Sandstone Press

WaterAid

Posted by RLD on 29th December 2009

Away back in the early 80s a young engineer stood over an open manhole in the garden of a Council house located in a town not too far from where I write now. Okay, you’ve got me bang to rights. I was that young engineer, not long arrived from Glasgow and not really all that young since I was approaching the end of my rugby career. The rugby career was, surprisingly, having one of its best phases and there are one or two other surprises in that opening sentence. The manhole was already called a chamber opening within engineering, but the term ‘manhole’ would soon become actually improper, as it is now. The notion of the ‘bad word’ was on the rise again. Also, the Council house would soon cease to be Council owned as the whole nature and purpose of Council property was about to be changed.

The problem here was that much of the town’s sewage passed through this chamber on its way to the river where, at that time, it discharged untreated. When the tide was in or after heavy rain, most especially when the two occurred together, sewage would back up and spill over into the garden. We beat this by means of a system of valves and an underground pumping station. It was only one of the many small schemes that sat beside the big schemes which, in turn, fitted into the overall plan to treat all sewage that discharged into the Cromarty Firth. The plan was complete by the time I left in 2001 and I am proud to have played a small part in that achievement.

Incidentally, do you know the difference between sewerage and sewage? It’s easy. Sewerage is the pipes (preferably with surface and foul waters separated), chambers, screens, settlement tanks and all the other gubbins that amount to the ‘works’. Sewage is the human and other waste that passes through it. You’re smiling, aren’t you, without really knowing why? Let me tell you something else. It is just about impossible to discuss this subject without raising that smile. There is something about sewage that makes it impossible to take seriously until it floods across your garden and into the kitchen. We have just about forgotten typhoid in Britain.

Not so everywhere. Before roads, before more specific and personal aspects of health such as polio inoculations, before the development of adequate contraception, especially condoms, before even the notion of a functioning, publicly owned Health Service, clean water in and dirty water out are the beginnings of living together well. All this was already clear in my mind as I looked down into that garden chamber noticing, as I did, the sewage gradually darkening in colour beneath my feet. The rate of flow reduced to a red trickle until a huge animal organ, a bull’s heart or liver or the likes, attached to a tangle of guts, wobbled out of the pipe and burst across the chamber to exit by the other pipe, forced through by the pressure of dirty water that had built up behind. Not too far upstream was one of the local slaughter houses that still functioned in the area.

Horrified, I reported the incident to my superiors who in turn passed the knowledge upstairs and eventually to the local Councillor. A week or so later I pursued the matter to be met with one of those magic words through which it was impossible to pass, ‘jobs’.

The preceding four paragraphs contain all you will ever need to know about the politics of water in a temperate country. Make sure your children are aware because these same politics are likely to come knocking very loudly on their doors before their lives are done.

In tropical countries the pressures are more acute as the United Nations recognised in 1981, about the time I was staring down into that chamber, when it set up its first International Decade of Water. WaterAid was established as a charity shortly after, its mission being to address the many problems associated with the world’s water in practical, usually basic ways. Problems? If you haven’t looked into it you probably haven’t guessed. Here are a few.

2.6 billion people do not have a safe place to use for the toilet. Still smiling? I’m afraid there is more. 1.1 billion do not have safe water to drink and every fifteen seconds (I accept this figure without having any means to check) a child dies as a consequence. The almost caricature figure of an African woman carrying a huge vase on her head is all too real. Often they are carrying water for miles, using up valuable time that could be better used in gainful employment, or better still for education. This is no way for a mother to care for her children but affection is a luxury beside survival and the tyrant, Love, does not allow.

The way to good public health, the way to education and industry and so out of poverty begins with water. Brace yourself, Dear Reader. I feel a faith statement coming on. With basic water requirements met, basic education established, meaning literacy and numeracy, basic contraception and the right work for all, our species can achieve anything.

I became part of WaterAid’s Highland Committee first of all under Highland Regional Council’s Director of Water and Sewerage, Dennis Addly, later following the leadership of my great pal Willie Bruce from the Wick office. We would do anything for money. Mary Samson threw herself out of an aeroplane from a great height, something I would not do if it meant a cure for AIDS. The poets who contributed to After the Watergaw donated their royalties. I walked the Southern Upland Way (in a time I could not contemplate now) and, with others, organised a sponsored walk around Loch Glass. The north side proved to be so rough we almost lost some of the walkers when the weather changed.

It was a lesson learned, and applied in 1995 when Alasdair Stewart in Tayside conceived and achieved the first complete covering of the Munros by volunteers. I was Glen Manager for Knoydart, having walked the nine mile track beside Loch Hourn with our team the previous day. Some of the troops took a long time to report back but I spent the time climbing one of the Knoydart Corbetts while trying not to worry. Later that long summer night, I walked from the White Bothy across the Mam Barrisdale to Inverie to phone in, last Glen Manager to do so and unknowingly finalising and confirming the whole achievement.

My association with the charity ended on 31st July 2001 when I left the water industry intent on a new life. It was to prove one of my few regrets. I did not understand my own depth of feeling until it was too late, but that is how it has shaken down for me in so many matters. From time to time in the past eight years WaterAid has played on my mind, especially when working with Chris McIvor who, Sandstone readers will know, is Country Director for Save the Children in Mozambique. I must check with him, but understand that WaterAid fits very well with StC’s ethos and methods.

Not to labour the point, but I recently felt able to rejoin in a small way and recipients of my Christmas cards will have noticed the charity’s badge once again. I hope it took a few of them to the web site because there they will learn that WaterAid has not only grown but is better organised and more vital than ever. Not only does it provide sustainable technologies, but it also researches and publishes, educates, separates out the problems of women, men, children, the disabled, the elderly. It promotes health and good diet, wider education, benefits to women, family life (let’s hear it for the men) but, for all that, its mission statement is simple. Please read on.

‘WaterAid and its partners use practical solutions to provide safe water, effective sanitation, and hygiene education to the world’s poorest people. We also seek to influence policy at national and international levels.’

Imaginative cycling, triathlon, running events, challenges of all kinds are going on across the country and on Saturday 12th June 2010 there is to be another Munro Challenge, this time extending to the 3000 ft mountains of England, Ireland and Wales, which of course are not Munros.

If you are a hillwalker you might like to think about participating. If you are seeking a charity to support because, like me, you just think you should, you could do worse than WaterAid. If it reminds you how thin the line is between what we have and less fortunate parts of the world, and what that line is made of, so much the better. Remember the political attitudes among our own grass roots less than three decades ago. Jobs or health was always a bogus valuation. Let’s never go back there, and let’s not impose it.