My Water Pilgrimage:
What spending 10 days in a remote village in Nepal has taught me about the role of technology in water sustainability and independence
The Origin Story
At an early age, my parents instilled in us a sense of empathy for the less fortunate and taught us to be mindful custodians of the world and its precious natural resources. Whether it is volunteering at the local convalescent home, sponsoring families in Nepal, or finding novel and creative ways to save water at home, we wanted to leave the world a better place than we found it. Water conservation was an especially big deal at our house, perhaps due to my parents’ upbringing in an agrarian-based economy in Asia.
For example, we did not use detergent when washing dishes since we saved the water for the plants, and soap is harmful for the soil. We also had large, unwieldy buckets in our showers to collect bath water, whose subsequent destination was also the garden. Not for the squeamish, we collected our urine in the Costco premium assorted nuts container just so we could save ourselves a dozen toilet flushes a day. The ammonia and nitrogen in urine is great for, as you may have guessed, fruits and vegetables in our garden. Thus was my upbringing in a family that was maniacal about water conservation.
Suffice to say, the conscious use of water and general awareness of water-related issues was something that was ingrained in my psyche from an early age. A few years ago, I started looking for water-specific charities to get involved in and came across charity: water. Charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries. Founded by Scott Harrison in 2006, charity: water has raised more than $300M dollars, funded almost 28,000 water projects, and has helped over 7 million people get access to clean water.
Charity: water works with local NGO’s on the ground to deploy capital and resources to directly impact those in need in rural communities. Its website has a feature that allows you to create a “birthday campaign”, a program in which friends can donate to your personal online fundraiser in lieu of gifts. We’ve been using this campaign feature for our children for several years, and it has been a great way to bring awareness to our kids regarding water-related problems while empowering them with a way to contribute to the cause.
The NGO
I came across Nepal Water for Health (NEWAH) through charity: water’s birthday campaigns. NEWAH is an NGO started by Umesh Pandey over 25 years ago with a singular mission to help the most rural and poorest people in Nepal get access to clean water and sanitation. A pioneer in developing and promoting the concept of “WASH” (water sanitation and hygiene), NEWAH and its projects have helped two million Nepalese villagers gain access to potable water and proper sanitation systems, an amazing feat given the lack of infrastructure in one of the poorest countries on the planet. Given the history and kinship I’ve had with Nepal, I knew that I had to get involved beyond financial support. I reached out to Umesh directly in the middle of 2017, to see if I can get my hands dirty (literally) and offer some direct on-the-ground assistance. I learned that NEWAH was dealing with some bureaucratic red tape (read: government corruption), and that they were having issues getting projects approved. But thanks to the tenacity of Umesh and his team, as well as employing some excellent enterprise sales techniques that we can all learn from, several dozen projects were finally green-lit, with the first breaking ground in February of 2018. I packed some Imodium and a sleeping bag, and I was on my way to Kathmandu.
The Journey
Nepal is a landlocked South Asian country that shares a border with China and Tibet to the north and India on all other sides. With 26.4 million people, it remains one of the poorest countries in the world with almost 60% of its population earning less than $2 USD a day. Almost half of its working-age population are unemployed, and the latest United Nations Human Development Index ranks Nepal at #144 out of 188 countries, coming in behind Cambodia (#143), Zambia (#139), and Iraq (#121).
The water project is located at Mahendrajhadi VDC #8 Ward of Sindhuli province, which is an 8-hour “drive” from Kathmandu. I use the term “drive” loosely, since half of the time we were actually off-roading through the mountainous terrain, traversing river basins, and avoiding herds of livestock. As a matter of fact, the village was not even accessible by car a few weeks prior to my arrival.
Pulling into the village, our truck kicks up a cloud of red dust as we stop in front of a maroon cinder and mud structure. A crowd gathers as curious eyes peek about and slippers shuffle to and fro to observe the commotion at the village school. NEWAH’s Regional Director of the Sindhuli region, Dinesh Upreti, and the site manager, Mahesh, convenes with some of the village elders and chair persons to gather the village people for a welcome ceremony.
Dinesh introduces NEWAH and its mission, describes the project we are kicking off, and explains everyone’s roles and responsibilities. One of many important lessons NEWAH has learned over 25 years of providing water access services is that community buy-in, participation, and ownership dramatically improves the long-term viability of the water tap installations. As such, every household that will use the water taps will need to contribute to the preparation and construction of these units. A hand-written contract is drawn up with every household listed as co-signers. Some of the villagers are illiterate, so in place of some signatures are fingerprints.
The official name of the project is “Ratodanda Simras Solar Lifting”. The villagers currently fetch water from a natural spring source at the bottom of the valley, but the source is open-air and unprotected, which makes it vulnerable to contaminants from animal excrements and other pollutants. The task of retrieving water falls on the backs (literally) of women and young girls, who make multiple 30-minute round trips every day while carrying 30+ pound water vesicles.
The “Lifting” project consists of the installation of a solar generator next to the water source, which pumps water from the bottom of the valley to a local geographical peak into a water reservoir tank and feed into several water taps via gravity located at various points in the village. This can potentially free up more than 300 woman-hours a week across the 31 households in the village, for the women to focus on other productive work and the children to devote more time to their education.
The village elder arranged for Mahesh and me to stay in a villager’s hut for the next 10 days (Dinesh endured another 4-hour trek to return to Sindhuli!). Our host is Saritha, a 28-year old woman with two kids, Kopila (11) and Kiran (4). As with a large number of working-aged men in the village, Saritha’s husband is laboring abroad to earn money to send home to Nepal. Men spend anywhere from 3–7 years in neighboring countries like Qatar, UAE, China, etc. to make $300-$500 USD a month to send back to their families.
Saritha’s husband’s absence freed some space in the hut, hence our arrangement. For Saritha’s accommodations, which includes two meals a day, the village elder agreed with Saritha for me to pay her $2.50 a day (I voluntarily ended up paying her a few times that rate because…well, just because). A typical Nepali meal consists of a huge heap of rice, daal (lentils), and stir-fried aloo (potatoes). The diet is heavily carb-based as daily manual labor requires readily accessible calories and energy. Protein is considered a luxury, but Saritha owns livestock, including 6 goats, 4 kids (baby goat), 7 chickens, and a cow. We were told some of aforementioned protein could be made available for an additional charge. It is difficult for me to eat something after I have named and pet, so I respectfully declined.
The typical day in the village starts around 5am, depending on when the rooster lets you know he’s up. Saritha generally begins her day sweeping and cleaning the hut. When daylight emerges, she feeds the livestock and lets them out of their pen to forage among the fields. Kopila is up at some point and will have fetched her first container of water by 8am. After my morning meditation routine, Saritha usually has breakfast ready for us around 9am. At 10am, Kopila and Kiran head off to school, and Mahesh and I meet up with the villagers for the construction of the water project.
Since we were in the beginning phases of the project, most of the work consisted of digging meter-deep trenches up the side of the mountain for the water pipeline, directing water from the source to the top of the hill. To my surprise, people worked through lunch time and did not break for food. Work would generally conclude around 5pm, when the village chairman would come by with a ledger and write down the names of everyone who showed up for work that day (I can think of a loophole or two with this approach…). Dinner is served around 7:30pm, and lights are out before 9pm as we look forward to the morning wake-up call in 7 hours.
While we were not able to stay for the entire duration of the project, here’s what the final product would look like based on other projects that NEWAH and charity: water have done nearby.
The wear-and-tear of the pipeline digging caused me to re-aggravate a previous Achilles injury. I felt terrible, with almost a sense of guilt as I was forced to end the trip two days earlier than anticipated. In the short amount of time I was there, I developed a deep connection to the people and an appreciation for their struggle. The villagers are extremely hard working, possess an inspirational sense of community, and, despite lacking in what the western world defines as “wealth”, exude incredible grace and quiet dignity.
I fought back tears as the village came together on my last day to perform a going-away ceremony. While an extra set of hands is always welcomed for the labor-intensive part of the project, the villagers were much more appreciative of the fact that a complete stranger traveled across the world, raised money for their cause, and took time away from his wife and children in order to improve the quality of life in their village. It was a recognition of genuine reciprocity that I am so grateful for, as the experience in the village has given me so much more than I can ever give them. And so with a traditional Nepalese ceremony, a new appreciation for life, and a promise to the community of returning in the future to taste the fruits of my labor, my Nepal trip came to a close.
The Epiphany
For the last several years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how we can apply technology to reimagine the water infrastructure for both utilities and consumers. I’ve since formulated a hypothesis that, similar to communication networks, water networks and infrastructure inevitably has to evolve from a centralized to a decentralized topology. In other words, instead of homes having to rely on water from a central water utility with all the “centralized processing power”, all the end nodes in the water network (ie homes or commercial buildings) have to have to be intelligent and self-reliant with water monitoring, recycling, and processing systems.
At the risk of over-simplification, if consumers and utilities knew how much water was being used on which appliances in real time, and if said appliances can recycle the water that’s been used, then consumers can become much less dependent on an aging and insecure water infrastructure. Along these lines, I’ve explored ideas ranging from wireless water flow IoT sensors to infrastructure-mediated machine learning platforms, but these approaches all seem to be missing something and are heavily dependent on consumer behavioral change. On my Nepal trip, I had an epiphany.
By my estimation, Saritha’s household uses less than 15 gallons of water a day, mainly attributing to the fact that they don’t shower daily, wash clothes only a few times a month, and uses only a cup of water to flush the toilet. According to the USGS and EPA, the average American family uses about 250 gallons of water indoors per day. The International Space Station recycles 93% of all of the water on-board. For the average US household to go from 250 gallons a day to 15 gallons (coincidentally a 94% decrease), a smart home device which will indicate when you’re over your limit is not going to suffice.
The amount of lifestyle and behavioral modification required for that magnitude of change will be a challenge with a passive device. The epiphany I had was that, in addition to monitoring usage, we need innovations around filter technology and plumbing topology that together can proactively help people reduce water usage while recycling water that has been used (“greywater”). A step-functional increase in the monitoring intelligence, efficiency, and recycling capabilities of our water appliance is required for us to reduce our dependency on a centralized water authority. Such is the driving motivation and focus of my next startup named Pani, or “water” in Nepalese.
The Destination
Friends, family, and colleagues often ask me, “How was your trip?” I still have difficulty answering this question despite several weeks removed from the trip. Where do I start? Do I talk about charity: water and NEWAH? Do I talk about the 8-hour journey into the village and the difficult conditions of the local community? Do I talk about the resilience of the people and the quiet dignity with which they live their lives? Do I describe the haphazard education the village kids get despite best intention of teachers, and how, I wonder, would these beautiful children break the cycle of poverty that they’re born into without proper education? What is the first brush stroke with which I begin to paint the complex texture of my experience?
Ultimately, I begin with one message, and the last thing I will leave with you: every one of us reading this article has already hit the karmic jackpot. We have food on the table, we have clean water to drink, we have access to a good education, and our fathers don’t have to go to a foreign country for years at a time just to make a nominally sustainable living for the family. We are all so blessed to have the life we are given, that so many of our 1st and 2nd world problems dissolve in context of the larger issues that so many around the world still face today.
So the question now becomes what are we going to do with the short time that we have here on earth? How do we become more compassionate for our fellow human beings and how can we work towards a better life for those who are less fortunate? How do we become more mindful of how we consume our natural resources so that we leave behind a sustainable world for our children and our children’s children?
There is no one answer. There is also no silver bullet. But at the same time, no act is too small and no deed is too insignificant. At the end of the day, the journey is different for everyone. The only devil is inaction and complacency. So go out and do something. Be the change you want to see in the world. For me, I found my inspiration high up in a remote, dusty and smoky village in Nepal.
Overflow
Here are some additional images that I took that captures the spirit, resilience, and the essence of the people in the village.
