I explained the differences between surface and ground water, and Mok drew a problem tree on the ground using chalk, where the problem of having too little water was written on the trunk. By drawing, important information is recorded visibly, rather than going in one ear and out the other. Also, it keeps them interested and serves as a reminder after we leave, until it gets erased eventually. Villagers then brainstormed the fruits grown as a result of this problem. 

First, the obvious ones were stated:

Not enough water for drinking, leads to: dehydration, diarrhea

Then slowly came ones regarding sanitation:

Not enough water for washing: hands, feet, teeth, clothes, dishes, food

Some others related to production emerged:

Not enough water for: crops and animals (additionally, many larger animals had to be sold this past year due to a drought in Yunnan)

With some prodding, the loss of time and energy was mentioned:

Daily, time and energy is spent collecting and carrying water from other sources. This leaves less time and energy for other endeavors, such as caring for the home, educating children, working, etc. A problem I had never considered related to water was that the men had trouble finding wives. A bride customarily gets married away to the groom's village, and none of the women in the village wanted to stay there, because the water situation was so bad. Another problem was that when old people had to wait late into the night to gather enough water to carry home, they would often stumble in the dark, due to poor vision and uneven terrain.

Then we drew in the roots of the tree – the roots of the problem that had to be addressed.

A few villagers were more vocal than the rest. Most stayed silent, so I assume they either did not understand us or they remained skeptical. One man passionately denied that their water could be contaminated. It was because he feared that we would not help them with the project if it was. This is not the case - if they will be drinking contaminated water either way, getting it to the village still helps them tremendously. We just hope they will treat it afterward.

Li Ju-Do giving a filter demo to a really enthusiastic villager

We talked more about water quantity than about water quality, and I fear we made a crucial mistake by pushing our product too soon. By talking about filters before being sure they truly understood the reason for needing them, we shot ourselves in the foot. It seemed they only saw us as salesmen from there on. Our main goal is to help villages achieve long term health; using water filters is just the best of many good treatment options. This should have been communicated more clearly. We sell the filters rather than give them away because when something is paid for using hard earned money, it more likely to be cared for and used. The money earned (at a loss) goes to keeping the factory running. Despite our desperate attempts to demonstrate the impossibility of earning a profit (when the cost of helping with the water resource project was so high), it was too late. The damage was done, and it seemed to cast doubt upon everything else we tried to teach them about water safety.

Sometimes, want does not follow need. Later, despite our efforts, we heard that only one person ordered a filter, which made me very sad. Though these villagers’ situation truly required water treatment, they simply did not believe it. So though they certainly needed our filters, they simply did not want them. At the time, I thought that if we had maybe given a better performance, they would have understood, and then would have been willing to change their habits. I felt we had failed them.

Being my first public health training experiences, I’m not sure how I would have handled disillusionment had Mo Jiang not turned out be so different.

To be continued…

They laugh and are puzzled every time I tell them they live in a beautiful place

On the drive to Yuan Jiang

Villager reviewing the lesson