 "Photo: Courtesy of Engineers Without Borders")
A path opened up for the vehicle and the group found themselves encircled by a crowd of singing and clapping Bakangians. As the team exited and stood, they heard the drum and gourd percussion from a group of men and the cheering and singing of women.
This account comes from professor Steven Dentel's blog, titled "Engineers Without Borders - University of Delaware."
University students, with Dentel, represented the group Engineers Without Borders not at a local festival but instead in the midst of a water fair 2,000 miles away in Cameroon, on the west coast of Africa.
Dentel, a civil and environmental engineering professor, is the faculty advisor to a team of four university students and a professional hydrogeologist who traveled to Bakang, Cameroon with the goal of improving the town's water crisis.
Julie Trick, project manager for Cameroon, recalled the warm welcome the team members received on their first visit to Cameroon this past June.
"We thought it was going to be a town meeting with maybe 10 to 20 people," Trick said. "It ended up being hundreds of locals to welcome and thank us for being there."
Due to the United State's abundant usage of water, many people do not realize countless countries in the world are struggling with a horrible water crisis.
On average, each American uses up to 176 gallons of water every day. Brushing teeth, watering lawns, washing cars, showering and washing dishes, all with clean and easily accessible water, are luxuries that Americans take for granted. The average African family uses approximately 5 gallons of water each day. Walking than 200 miles a day collectively and carrying heavy, often polluted water back to their homes, African families do not know where their water comes from.
In the spring of 2006, a group of students formed the Delaware chapter of EWB. In less than a year, the group made strides and is setting its current goals high. Their first project is in Bakang.
Bakang, a village in the town of Bamendjou, is located in the western province of Cameroon. With a population of approximately 3,000, Bakang has no useable or affordable water supply. The water that is needed to drink, cook and clean with is brought to the village by women and children who travel an average of 6 kilometers, or more than 3 and a half miles, to retrieve it from shallow pools. Because the women and children of the village spend hundreds of grueling hours collecting water each day, education, field and housework often lag as second priorities.
Currently, the population's water sources consist of streams, shallow collection areas, hand-dug wells and a borehole well. A borehole well requires manual pumping that pulls uncontaminated water from far below the earth's surface. When the university's EWB group arrived, the town's only such well was broken.
The project was approved by EWB-USA in October 2006 and planning began immediately thereafter. The team had a lot to do before its departure in June, including writing proposals, raising money, getting vaccinated, obtaining visas and passports and getting trained in the equipment they would use.
Sarah O'Neill, president of EWB-UD, said all of their training could not prepare the students for what they would experience while there.
"We saw one kid washing clothes in the same water another kid was collecting drinking water from," O'Neill said.
A survey conducted by the students gave them a first-hand look at how badly the lack of clean water was affecting the Bakangians' lives. Of those surveyed, 69.6 percent showed signs of diarrhea, 56.5 percent had malaria, 30.4 percent had typhoid and 13 percent had cholera.
Prepared with hand-held GPS systems, water-testing equipment and DC resistivity equipment, Dentel and students Sam Sagett, Barney Fortunato, O'Neill and Trick set out to determine the problems and come up with solutions.
Every day for a week, the team was in the village by 7 a.m. to conduct research and work until dark. When the team members returned to the mayor's house where they were staying, Dentel and the students worked into the morning hours making sense of the data and fixing broken equipment.
"We walked miles to different water sites to conduct tests and carried 80 pounds of resistivity equipment when we did measurements," Sagett said.
O'Neill said the communication barrier was tough for students.
"Nothing in Bakang was familiar, the language, the food or the technology, everything was so different," she said. "Just to conduct the survey's we needed a French/English translator and a Bamileke/French translator."
The students were in Bakang to collect data for more in-depth research to be done back at the university. However, the team members were also able to complete corrective field work on their first visit.
At Bakang's main intersection, the team found the non-functioning borehole well and immediately started figuring out how to fix it.
When the well was fixed a few days later, the villagers were ecstatic. Though not enough to provide clean water for the entire village, it was a start.
The team's next trip to Bakang is scheduled for January 2008 and the EWB-UD will be implementing their ideas to supply potable water to the village. Some ideas the group are working on now include rainwater catchments, solar energy and hand-dug wells. Well drilling is also an option but would cost thousands more than the other options.
"Our goal is to be able to drill wells, which means our goal for money to be raised is at least $60,000," O'Neill said.
Fundraising is a crucial element for the group that raised $20,000 to cover all expenses for its last trip. The Colleges of Engineering, along with the Center for International Studies and the Alumni Enrichment Board, gave each student grants for the project. Other funds came from corporate companies who support EWB.
"This year, we will have to rely more on fundraising while also spreading awareness to raise all the money needed," O'Neill said.
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