PART II: PART II: LOCAL REDEVELOPMENT OF PROJECT WATER
5.3 GENERAL PROJECT MODIFICATIONS
A number of suggestions for general changes to materials and procedures resulted from discussions with participants and local scientists and through my own experimentation with the kit (see also Appendix 11).
In the early days of the project, the national coordinator had wanted to encourage people to develop their own kits rather than buying them ready-made. In practice I found that, until pupils had had experience working with a kit, they did not have the confidence to develop their own. Not being particularly practically inclined, I personally preferred to buy a ready- made kit than to go to the trouble of constructing one myself, finding it time-consuming to collect all the necessary equipment. I found that participants generally preferred to buy an initial kit and supplement and modify the apparatus as they developed a sense of familiarity with the project.
The coliform test was refined after discussions with microbiologists at Rhodes University.
The need to investigate this test more closely resulted from a problem I encountered at one of the farm schools. The pupils had wanted to test the quality of water in the school water tank. I had run out of equipment and therefore had to collect a water sample and test it once I returned to work, rather than in the field as I would normally have done. The water was collected in a plastic bottle which the children cleaned with water from the tank.
The test results indicated unexpectedly high levels of bacterial contamination (47 000 total coliform colonies I 100 ml). I surmised that the bottle in which the water sample had been collected might have been dirty but also felt it was necessary to run a quality control check
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on the coliform test itself. I ran a test with 5 ml 'sterile' water supplied with the kit. 14 total coliform colonies developed (280 / 100 ml), not enough to account for the levels of contamination of the water tank sample but enough to raise concern about the sterility of the apparatus and the reliability of the procedure.
The Head of Department, Professor Ralph Kirby, and the Chief Technician, Ms Moira Pogrund, in the Department of Microbiology were consulted and suggested a number of ways to avoid possible contamination. They also suggested a method of sterilising plastic apparatus without the use of heat and made their facilities freely available to me for the duration of the project. These modifications have been recorded elsewhere (GREEN S.A.
Newsflash 1992b).
On my next visit to the school, I showed the results to the group but stated that I was not convinced that the results were reliable because the container might have been contaminated.
Despite making these misgivings clear to the group, the pupils responded with shock and anger towards the farmer who managed the school. This farmer was disliked because he was very unsupportive of the school. In comparison to the other farm schools I had visited, the school building, teachers' accommodation and grounds were badly maintained, and the farmer was unwilling to assist the school with transport to functions, for example. In discussions I had with him, he spoke in racist terms about his labourers and the pupils. The pupils and teachers felt that the apparently poor state of their drinking water reflected his lack of concern and they identified the issue of contaminated drinking water as something they could confront him about.
The second test, performed with sterile equipment and in duplicate on water drawn directly from the water tank, revealed an average of only 80 total coliform per 100 ml. The situation was defused but the experience highlighted a very important issue in low-cost water quality monitoring. As more people are able to monitor the quality of their water sources, conflict situations such as almost occurred at the farm school may develop. O'Donoghue (GREEN S.A. Newsflash 1992b) warns that too much emphasis on accuracy can spoil the enjoyment of water testing. However, action based on unreliable results can quickly discredit a
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potentially worthwhile project. I believe that it is imperative that a sense of responsibility develops hand-in-hand with a sense of empowerment.
Another example of general redevelopment of the project was the production of alternative catchment observation checklists. In the original materials, two checklists were provided to help participants make relevant observations of catchment and river quality to complement the chemical, physical and biological tests (Appendices 3a & b). Student teachers, school pupils and a Wildlife Society environmental education officer were asked to assess these checklists during field trips.
The responses were that the checklists were "rather dull, particularly for young children"
(student quote), and difficult to complete in the field as they required too much writing.
Certain comments suggested that the checklists presupposed unrealistically sophisticated knowledge about streams. For instance, most participants felt that their experience of different streams was inadequate to enable them to rank stream quality in terms of an overall percentage rating. Some had problems interpreting terms used in the catchment observation checklist. For instance, the Wildlife Society environmental education officer thought that 'settlement patterns' referred to aspects of geology, or "the way in which the rocks have settled" (her quote). In a recent edition of the Project WATER instruction booklet (O'Keeffe
& Day, 1992) explanatory notes have been included to simplify the use of one of the
checklists (Appendix 3a).
The B.Prim.Ed. students dismissed a suggestion by the education officer that a I to 5 ranking system for each category of observations be provided to facilitate the calculation of an overall percentage catchment quality rating. They felt that a certain amount of qualitative appreciation of the system would be lost by reducing observations to a numerical rating.
They preferred to combine the river and catchment observations into a single checklist as they saw these to be integrally related.
In order to address some of the problems mentioned above, I designed an alternative observation schedule and field tested it with student teachers and school pupils (Appendix 13), Providing options under each observation category reduced misunderstandings and
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facilitated recording without reducing observations to numerical rankings. Space for notes was provided so that these options did not become restrictive. A sheet of expressive faces (Appendix 9) was provided with each schedule in order to enable participants to identify and record their emotional responses to the area under study.
Because Project WATER has been used extensively in rural areas where untreated drinking water and poor sanitation present a serious health risk, the GREEN national coordinator suggested that a health risks checklist be designed highlighting unsanitary practices that could contaminate water sources. In order for this checklist to be useful to illiterate people, a pupil from Graeme College suggested that it be produced pictorially rather than in words.
Precedent for this exists in South America where health workers from the Del Agua project (Lloyd & Helmer, 1991) provide rural settlements with sanitation assessments in the form of a drawing of the water source with sanitary risks circled. I therefore designed a health risks checklist and submitted it to other project coordinators for comment. This has been developed and included in the most recent edition of the GREEN Field Guide (O'Keeffe &
Day, 1992) (Appendix 3c).