S. Africa
Introduction| Context| Ram Pump| Gallery| June 2006 Trip| Participants| Plans| Brochure
Introduction
Our chapter aims to partner with the Church Agricultural Project (CAP) to provide ram pumps for irrigation. Our objective is to provide sustainable water for agriculture among AIDS-stricken poor communities in rural KwaZulu-Natal. Though water is locally plentiful, it must be brought uphill manually. We propose to improve food supplies and reduce the labor expended to irrigate community gardens.
Project Leader: Regina Shklyan
Two graduate students from JHU's Bloomberg School of Public Health brought a public health perspective to the project, including water quality sampling and a survey assessment of the community. Click here for more information about their role and perspectives.
Context
Kwazulu-Natal is a province in eastern South Africa. Its largest city is Durban in the southeast. HIV/AIDS has infected over 2 million people in rural villages, leaving many children unsupported, malnourished, and uneducated. Unemployment causes adult departures that exacerbate the problem. Remaining elderly women and children expend vast amounts of time carrying irrigation water to feed the younger children. This project will sustainably support more than a thousand of these children and their providers, while serving as a model for future projects to aid millions more.
Additional context can be found in the South Africa Project Planning Fact Sheet - Year 1
Ram Pump Technology
A ram-pump harnesses the momentum of a large amount of water to move a small amount up-hill. An innovative local design (Alcock) has been prototyped and one irrigates the communal garden of twelve grandmothers in the rural village of Inchanga (the "isthembe" or "Commitment" group), who feed and raise over 100 orphaned children. Importantly, the group can easily maintain the system themselves without external supplies.
Gallery
June, 2006, Implementation Trip
In June of 2006, an 18-member EWB-JHU team traveled to the rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal Province to work with Dave Alcock on the development and installation of ram-pump driven irrigation systems in community vegetable gardens within the Inchanga and Mapahapeteni communities. As described in the attached South Africa Implementation Fact Sheet - Year 1 , these are two HIV/AIDS stricken and impoverished villages where grand-mothers have bonded together in efforts to grow food for their grandchildren and other orphaned children of the community.
Participating in the project were:
-- 10 JHU undergraduates (team leader Qing Ma [BME '07], Richard Farmer [ME,
'09], Jerome Fox [DoGEE, '07], Jesse Hindle [CE, '07], Yang Li
[Biophysics,'07], Cassie Mickish [BME, '09], Emily Roche [CE, '07], Maya
Sathyanadhan [DoGEE, '06], Regina Shklyan [CE, '07], and prior EWB
president Richard Tang [BME, '06] )
-- 4 JHU graduate students (Laurence Phan [DoGEE, MSE '06], Allison Costa
[DoGEE, MSE '07], Sharon Nappier [SPH PhD program] and Maura Dwyer [SPH PhD
program]
-- 2 JHU faculty (William Ball [EWB faculty advisor] and Erica Schoenberger
[Professor of Geography])
-- 1 professional partner and 1 EWB member from another university (Nick
Pippen [UMCP ChE '05] and Benjamin Ball [ U.Va. CE '06])
At Inchanga, the garden size was more than doubled (from 0.07 to 0.16 hectares) and a second irrigation system was installed, including a new ram-pump supply pipe and pumping system as well as a new irrigation supply system that included an elevated storage tank and reservoir as well a supply and delivery system. Other major aspects of the work included the development of wetland drainage channels as a means of collecting and concentrating stream water (using buried perforated pipe) and the construction of over 150 meters of fencing. At Maphapheteni, a much larger (0.8 hectare) community garden was provided with a new ram-pump system, two storage tanks above the field, and an in-field system of pipes that provided water spigots at three strategically placed locations. Major challenges here were the rocky terrain of the stream site and the long distances of trenching required. The work at both sites was assisted by local students from the Zakhe Agricultural Institute (22 boys helping with the work for two full days!), and a major highlight of each day was the mid-day meal (typically "samp" [crushed corn], beans, rice, and cabbage), which was either offered in the homes of the gardeners or delivered to the site by the women and their grandchildren. At night, the students were very well accommodated through facilities made available by the Valley Trust, a local NGO that also does work in the area and houses a local medical clinic.
Two graduate students from JHU's Bloomberg School of Public Health brought a public health perspective to the project, including water quality sampling and a survey assessment of the community. Click here for more information about their role and perspectives.
Other important elements of the project trip
were numerous events aimed at providing students with contacts in the community
and cultural exposure. These included, among other things, all of the
following events:
-- an initial "braai" (barbecue) at the Alcock home, as an
opportunity to introduce the team to Inkhosi Gwala (the Maphapheteni area's
tribal chief) and other local dignitaries;
-- several visits with local tribal elders and councilmen (including Councillor
Dennis "Boy" Shori of Ward 4 in the Ethikwini Municipality);
-- a visit to the Zakhe Agricultural Institute (hosted by the
Institute's Director, Mr. Richard Dladla);
--- a two-day tour of a platinum mine in Rustenburg, northwest of
Johannesburg (hosted by Mr. Pieter Pieters of Read, Swatman & Voight, Ltd.
)
--- meeting with staff, translators, and others at the Valley Trust
(in Botha's Hill, KZN)
-- an end-of-project tour in the group's two mini-vans
("combis"), that included
-- a visit to an Agriculture Research Station in
Dundee
-- a visit to the historical Battlefield of Isandhlwana
-- a visit with Creina Alcock at the sustainable development
project at Mdukhutshani ("Land of Lost Grasses") near Tuegela Ferry
in Msinga
-- two days in the Hluhluwe and Umfolozi Game Reserves
Some few photographs of the community garden implementation effort are provided here.
We hope to add additional photos and links to journal entries of student
experiences later in the year -- please stay tuned!)
Plans
"Plans for the 2006-2007 year are currently under development. A new project team (with a few familiar faces!) is working toward a return trip in the summer of 2007, during which additional ram-pump irrigation systems would be provided to additional gardening communities, helping to feed many hundreds of additional children. In addition, a possible bio-gas digester implementation is being considered, as a means of helping a community to sanitarily dispose of animal and human feces while also generating a valuable fertilizer resource and methane gas for hot-water heating."