On Pigs and Water

It is “Adgoma” in Georgia. “Adgoma,” of course, the verb meaning “to rise, rising, to stand” which – in turn- means that we (Georgians) are celebrating Orthodox Easter. Though I’m not exactly sure what to expect on the big day (Friday), I have learned that Wednesday night, in my corner of Terjola, is the night of the pig.

For the last several hours (it’s about 8:30PM) I have been serenaded by several dozen strident porcine death moans. What started out as a strange, unsettling and creepy soundscape has slowly evolved in my ears to become strange, unsettling, and very much creepy.

From a scientific viewpoint, this is a simple experiment in the non-communicative abilities of Suidae Budodontia. Elephants, as a counter-example, are able to communicate precise locations of predators and waterholes many miles away to other members of their pack, or herd, or what-have-you. Pigs, on the other hand, seem unable – betraying their best efforts- to convey a pretty simple message over a couple hundred yards. “I appear to be dying over here!” or “Watch out for the guy with the knife!”

Peace Corps strives to have its volunteers set realistic expectations. “Start slow and taper off” is a favorite saying in Pre-Service Training. In our Project Design and Management seminar, we are instructed to set “SMART” project goals (The acronym contains both the words “Attainable” and “Realistic.”) It is in this vigilant vein that I’ve decided to engage in a complete renovation of Terjola’s municipal water supply.

45 years ago, (which was no longer “Stalini’s Dro” but now “Khrushchev’s Dro”) the powers that were decided to create the current municipal water system in Terjola. As can be seen from my lovely “still-haven’t-written-my-GIS-grant-yet” diagram, it is a fairly simple system, drawing water from a neighboring villages’ pump station, theoretically filtering it, sending it up to our local “young-pioneers-camp/IDP-refuge” hilltop, before storing it, and dispersing it among the Terjolelli.

What happens in “Julieni’s Dro” is another matter entirely. You may recall in an earlier blog that we mentioned the power situation in Georgia. Remember the movie Power Trip you were all supposed to go out and watch? Well, as a refresher, it was the story of Georgia’s transition from a Soviet-style electrical power grid and fee-non-collection system, to the current “modern” system.[SPOILER WARNING] What was most difficult for the people involved in the project was convincing Georgians to pay for something that had, since the beginning, been free. Yesterday, I found out that this paradigm applies to water as well. While I can’t vouch for the major metropolitan areas (as has been advertised in The Economist, the government of Georgia has been privatizing like crazy, and utilities were the first to go), water, in Terjola, when you can get it, it still free. This not only translates into a complete and utter lack of water conservation, but also obviously detracts heavily from infrastructure investments.

45 years on, the system is in a poor state. After meetings with the local mayor (Gamgebeli), it was decided that water was the number 1 priority for Terjola, and that my quaint idea for a landfill-that-is-not-the-river will have to wait. (As a side note, the German development agency GTZ is building a two-story sports center in ‘down-town’ Terjola, but I will reserve my comments on this fact for a less public arena.)

Though the final financing source may only appear after I am back in the states (hopefully in grad school with my own financing problems), I know that the first step for this project is analyzing the scope of the problem. Thus, armed with my notebook, chacos, camera, and very amateurish knowledge of gravity-fed water systems, I went with Kaxa, (my director’s husband) and his Lada on a driving tour of the “facilities.” What I found in the sand was something out of Shelley, though instead of two vast and trunkless legs of stone, were rusting pipes, caved-in storage tanks and historical relics posing as pumps. “Despair” indeed.

For a couple hours, I took notes, sketched out the system as best I could, and listened to the ancient pump station operator’s lament about how things were, back when he was paid. The system today is operating at a fraction of its previous levels, only turning on for two hours a day, and only serving the lower half of town, leaving the other half and the small surrounding villages to rely on well water and dubious springs.

I don’t have much faith in the supposed “filtration” stage of the system, nor do I believe that the source is that clean to begin with. As can be ascertained by the business end of the candles in our Peace Corps water filter, there’s some pretty gross stuff in there, and its not “vitamins.”

As I said previously, I’m not sure how this project will proceed, because from my estimation, this project will fall right in the middle of the global financing gap between small <$10,000 projects and large ones >$100,000. Though, to be fair to the development community, this gap has merit: who wants to fund a project that will cost the equivalent of several small projects, but not tip the scales enough to attract the major players in infrastructure development? Hopefully, by next blog, I’ll have a better idea.