Foundation's Clean Water Goal is to Say 'This Is Normal'

Filmmaker Derek Watson admitted to feeling a little guilty while documenting a Zambia village struggling to find clean water, knowing what would be waiting when he returned to Oklahoma. 

"The thing that kept hitting me is that this is normal for them," Watson told Patch. "I'll get up and go home, and I'll go to my Keurig and have a hot pot of coffee in 30 seconds." 

Watson's short film This Is Normal tells the story of a fellow Oklahoman, Richard Greenly, and how he is developing a way to provide clean drinking water to Africa villages while building an economy there. The 22-minute short will be screened before showings of La Source, which tells the story of modernizing the water system in Haiti. The film shows at 3:15 p.m. Tuesday and 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Regal Cinemas Hollywood 20.

The short doesn't have a release date yet and is continuing to make its rounds on film festival circuits.

Watson and his crew traveled to Smafya and Mbabala Island, Zambia in January 2012 spending three weeks out there to show how people there are forced to drink dirty water just to make it through the day, with no guarantees that it will help them live. The water often comes from an open pit nearby or people like Petronella, a mother of eight, walk a 6 kilometer round trip to fetch a Jerry Can full of water in Lake Bangweulu.

Diarrhea and disease is prevalent there due to unsanitary conditions, often killing children, and Peteronella knows of the risk, but there isn't any other solution.  Actually, 21 children die every second from unclean water, according to the World Health Organization, and it doesn't have to be that way.

That's where Richard Greenly and his wife Terri Greenly come in with their business Pumps of Oklahoma, which provides water systems and solutions to military installations and major plants. The couple wanted to do more than run an American business, and wanted to help people in need and established the nonprofit Water4.

Solving The Water Crises

Richard Greenly traveled to southern China and installed the first solar powered water pump to provide water for schools and villages, and after that experience, he decided he could do more to resolve the global water crisis.

"This is unthinkable in the 21st century that half our planet doesn't have safe drinking water, and that a billion people are at risk," Richard Greenly told Patch. 

Other large organizations have tried and failed, as shown in the documentary, where Greenly explains how the traditional model would have thousands of dollars raised for a rig to come in and drill deep for a well, and install a pump. But the O-ring on the pump or other parts would break after heavy use, and there wasn't any support or training in place to repair or replace the wells, so the villages would return to walking miles for water.

"We decided we didn't have the money like the United Nations had money, so in order for us to get the biggest bang  for our buck, we had to train locals how to treat this as a business," Greenly said, so he set up a separate entity from his business called Water4.

Greenly's company create hand-drilling tools, and a hand-powered water pump and a supply chain in place to provide and purchase parts, and a way to get the tools in the hands of the people who need it. He created a non-profit Water 4 to handle the operation.

"We teach them to be a water solutions provider," he said. "We're not demanding them to be married to our system. We just want to train people to go out and fix their water problems." 

Watson and his crew had the luxury of having chlorine tablets to disinfect the water, which still doesn't guarantee he wouldn't get sick, but he knows he can find modern medicine to fight it—something that the people of Smafya can't.

"You feel a little guilty, I'm not gonna lie," Watson said. "You get to drink clean water because I have a tablet that costs a nickel. We're going to drink it and be completely OK, and you can hear everyone else in the village drinking and eating without the security. The injustice in that hits you hard." 

The good news is that when Watson returned, he saw the effects of clean water—happier people, healthier babies and fewer cases of disease.

"It dramatically changed their lives," Watson said. "They're not as sick as they were."

Building Economy

In the movie viewers follow Jimmy Kamfwa who is in need of money to support his wife and two kids. Kamfwa receives training and can start making appointments and visits to villages to dig a well and install a pump. The joy and excitement that come out of the children surrounding the well look like they struck oil.

Just like oil, though, the water has a monetary value.

The village still has to raise funds to pay for the work and for maintenance of the well. Greenly admits it does sound cruel on the surface, but there is a bigger purpose. 

"We're requiring that the people that are recipients of wells to pay for their water," Greenly said. "Nowhere in the world water is free, and it sounds cruel making Africans pay for water, but we're only asking $1.80 per person per year. That develops a fund to pay for when a pump breaks, so it pays to replace it."

Once the water comes in, it creates an agricultural based economy that's allowed to thrive. Petronella uses the water—by the trash can full—to make porridge to sell to her villagers to earn money, Watson said.

Other villages are using the water for irrigation of crops, allowing more food, and have been able to sell the yield to other villages and even to businesses traveling in from towns and cities. That money in turn, allows to build for more wells.

"Now we've seen for the first time, personal well ownership in Zambia where because they were able to have these better crops, they now drill their own well for them so they can get even more water," Greenly said. 

As trucks traveled to buy crops for the larger towns, they're paying for roads to be built so the trucks won't be stuck in the mud anymore, Greenly added. 

"There's more commerce that happens," he said. "I've been to Asia, been to Indian, been to North Korea and the jungles of Africa. People are people, Charles, and wherever you go, they basically want a chance. You have industrious ones and lazy ones, but if they have an opportunity, and if you give them love and a little bit of attention, they just take off and flourish."

Battling Corruption

One of the keys in the Water 4 model is that the organization contacts non-governmental organizations in Africa to avoid rogue leaders and rebels from taking water and wells hostage. 

"That's exactly why Water 4 partners with people on the ground knowing cultural intricacies," Watson said. "Without knowing about the people on the ground, there's not way to really protect them."

Another part of the strategy is to build as many wells as possible.

"Water is being used as a weapon, and water is being used as a lever point in these areas," Greenly said. "They are more able to do that utilizing the current model that's out there where you hire a million-dollar drilling rig because it's the only water point in the whole vicinity."

Drilling teams will come into villages and drill a well for one per every hundred people, Greenly explained, so that not only can another well be used if one breaks, but it would be a challenge for a rebel group to control 50 ore more wells. 

"That's kind of the idea—decentralization," he said. 

Water4 has 35 drilling teams in 16 countries, and the goal is to have 60 more drilling teams in the next three years, Greenly added.

"Ghana is our next big push," Greenly said. "We're going into Ghana, set up a supply chain to build pumps and have vocation schools to train drillers and have micro-loan finance companies to loan money to lend to purchase supplies."

More Than Clean Water

Providing water isn't enough. It still needs to be filtered further, and basic hygiene needs to be taught along with providing latrines, Watson said. 

Something as simple starting a fire to boi water isn't as easy as it sounds, Watson said.

"There are trees that offer shade, and they cut every other tree down for food, and they would hate to cut down trees with shade and food, so they can't just boil water," Watson said.

Now, the villages need toilets so they don't have to go to the bathroom in fields, and keep mosquitoes away from the water source, he said. 

Washing hands before you eat and after you go to the bathroom is a challenge, too.

"You're carrying water that far, 40 pounds on your head. Are you really going to waste it on cleaning your hands?" he said. "Just by providing water, and abundant water nearby, they can wash their hands nearby, even if they don't have soap it's better."

In the meantime, Water4 is accepting donations to pay for pumps and clean water at water4.org. As little as $6 can provide clean water for one person, and as up to $5,000 can buy a drill kit to drill up to 50 wells.

This Is Normal

Screenings: 3:15 p.m. Tuesday and 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Regal Cinemas Hollywood 20 before full-length documentary La Source.

Tickets: $12.50

Thisisnormalthefilm.com

Water4 

Water4.org

Facebook.com/water4foundation