Hello and happy March!

Are you starting to see little signs of Spring? Some little buds on plants, and longer days? Here in Cambodia March 1st means that the cool season is nearly over, and to begin preparing for the hot. At the moment it’s still quite pleasant in the morning and evening hours, but we are starting to take shelter indoors and flip on the fans or air conditioner between 11 and 3 when the sun is right overhead.

295 more children have clean drinking water

In February we completed a large project that we’ve been working on for a few months now. We started in December with a visit to the school, in partnership with the Kampot Health Minister and a local missionary. In January we drilled the well and Lukas collected water samples to test. Once the well tested safe, we set a date for Feb. 8th to install the water filtration system for the school. The school is located in a rural community surrounded by rice farms. They didn’t have a water source, but they did have an old bio sand filter which was donated a few years back by another NGO (non government organization). But what good is a filter without a water source? 🤪We were able to repurpose the old tanks to store the well water before it was pipped through the filtration system and into the water jugs at a new water bottle filling station. My dad was able to join us on the day we did the installation, which was fun and encouraging for everyone. ❤️

When you know better, do better

The longer we’re here the more we learn from our mistakes. 🤦🏽‍♀️ In the “good ol’ days” we could install a water filtration system in as little as two hours. We don’t do that anymore. We now do at least one pre visit to collect a water sample and to talk with the community leader(s). We ask questions like “Who will take responsibility for the filter? Who will maintain it? Will needy children have unlimited access to the water for free? What can you contribute to the cost and installation process?” Some locations are very poor and we don’t expect them to provide cash, but we ask them to contribute something, such as labor, a water tank or a hot meal. Once Lukas came home with a duck! 🦆😆 We are also trying to set up a maintenance schedule for all of the places that we’ve installed filters in the last three years. This isn’t flashy work, but it’s real, and we see it making a difference.  We aren’t doing is perfectly, but we’re trying to do it better!  As Maya Angelou so graciously said “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” So, we are trying to do better.

Sometimes people say “no” 

Last month we had two different locations tell us “no thank you.” First, a high school with more than 1,000 student. This would have been our biggest school installation yet. But when we started asking those hard questions and asked them to make a budget and contribute something, they changed their minds. They told us that they had another donor that would do the filter for the school. We were a little surprised, but also glad that our new screening system worked. Since the school leadership didn’t want to contribute to the process, it’s likely that the filter wouldn’t have be maintained or used correctly.

The other location was a church. The water had a strange taste, and after testing, it showed high levels of salt, and our filters can’t remove salt. This is a good example of a location where, previously, we would have installed a filter and they wouldn’t have used it because the water would have tasted bad (salty). By providing a pre visit and water testing, we helped the church make an informed decision for their community, and we didn’t give them something that they can’t/won’t use. ❤️

Daily life:

Daily life is… different here, and it takes a lot of time! For example, Sunday we were an hour late to church because there wasn’t any water. We are on city water, but last year durning dry season the water pressure was so bad that Lukas bought and installed a water tank and pump for our house. The only drawback is that our neighbors share our water line. Well they decided that they would also install a water tank (a good idea) but on Sunday morning there wasn’t any water pressure coming from the city pipe. We turned on our pump so that we could take showers before church, but no water was coming out. When we went to investigate we found that the neighbors were happily filing their new water tank from our water tank. 😆 We tried to explain that they needed to stop so that we could shower. They asked us to wait until their tank was full. We again tried to explain that their tank was being filled by our tank, and once their tank was full, we wouldn’t have any water. 🙃 As I said, we were an hour late for church, but in the end we were showered and our neighbors are still our friends. 👍🏽

These kinds of daily life delays are time consuming and sometimes frustrating. If you can imagine, building a house here also takes a tone of your personal time and energy (if you missed that update, see last month’s post). You can’t just hire the builders and come back in six months. You have to be there almost every day, involved, communicating, and sometimes saying “stop! That’s not right.” We are learning A LOT about construction right now, and it feels like we have two full time jobs. But we’re thankful that it’s going quickly and should be completed in a couple more months, because it’s pretty exhausting! But in a good way, of course 🙃.

Well, I think that’s it. Have a great month! Here’s the photo link, if you want to see more photos.

Jenny, Lukas and Benjamin

PS. I almsot forgot! Our little adventure buddy turned six last month. We can’t believe how much he’s growing and changing right now. For his birthday he wanted an aquarium. We let him have a bucket of guppies for six weeks and he did such a good job taking care of them. So, on his birthday he got his aquarium.