Nanda's arrival, health surveys and water testing...

Hello Everyone,
David and I arrived in Hubli airport after a grueling 23 hour flight journey where we were welcomed by a man carrying a placard of Deshpande Foundation. We squeezed in all the baggage in a small hatchback car and after asking around for the BVB Engineering hostel to a few autorickshaw drivers and watchmen at the BVB College of Engineering, we finally reached an apartment block which is currently under construction. We were so happy to meet up with the rest of the team. After a brief unpacking session, we headed off to the famous Ambesh hotel for our dinner to discuss the project details and future goals. I ended up spending the first 15 mins to half hour giving a detailed explanation of all the varied and exotic Indian dishes that were offered by Ambesh. The questions ranged from, “what is the difference between Dal Fry, Dal Palak and Dal Tadka?” to “What makes masala chai so tasty?” and “Can you ask the waiter to put less oil in my Veg. Kadai?”.... the questions were infinite and I was glad that I could answer most of them. I guess this trip so far has also been a learning experience for me as far as the Indian culture is concerned.
My notion of Hubli was a hot and arid place but it was just the opposite, it was nice and cool with light showers in the evening and so far mosquitoes have been a minimum compared to Honduras. The very next day we (David and I ) were on a mission (in fact every day has been one so far) to visit the Rajiv Gandhi Primary School at S. M. Krishna Nagar with Kim to get a feel of how to do the surveys. The majority of the people at Krishna Nagar are Muslims so they can speak fluent Urdu than Kannada, which made it easy for me to interact well with them. We were introduced to Mr. Mulla, the President of the Rajiv Gandhi School Trust and Mrs. Nirmala, Principal of the Primary School, they were very warm and welcoming. After this, we were taken by Irfan, a sixth grade student who is very active and chirpy with endless questions about America and about our project. I had fun talking to him in Urdu and he took us to another student's house where we did an extensive health survey to address the health and water issues they were facing. The two main problems that I was able to deduce from the surveys were:
The availability of water was scarce because only two out of the six bore wells were in working condition and the water comes to the houses once in every 5 to 6 days. Apart from this, the water that is sent by HDMC (Hubli-Dharwad Municipal Corporation) through the water trucks comes in every 8 or 9 days.
Due to the lack of water, the families in this area tend to store buckets of water over a period of time in their living room which was not more than 5ft by 3ft in area. The storage of stagnant water in these buckets and the lack of hygeine in their houses was a clear indication that bacterial contamination was present in their so called “potable water source”.
In the little time that we were there at their house, the family was very hospitable and offered us with coffee in small stainless steel cups. The coffee was delicious and milky. After our survey, I wanted to test the water quality by sending samples of water to the testing facility in Dharwad. The next day Kim and I headed to Dharwad with Mr. Jabashetti from Water Literacy Foundation to the laboratory to collect sterilized glass bottles and 2 litre plastic bottles for bacteriological test and testing of 14 parameters ( some of which include water's alkalinity, hardness, chloride, nitrate, phosphate levels etc) respectively. The bus ride from Hubli to Dharwad costs Rs. 8 and takes roughly 45 minutes. If you are lucky you might get a seat to sit otherwise its a bumpy ride with shoulders rubbing with six other people and head constantly hitting the roof of the bus as the Indian buses are not designed for people over the height of 6ft 2 inches. We traveled to Krishna Nagar and collected three samples of water:
Water that is supplied from the bore well to the school's roof top water tank.
Water that was stored in buckets in a nearby family's household where the water was initially collected from the Corporation's water truck.
Water from a very dirty and murky stream which runs around the side of Krishna Nagar.
The stream which is referred to as a “naala” by the locals is black in color with a pungent rotten smell of decaying organic matter. The stream is used by the local people at Krishna Nagar to wash their buffaloes and we found children playing nearby this “toxic” water. In order to collect the water, I forced myself to carefully walk my way through piles of garbage, human and dog feces which stunk so bad that my sense of olfaction was a little numb by the time I reached the banks of the black stream. I then closed my eyes and immersed my bare hands into the toxic water to collect samples for testing. As I got back, Kim had kept a tonne of hand sanitizer ready for me. We then rushed back to Dharwad and returned the samples of glass and plastic bottles to the lab. The tests would take three to four days to be ready and we had asked them to expedite the process so that we can collect results on the following Monday.
Yesterday, I went to Dharwad to collect the results and the following conclusions were drawn from the results:
School water contained 6 counts of bacteriological contamination whereas the maximum count that is permissible is 10. However, since we only did one sample to test, it is likely that this number could vary from time to time. Therefore, it is important to incorporate water filtration techniques to the school water to remove this contamination.
House water was shockingly at 58 counts of bacteriological contamination which clearly indicated that the particular household is consuming unhealthy water. This result does not help us to conclude that the water provided by the Corporation trucks are contaminated because it could be that the containers which the family used to store the water might have been the source of contamination. Nevertheless, the families are drinking unhealthy water which is highly prone to water borne diseases caused by pathogenic microorganisms.
Stream or “naala” water was obviously super toxic with over 1800 counts of bacteria....suggesting that even touching that water might cause mutation...I hope that I don't see some mutated growth on my right hand !
We discussed with Mr. Mulla and Mr. Sudhir (the Vice President of the School) about the results and they suggested to do one more test of the water that directly comes out of the water truck. We plan to do this on Monday...
I have lots more to tell but I have to leave to get some surveys tabulated in Excel...and organize a meeting with the Commissioner of HDMC, and plan out a Cleaning Camp event with the corporation, school and locals at Krishna Nagar...and of course get some dinner. It's been super busy here and that's exactly how I like it...
Thank you for reading my first post...I will upload some photos and I want to tell you all about our inauguration function at the School....till then good bye...
Cheers, Nanda