We started our first full day at Puna island with breakfast at Mercedes’s house. She owns a restaurant and is cooking for us this entire trip! After a good meal we head off for the big day. Today we are visiting two local communities to interview them and collect water samples: Tabor y Concordia. We walk to the bus and head off!

We arrive near Tabor, but the road to gain direct access to the community is in bad condition from last night’s rain so we park the bus and hike to the community entrance. It is a quick hike (10 minutes) and once in Tabor we immediately notice the elevated water tank and the beautiful large tree with orange flowers in the center of the roughly 7 house community. 

We interview a handful of the houses and ask about how they store the water. What it tastes like, what it smells like, how they feel about the water and their supplier, education, family, societal structure, sanitation, and more. They are really friendly!!

Luisa has two reservoirs and when they empty, the well pump is run and it refills her reservoirs. She is overall happy with her water and said her most pressing needs are a road to Puna and better healthcare. To treat her water, Luisa only covered her indoor barrel with a piece of wood to keep the bugs out. Her outdoor tank has no cover and is featured below:

After we interviewed various houses, we went to look at the wellhead and storage tank and talk to the operations manager. The manager says the well has been active for 5 years and has shown no signs of running dry. The well is not pressurized, however, and for only being 5 years old the structure supporting the tank seemed to see considerable weathering. 

After we collect samples we begin to do some lab experiments and hang out with the local dogs. Because this is our first field lab of the trip, it takes a little while and after some work we take a break to eat guava from the orange tree. 

We said goodbye to Tabor and headed back into Puna to eat lunch and plan our trip to Concordia. Concordia is a little bit further away (20 minute drive), is larger than Tabor, and allegedly has worse water quality. We arrive late afternoon and the tide has already started rising. We talked to the community leader and many of the residents and then split up into groups to maximize our productivity.

There are 5 wells in Concordia and an experimental well. We collected samples from 3 of the 5 wells, the experimental well, and a house water reserve. Some of these wells were constructed by the elderly men in the village and have been in operation for over 30 years. 

We leave Concordia and head back to Puna for some sweets from the local bakery, dinner and a long night of lab work! Yay team!

– Julia Schultz

Wow! What an exciting and fascinating second day it was for the CEE 449 travel team’s expedition to Ecuador. After a tiring flight, we were fortunate enough to sleep in and have a relaxing morning. This consisted of an enjoyable breakfast from the hotel in Guayaquil. After breakfast, some students went for a swim in the hotel’s swimming pool while others went for a walk outside the hotel.

At 12 PM, we checked out of our hotel in Guayaquil and boarded a bus shortly after. The bus dropped us off at the port where we would board our boat to Puna Island. We saw an iguana roaming around while we waited and also had the opportunity to meet and talk to some local people.

The boat ride itself took about an hour.

Once we arrived, we entered our hotels, with the girls staying in one hotel and the boys in another around the corner.

After getting settled into the hotels, we began walking around the island. Juan Pablo showed us the location of the desalination plant and the location of a well which is also used to provide water.

We then had a fantastic meal at one of the houses on the island, consisting of meat, rice, and beans. After we were well fed, we went over our notes on what we had learned earlier today, and also went through potential questions to ask community members. The last event of the night was calibrating some of the equipment that we will need to use to test our water samples later in the week. After this, it was time to shower and get some sleep!

Our plan for tomorrow is to visit two communities on the island, Tabor and Concordia, that do not have access to the desalination plant. We plan to interview residents of those communities and take samples of their water to analyze. Until then, it’s time to relax and get excited for the rest of this trip!

-Ethan Heidrich

Friday morning we got up early to leave Mbarara and head back to Kampala. We had two stops on the way back at schools! The first school was one of Peter’s projects where we got a tour of all the facilities. The second school was where Peter’s two daughters attended. We ended the day with a surprise performance in Kampala!

Before we arrived at the first school we stopped on the side of the road because we saw zebras! When we arrived at the first school we met Peter’s mother and some of his brothers. Then they and the headmaster showed us around the school and into some classes. We saw that they had a science lab with some chemistry materials and many vocational classrooms for things like sewing and soap making. They also were completing construction to build more classrooms as some of the classes are currently in an old chicken house. They also had lots of food growing on a farm there so we got to see coffee beans up close and some people tried them. We spoke with a crowd of students in the cafeteria and Gabi led us in asking questions and handing out prizes! During this meeting with the students we found out that they were going to name one of the new construction buildings “Benito” after professor Mariñas!

We then went to lunch at an outdoor restaurant in a town nearby. We got a buffet and ate quickly so we could go to the next school. A former CEE449 student, Anjana, who is now working in Uganda met us there and told us about her NGO, Brick by Brick.

The next school we went to was where Peter’s daughters attend, and it was an all girls boarding school. This school had a very beautiful campus and lots of useful facilities including a fairly large computer lab. They had the beginnings of a library for the girls but it needed many more books. We spoke to a group of girls at this school and handed out prizes, although we had to go quick as we were running low on time.

After we got back into the cars, we started to head back to Kampala. We all knew Peter was planning a surprise for us, so we couldn’t wait to find out what it was! As we were running late, we did not have time to stop at the hotel and went straight to the surprise. It turns out it was a performance show of songs and dance of many local cultures in Uganda. Everyone really enjoyed the performance and thought learning about all this culture and history was very interesting. They performed dances and music from many different regions in Uganda. We even got to dance at the end too!

Finally we headed back to the hotel after everyone finished dancing. Most people were very exhausted so everyone fell asleep very easily from our long day and got rested before our last day in Uganda!

Author: Abby Cohen

Today we visited two water treatment plants. One was a conventional plant that takes water from the lake. Here they were doing an expansion and we saw a plant that was undergoing construction. We also ate random berries Yuehao found in a bush on the ground. Hopefully we don’t die! (They were aptly named ground cherries and were very good),

At the current plant they explained to us how the treatment processes they used worked and the how once the new plant was online how the old plant would be used. This plant worked pretty much the same way as the one at base camp we saw yesterday. This plant has a capacity of 300-400 cubic meters per day.

After that we went to lunch with Jean Baptiste and Silvia the people in charge of water management for the Nakivale camp. During that lunch some members of our team used that opportunity to learn more about the plant operations, Gabi our wonderful TA used the opportunity to make fun of Mike for drinking his Coca-Cola too fast.

The next plant we visited pumped groundwater. This plant pumps groundwater 500m up a hill into a sand filter and then from there gravity is used to send it to the spigot used by the refugees. Team 3 drive up in one of the trucks to check out the filter and the rest of us ran our water quality tests and interviewed the community. We got a lot of information about water availability at the source. The source turned out to be pretty good. The only major problem was that the water table would fall below the pump during dry season and there would be no water.

We also went with one family to there home where they told us about their daily life and thought it was really funny we wanted to see their wash basin. The intermittency of the water source was a big issue for them because one of the other sources they went to for water was the lake. When they took water from the lake the people who own the land around the lake make them pay.

Plant under construction

Current plant

Landscape around the plant no lions 🙁

Author: Michael Boetel

Starting our first day of field work, we first drove to the office of the Prime Minister where we were formally welcomed into the country for our efforts. As Amos, the director of the Nakivale and Oruchinga camp explained the government of Uganda’s commitment to improving the camps, Peter expressed his gratitude for allowing us to conduct research in the settlement, outlining his motivation to make sure our research would not go without tangible change within the community.

After driving another hour towards the settlement, we were greeted by the assistant to the commander of the UNHCFR camp associated with the office of the prime minister of Uganda who explained the current conditions of the camp. Currently, there are 102,000 refugees consisting of mostly French speaking residents who all have the potential to receive full Uganda citizenship. The government’s role in the camp comprises providing a plot of land for the refugees for farming and housing and arranging services through NGOs such as the World Food Programme and UNHCR. They are also in charge of security and policing within the camp to ensure the safety of the refugees. Unlike refugee settlements in other countries, Uganda’s government encourages the citizens of the camp to farm their own land in order for families to use new skills to bring back to their home country. The Uganda refugee camps also differ in their policies to allow citizens to grow their own food when WFP donations are not sufficient.  Although the government arranges services for the refugees, there are various outside players. NGO’s, for example, provide the funds for water, food, and construction of infrastructure within the camp.  The camp has been around for 60 years consisting of 27 villages, and there is a census every three years conducted at the camp. It was clear driving through the settlement’s dusty roads, there were many families and local businesses within the camp, and we were frequently greeted by the residents as we passed.

Once we spoke with the leaders of the settlement, we arrived at the Basecamp Water Treatment Plant to learn about the water treatment and distribution process the camp employs. Hearing from the operations manager of the water treatment plant, Jean Baptiste, we listened and took notes as he walked us through the treatment methods already in place. Collecting from Lake Nakivale, the water is pumped through a galvanized iron pipe to pre-chlorination tanks where alum, chlorine, and soda ash is added before flocculation and sedimentation. As we familiarized ourselves with the plant more and more, it was clear that Jean Baptiste was eager to see improvements made within the camp, always willing to explain things twice if needed to us if we didn’t understand or wanted clarification on the current dimensions and materials used to construct the plant.

There are currently five treatment plants in the Nakivale settlement, three of which use raw lake water and hand pumps while the other two are motorized from groundwater. Basecamp is the largest of the plants with a capacity of 600,000-700,000 L/day supplying water to 89,207 residents at 17-18 L per refugee per day. For many of the residents, the walk to the nearest water tap is 500 m, and there are still many challenges within the settlement to address in terms of water access. In order for improvements to be made, Jean Baptiste would like to prioritize increasing the capacity of the plant, adding more chemicals, acquiring more fuel and generators to power the plant, and extending the pipelines. Though the amount of work felt overwhelming, we all wanted to work to see the improvements were implemented.

Our time visiting basecamp, collecting samples, and performing field tests on the raw source water and treated water from the plant ended with us traveling to the center of the camp for lunch, where we had the chance to speak more with Richard, Peter, and Jean Baptiste. We all loved trying the different cuisines we were starting to grow accustomed to while learning more about the language and customs of the cultures within the settlement.

After lunch, we split into two groups to take samples from the community water taps and survey the residents on the quality of their water. Surrounded by Gerry cans in rows, the tap operated systematically with children sliding cans down the rows as each was filled. With Richard as our translator, we were able to speak with members of the Water Committee at the tap and ask them questions about the biggest challenges their community was facing with water supply. In terms of quality, most residents had no complaints, however, the committee reported the capacity of the water was barely sufficient to meet the needs of the entire community.

Our long first day of field work ended with all of us tired from the heat and activity, but as soon as we got back to the hotel, there was still a lot of lab work yet to do. Dividing into groups after dinner, we tested the samples collected from the raw source water of the lake, the basin at the plant, the chlorinated and treated water, and the two taps we visited. For some of us, it was our first time using the titrators and calorimeters, but by the end of the night, each of us had learned something new.The lab work ended our first day, but we were ready to return to the camp the next day and learn how we could work to meet the growing needs of the community.

Author: Amanda Darling