Anna in Nepal: Dhaneri

A few hours later, we arrived at the site of our first village visit… Dhaneri.

As we jumped out of the dusty jeep to climb over the hills and down into the village, Dinesh from NEWAH pointed out something alongside the path we walked along – pipes running down from the hills and into the village. It was my first sighting of part of a gravity flow system. When I’d put together some of the information for our WaterAid200 event participants, I’d included a diagram of one of these – water is sourced from high in the hills and piped down into tapstands in the villages, each one not being more than a 15 minute round trip from each house. It was quite overwhelming to get my first glimpse of this in action as we followed the trail of the pipe into the village. We were greeted by the people of Dhaneri with garlands and welcomed into the school office building, where members of the village had gathered to meet us.

It was an exciting time for us to arrive – the village was to be declared ODF (open defecation free) in just three days time. This is an important step on the way to completely safe water and sanitation in a community, as it means that health and hygiene education has reached a stage where the whole community is aware of the health practices needed to be acted on to keep the village healthy.

We sat down to hear from members of the Water Sanitation Users Committee (WSUC) and other members of the community. To quickly explain – the way that NEWAH and WaterAid work with these communities is that in order for any ‘hardware’ work to begin, we have to see evidence of ‘software’ working in the community – so there has to be village commitment to practice safe sanitation and educate others about hygiene. The project start also requires a small financial commitment from each household – in Dhaneri it is 115rs each month (about 80 pence) – to set up a maintenance fund to make the implementation of the tapstands and sanitation blocks sustainable. This fund is also used to train and then pay a small salary to a few members of the committee who become caretakers of the systems.

First we heard from the Chairperson, Gagan Sunar. I learnt later that he had been a Maoist guerrilla for 5 years and had then returned to the village a few years ago.

He told us some information about the work we had done in Dhaneri – there are now 9 village tapstands and every household has a toilet. There has also been the construction of a new school sanitation block with separate toilets for boys and girls – imperative to keep teenage girls at school. He told us that they had heard about NEWAH through their local DDC and requested help. Between members of the community, they then made a whole village commitment to get the project started. He reported that all tapstands are now working well and that they had conducted world toilet day celebrations in the village. We also heard from the school principal, a lady who talked about the situation in Dhaneri now – she told us that they have enough water and people are clean and well. She smiled as she told us that children’s behaviour is changing now. They have seen their parents make a huge commitment to health and sanitation and they are knowledgeable and eager to contribute.

We then heard from the Community Health volunteer, a young woman about the same age as me. Obviously, I don’t understand the Nepali language, but I immediately got a sense of her passion and commitment to the WASH issue as she talked… She told us how, after her training on sanitation and hygiene, she would go to every house in the village to spread the messages and teach good health practice. She said that at first, they would call meetings to discuss the issues and no one would come, but when people started to learn that making a small contribution to health through sanitation could help to keep them clean and well, she began to feel much more interest. There certainly appeared to be a great deal of interest from this community – the room we were in was packed with the whole village, with everyone wanting to give us their views and tell us their thoughts. She also told us how she remembers the problems in the past with not having access to clean water and that she was determined to keep it that way. She told us of their ‘One household- One toilet’ campaign that had helped to build a toilet in every one of the 41 households in the village.

We asked her if she would make any changes, or if there was anything more that she would want for the future… Parus translated for us that , from the heart, she wants to take the water and sanitation movement as an example, and wants to try to use this model to get electricity for the village. I found this one of the most inspiring things that she said. It was incredible to see first hand water and sanitation being used as the building blocks for other development, and really humbling to see a strong young woman wanting to drive this forward.

We left the office building and were escorted over to the nearest tapstand. It was clean, flowing and the children played – turning it on and off for us with pride to show that it was working. I learned that the women of the village used to collect water from rivers which was difficult for them in and around Dhaneri. The village itself is very hilly, with houses spread out quite a distance from each other and I could see just from looking around me that this would have been an incredibly difficult challenge. It’s just before the monsoon season now, and the rivers are drying out, with water along the riverbeds muddy, and steep climbs to bring it back to some of the houses.

We were shown the newly constructed school sanitation block with pride – it still feels slightly strange to me that people are so proud to show you their toilets, but it also highlights that the issue is out in the open and has been dealt with in Dhaneri.

As we walked around the village and visited the different tap stand points, I could start to appreciate the logistical challenges of piping water to a village like Dhaneri – with the houses so spread out over rolling hills, through rivers and agricultural farming land, it’s a huge challenge to ensure that each household has access to a tapstand within a reasonable distance. As the community also then contribute to the maintenance fund to keep the water flowing, I could also see how there could be issues with fairness and equal access to the water supply. I asked Parus about this, and he said that this can often be an issue, but that actually by giving ownership of the implementation of the tapstands to the committee, a solution is worked out amongst the villagers themselves.

On the way round, Parus pointed out a cow shed to me, and told me a story about how when a woman is menstruating, then she can be made to sleep outside somewhere like this, because it can be thought that she is dirty. She would then not be given any access to safe water to wash, or to drink. He told me that one woman had died of exposure recently in these circumstances. I asked Parus what could be done to challenge such practices in these remote villages and he told me that through the hygiene education given to the communities at the start of the implementation of a NEWAH project, these issues are addressed. The Community Health Volunteer in the village is educated in menstrual hygiene management and women’s health and can then deliver these messages through the community as the project begins. I found our approach to this really inspiring – putting the hygiene and sanitation education element of our work into such a powerful context really made me appreciate the great importance of this part of what we do.

As we wandered more around the village, everyone was so friendly, and seemed so happy. I could really see the impact that our work has had here in bringing this community together and empowering them to make changes in their lives that have brought about access to clean water and sanitation. I think this is the first time I can say that I can truly appreciate that the work that we do is not just building tapstands or toilets, but to bring communities together to access safe water and sanitation and demand what they have the human right to have.

We headed back to the jeep after lots of goodbyes and good lucks and as we left and followed the dusty road back to Surkhet I felt really overwhelmed; trying to take in what I had just seen and looking forward to what would come in the next few days…