Leaving the Land of a Thousand Hills
September 15, 2010
By Michael J. Mascarenhas for the New York Times
Michael J. Mascarenhas is a World Water Corps volunteer currently on assignment in Rwanda. This is his fifth and final installment in the Scientist At Work blog on the New York Times web site.
Note: Baseline Assessment is work done in regions where Water For People plans to expand its programming. This is a highly important volunteer assignment as it establishes baseline data to which future progress can be compared as programs are established. The work consists of conducting interviews with local people on current water and sanitation conditions (data collection), marking the location of water points with GPS technology, and photographing water points and sanitation facilities.
Our two-week baseline assessment in Rwanda came to an end, and it was time for me to leave “the land of a thousand hills” and head back to New York. I have much data to sift through — my team interviewed 48 households, and collectively we surveyed 378 households in the three sectors. I leave the field with many research-type questions — more than when I entered. For example, how do we actually measure this complex activity known as water access in subsistence communities? I am also left wondering about the relationship between social inequality and environmental disparity, and the social impact that technological changes might bring about in these subsistence communities.
Like most of you, I want to see (and am happy to be a part of) improvements in water services in developing areas like rural Rwanda. Water For People, together with a large contingent of other nonprofit water development institutions, like WaterAid, Charity:Water and Water.org, to name only three, are engaged in various (and very successful) sponsorship drives, research initiatives and technological improvements to help water access. The objective of these organizations is to help provide those who, by virtue of where they live and who they are (poor, and lacking political power), do not have appropriate access to what many believe is a basic human right — water.
However, my fieldwork has also taught me that we should be cautious about the research methods and technological improvements introduced in the name of water aid and development. Technological improvements, even improved gravity-fed public taps, have impacts that are not always predictable or in the beneficiaries’ best interests in terms of stability and sustainability. Let me explain from the changes I have observed in farming practices where these new water technologies have been introduced.
What do you think?
