A Month Later...

It’s been a while since I’ve hopscotched my way through the trash-infused mud of SM Krishna Nagar. I recall the gutka wrappers, the piles of feces, the animals running wild, and the whole experience feels so close and so distant at the same time.

During my time in Hubli, I was asked repeatedly, “Can you imagine growing up here? In the slums?” My answer hasn’t changed since the beginning: I can’t. I can’t imagine going to school in a uniform that’s been discolored and tattered from overuse. I can’t imagine having a limited supply of water and not being able to bathe whenever I want. I can’t imagine going to school and not having a desk to work at and a chair to sit on.

Looking back on the project, I often feel proud of our team and the work we accomplished. We provided filters to 55 families, we developed an educational curriculum to increase awareness on proper sanitation practices, and, most importantly, we provided a potential solution to a problem the people had assumed to be out of their control. Then I remember the responses to one of our survey questions: “Why don’t you filter you water?” The overwhelming response was “We’ve always used this water. There is no need to change.”

While we may have raised awareness during the two months we were there, creating behavioral change involves a lot more than strangers coming into the community and declaring that change needs to be made. We hope to address this issue through our education workshops. We hope that the children will take the lessons they learn and relay that information to the rest of their families so that notions of bathing in boiled water being the cure-all and sour bore well water being potable are eliminated.

There is much more to growing up in the slums of SM Krishna Nagar than can be addressed by our project. The trash, the practice of open defecation, and the lack of proper clothing all make it painstakingly obvious that we, at best, nicked the tip of the iceberg.

“Successful people replace the words ‘wish’, ‘should’, and ‘try’ with ‘I Will’. Ineffective people don’t.”

That’s what we tried to do. Unfortunately, we were only able to start what we had planned to be a success. Now it’s up to the people of SM Krishna Nagar to do the same and want to make a change – starting with their water. Once they realize the importance of clean water and proper hygiene, maybe their eyes will open to recognize other arenas with room for change; at which point we’ll hopefully have another plan of action ready.

Catalysts

Meet Jabashetti.
Jabashetti is with the Water Literacy Foundation, and has been instrumental in whatever success we’ve had during our first few weeks here. The Water Literacy Foundation actively works to raise awareness throughout Karnataka about rainwater harvesting and other methods of effective utilization of water. We met with him last week at his office, and he explained the mechanics of a rainwater harvesting system they have at their facility.

At the end of our meeting, he invited us to go visit one of Karnataka’s sources of water. On Tuesday, we took this trip.

We first went to a filtration plant run by the Karnataka Water Board, where we received a very thorough tour of the filtration process that takes place before the water reaches the Hubli-Dharwad Municipal Corporation (HDMC), which controls the water supply throughout the region. We learned that the process is comprised of multiple steps that filter out sediments as well as bacteria. From what I understood, they employ a four-layer filtration unit to filter out sediments, as well as heavy mixing of the water to create and remove sludge using PAC (polyaluminum chloride), in addition to chlorinating the water to disinfect it. We collected a sample from the discharge point of filtration, which Alex is currently testing in the lab.

We then drove on to visit the Malaprabha Dam, which serves as the reservoir for the Hubli-Dharwad twin cities. Alex collected a sample of this water as well, and will be reporting the results of the quality tests shortly.

Our next stop was a school run by Jabashetti’s close friend, where we were met with swarms of students asking for our autographs and waving frantically as they half laughed, half shouted “Hello!” This was expected. The next part, however, we were completely unprepared for. The school had arranged to have local media cover an assembly about our project. Luckily, Jabashetti did a fabulous job of “translating” our speech, so I think we came out sounding a lot better in Kannada than we should have.


Jabashetti called us yesterday to let us know that we’ve been invited to speak at another school in Dharwad. While it is unfortunate that we can’t implement our project in every one of these schools, we feel that any opportunity to educate people on proper sanitation practices and the importance of clean water is one to be taken full advantage of. And this time, we’ll be prepared so that Jabashetti doesn’t have to work so hard. On top of everything I’ve already mentioned, Jabashetti has offered to send out a press release about our project using WLF’s resources.

Our doubts of not being able to accomplish much during our time here are slowly being erased one by one, thanks to the dedicated assistance of locals such as Jabashetti and many others we have not yet accredited in our blog. These people are our project’s catalysts. Whenever I begin to think that we’re at a standstill, a “Jabashetti” comes along and gives us that extra push we need to keep going, and I can’t begin to express how grateful we are for them.