Internship Project - The Beginning

The project that I’m working on during my internship with Busoga Trust has really started rolling in the last two weeks. On the 13th, I visited, Makooma Community, the village which will hopefully be the first of many to benefit from the sand filters with which I’m working. The objective of this visit was to collect water samples from the community source to be filtered in order to measure how well the filter would treat this water. We needed to gather about eight jerry cans of water, each with a capacity of 20 liters. A jerry can is a plastic container very similar to the spare fuel cans you might see on Jeeps, Land Rovers, and the like.

Makooma Community Water Source

It was very hard for me to imagine living off the water source we saw in this village. It was basically just a swampy area near the community resident’s homes. The water there was stagnant, muddy, and I could only imagine how sick I would become if I drank even a cup of it. The local children were incredibly excited to see us, and were very eager to fill the jerry cans for us. They were practically fighting over them. To fill the jerry cans, the children waded out into the water, which was maybe just over knee deep on them, to an area where the water was supposedly somewhat cleaner. Once the jerry cans were full, the children were equally excited to carry them the approximately 200 meters back to our truck. Considering that 20 liters of water weighs 20 kg (44 lbs), and that these kids were probably no more than 8 years old, I was impressed. They weren’t able to lift the full jerry cans high enough to put them on their heads, but once we helped them get the cans onto their heads, they walked on back to our truck without seeming to struggle too much. After seeing the water which these people live with everyday, I appreciated the water which was in my trusty Nalgene, and the water with which I showered that evening like never before.

The enthusiastic volunteer water samplers