Thukpa, or a Nepalese noodle dish is served as snack at NCDC

As you may have gathered from the announcement on our Facebook page, we’ve finished the project (save a few minor modifications the community is planning on making). Here’s how the last week went down.

While this past week has been extremely busy (as I will soon explain), we did have some time for more extracurricular activities. We found the tea fields that Ilam is famous for, and close by is the local university (Tribhuvan University). Here, I was able to get my pickup basketball quota for the summer (haven’t played in so long..) by playing with some of the few locals who actually enjoy basketball (it’s mostly football and cricket around here). One of the players owns a pool house nearby as well, and we went over and played our quota of pool for the summer against some of the locals. They’re pretty good, and we’re pretty bad (as an excuse I’ll say rusty), so we lost, unfortunately. Aside from these kinds of sports, at home we entertain Pitu, the 8-year old girl who lives at our homestay, by playing computer games, showing her how to use MS paint, or allowing her to take billions of photos on our smart phones. She has taken a liking to playing us in the card game “war,” and has even shown us the proper way to hand-wash our clothes. Culinarily, we’ve discovered that Shanti makes salsa from Nepali chili peppers that taste eerily like Mexican salsa. Just like all the other dal bhat side dishes she cooks, it’s really tasty.

Jihoon sets up the brick wall that will become the filtered water duct into the reservoir tank.

The filter material is added to the tank. We have a large layer of stones and gravel before 40 cm of sand in our slow sand filter. 

The roofs to the reservoir tank and filter tank are built.

In terms of work on site: upon completion of the reservoir tank, work slowed down immensely as several workers came down with the fever, we had some miscommunications with NCDC and the community, and the rain started pouring in torrentially for hours on end during working hours. To make matters worse, a Maoist strike in the bazaar hampered our ability to get materials for a day. It was already tough enough having to modify measurements and make construction decisions on the fly, but the added time pressure from these delays made it even more difficult. For example, we spent a while convincing both NCDC and the community that using a tin roof for the reservoir would be sufficient, and concrete would be both extremely time consuming and put us over our allowed budget. In addition, the slow-sand filter area had to be completely designed by us during this time based on the topography of the land behind the reservoir tank.

Thus, a July 23 or 24 estimated finish date became a race against the clock to finish by July 28, our last day in Ilam. However, by the skin of our (and the workers’) teeth, the luck of some good weather, and some long work days, we finished the project on July 28. We encountered a close call when we were forced to overhaul our slow-sand filter design on July 27 – some water flow tests in the filter area revealed that the extremely fine sand (one might call it silt) had seeped into our gravel layer and clogged the entrance to the reservoir tank. Morale was not high, but rallying behind us and NCDC engineer Madhu, we worked until sunset excavating and re-filling the filter area with less sand and more rocks to prevent clogging. Upon completing the roofs of both reservoir and filter tanks, we came back the next morning to discover that indeed flow had kept up, and the reservoir tank was rampant with water. While we are calling this a “completion” of the project – as this is true for most intents and purposes – in reality, the workers still have to do minor tasks such as set up a barbed wire fence around the area (to prevent animals and people from damaging the roofs and tanks), and fill the spring flow area with rocks, gravel, plastic, and soil. These are all doable with the remaining materials we have left, and without a great need of our construction oversight.

Because of the completion and our impending departure, a ceremony was held at the spring site on the 28th, although Jihoon was sick with the flu (probably because we worked until sundown the day before perfecting the filter) and thus unable to attend. I was given the ceremonial topi and tikkas, and gave a thank you/farewell speech to the workers, NCDC, and the community on behalf of EWB-Caltech. It was culminated with a ceremonial opening of the taps (see below), and we all (NCDC engineer Madhu, I, and the workers/community members) celebrated at one of the worker’s houses with buffalo meat as well as American chocolates and wine that I brought. We said our farewells to everybody, community and NCDC both, and on the morning of the 29th, we embarked on our long journey back home to the US. Currently, as of me writing this, we are in Kathmandu, awaiting our connecting flight to China.

This project has taught me so much - in both technical and cultural matters. It was sometimes frustrating trying to effectively communicate with the workers and NCDC – there exists somewhat of a language barrier, as well as a cultural barrier, and sometimes work didn’t progress in a day like we would have wanted it to. The contract did not contain half of the design (reservoir tank and filter area were things we needed to design ourselves), and without any construction experience and no contractor to help us, we were more or less on our own with leading construction. But amidst all of these struggles, the workers and we pulled through. Words can’t describe how fast and diligently they worked when they could – we were told by NCDC that a project like this would normally take over three months to complete! We learned about Nepali engineering – a more practical form of engineering a system than sitting down and doing theoretical designing. Many times, we were forced to improvise based on the topography of the land and availability of resources, resulting in creative solutions to making the filter tank (which is trapezoidal, and contains much more gravel and stone than we originally planned). It’s safe to say that Jihoon and I are a lot more seasoned in practical engineering and construction – around here, it’s all about efficiency in cost, time, labor, and materials, and sometimes it isn’t worth making sure that it will withstand a Richter Scale 10 earthquake. (although the tapstand area will, based on how much concrete and steel we used). Of course, it was also a cultural experience for the both of us, as we learned about the language, food, customs, holidays, and people. Overall, this and the rest of my EWB experience has been rewarding, and as an alumnus of the club now, I hope that we graduated members have paved the way for a brighter future for EWB-Caltech, and I’m excited to see what new projects are in store in years to come.

In our role as desk engineers, figuring out where to place rebar for the water tank.

Like our first 80 hours of our journey to and in Nepal, the past two weeks have been a real whirlwind.

Our fast but deliberate and careful construction sprint has continued, made all the more exciting because of our constantly jam-packed role as field engineer-desk engineer (occasionally)-overseer-contractor-skilled/unskilled laborers. Over the past week, we shaped and placed rebar, then poured concrete to form almost all of our walls and the water storage tank. Now, for the remaining week that we have here, we have to complete and test the structure for the filter, add filter media, place lids on top of the storage tank and filter, add finishing to the concrete as needed, and cover the upstream area to prevent contamination. The workers, and Madhu from NCDC, told me that some people like to throw random things in water storage tanks around town for fun – so far among the artifacts found were lone shoes, beer bottles, even a dead dog. To help prevent this and keep our water pure, we’ll also have to create a barbed wire fence along the perimeter of the tank and the filter. We were also discussing making heavier water tank and filter lids to make them harder to access, but we decided that the fence with our current ideas for the lids would be sufficient. We hope to finish everything by this Sunday, July 24, which an estimate that one of the senior workers gave me. We’re going to have as many workers as we can get to help out. I have to give lots of credit to all the workers – they’ve been very hard working, despite the heavy rain around us and their many other commitments including farming and, for one of them, working at a hydropower plant in the evenings.

In our role as unskilled laborers, excavating space to be used for the slow sand filter.

Webster after admiring the glorious formwork for the side and rear walls. The formwork has since been removed and reused for creating the water tank.

The completed water tank, viewed from the rear of the system. The tank collected some delicious stormwater overnight after some heavy rains because it is not yet covered. Its capacity is about 2200 L.  

Farmers are planting rice around our construction site. They plant rice in mid/late July, then harvest in early December. Some of the workers were busy with this for some time as well.

One of our biggest fears during our time here during construction has been of falling ill, since that has the potential to eliminate our meaningful presence here. One of our workers today couldn’t show up because of a fever (which led to a slowdown in work today), and Webster was suffering slightly from lethargy and headache for a bit a few days ago. To our relief, we learned that the mosquito-borne diseases that we feared most, i.e. malaria, Japanese Encephalitis, and Dengue fever, only really occurred a little south of us, in the Terai region of Nepal (southern plains), so at least we don’t have to worry about those as much now.

After construction completes, we will do some water testing and train locals in operation and maintenance (O&M, as EWB-USA mandates) before formally handing over the spring source protection system to the Bimal Dhara community.

Outside the work site, we’ve slightly broadened our interactions with people in Ilam. We played karambol, which is a game similar to pool but notably uses flat pucks instead of balls, finger flicks instead of sticks, and a smaller table. It was fun, but the regulars laughed at us for being terrible players. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time afterwards for a montage sequence of us practicing, after which we would have beat even the toughest locals and became the foreigner celebrities that won the hearts of everybody in Ilam in a happy ending. We remain terrible. Aside from that, we’ve met a variety of people around town that seem to enjoy conversing with us. To my surprise still, many people talk to me in Korean after realizing that I’m Korean because they have worked or plan to find work in Korea. Webster also met a jolly tour guide who wants him to teach him some Chinese.

The next few days will be a burst of activity again as we spring across the last stretch of our implementation. We look forward very much to have this project completed so that we have time to be off-site for the few (presumably a few, and not zero) days we would have remaining after we finish.

The workers and I.

Jihoon and I have gotten into a fairly daily routine of waking up at 5 AM to the neighbor’s rooster calls, having snacks (usually either cookies, biscuits, or bread with jam) and tea, at 7:30, and then having morning all-you-can-eat dal bhat at around 8:15 AM. The side dishes made by our homestay host and NCDC member Shanti [sic?] have been varied based on the availability of certain vegetables from the garden and the market – they have ranged from pork with pumpkin to potatoes with bitterroot. The meals are quite delicious and varied, and are quite large in quantity. We basically don’t need to eat until our next dal bhat meal at 8 PM. After morning dal bhat, we make the long downhill trek (around 30 minutes) to Bimal Dhara, our spring site, and start working around 9:15 AM with the other workers. Usually we are needed at the site until 5:30 in order to be overseers, field engineers, contractors, skilled laborers, and unskilled workers at the same time. Sometimes when work does not require our contracting, engineering, and physical labor skills, we go to NCDC to discuss and calculate the next steps of the project. At night, we return home from an exhausting 30 minute uphill walk that probably gains 1000m in elevation and are able to admire our 50 additional mosquito and bug bites, none of which hopefully contain Japanese Encephalitis. We have dinner dal bhat at 8 PM, and sleep soon thereafter. Rinse and repeat.

Jihoon receives a topi for his birthday from Shanti.

The ground concrete slab has been poured and set, and the rebar has been fixed.
Jihoon and I drink tzhaan [sic], a home-made white rice wine that Bimal (the land owner) provided for us.

In terms of work at the spring site, if we hit the ground running on the first day of work, then we’ve certainly been sprinting this past week. On the second day of work, we finished soling and started cutting steel rebar for the infrastructure frame. We bent and fixed the rebar in the following two days, and then built a wooden frame and poured in concrete mix for the ground slab. As of my writing this, the stone masonry bench is being completed, and the wooden frame for concrete pouring for the side and back walls of the site is being constructed. Work is progressing fast, and if everything goes well, we should finish earlier than our prescribed July 28 deadline. In the next few days, we will be working on cutting, bending, and fixing the rebar for the frame of the reservoir tank, and pouring concrete for the side and back walls.

In terms of extracurricular life, we have been learning about Nepal and Nepali culture through our interactions with the workers, hosts, and NCDC members. During the work day, the we and the workers take a break from 1-2 PM, during which we go to Suman’s (one of the workers and acts as a translator since his English is very good) house to rest, have tea, and usually some fruit as well. He has been studying Korean for about a year (since apparently a lot of Nepali people end up working in Korea, a lot of people actually study Korean), and Jihoon says it is quite good. From what I’ve seen, he knows a lot of vocabulary words, and can make conversation with Jihoon in Korean, which is really impressive. Sushan, a university student who works at NCDC, has also taught us how to count to ten, which I have been using as a parlor trick to make the locals and the workers laugh. Bimal, the namesake and owner of the land on which the spring site is located, invited us to his house today, where we had fermented lemon and white rice wine, which they seem to love to drink. Shanti even gave Jihoon a topi, which is a cultural Nepalese hat worn at ceremonies and at special occasions (although we’ve seen people wear it around a lot as well), for his birthday, which was yesterday. It has the khukuri emblem, which consists of two crossed Gurkha swords (see pictures). We’ve even learned about the Nepali calendar (it’s year 2073 right now), which has a new year in mid-April and follows some kind of lunar/solar pattern that I can’t discern right now.

All in all, we’ve learned a lot, and accomplished a lot in these past few days. Hopefully we can continue to push forward in this project and continue exploring Ilam and its people and culture in the next few weeks!

Jihoon and Webster being welcomed in NCDC offices upon arrival, right before a detailed meeting with first shift. No rest for the weary

The past 80 hours were a real whirlwind! It’s only now that I have enough time to write an update. I started out from Seattle’s SeaTac airport, flew down to LAX to rendezvous with Webster to form the second shift group, then together had to catch a series of four flights and a jeep ride to Ilam. In the ensuing frenzy, I lost my laptop charger and faced a near-crippling flight delay that had the potential to delay our arrival by a whole two days. We got to Ilam successfully and on time, though, and got to enjoy a day of rest in Kathmandu.

Right after arriving, Webster and I met with the intrepid first shift group and the legendary NCDC staff members at NCDC’s headquarters to get a detailed review on the Bimal Dhara project’s status and remaining tasks. This included a review of community agreements and design revisions and a tour of the implementation site. Site excavation was close to completion by then, thanks to the hard work of Mr. Bimal Shrestha’s community workers. We are optimistic that we will finish implementation by the deadline of July 28th, which is the day before we have to return to Kathmandu so that we can catch our return flights to the US, and we will put all our efforts into reaching that goal.

An overview of the implementation area on transition day. To the left with higher elevation will be the water filtration/protection and storage area. The center will be the wash basin area. In the very center is a layer of excavated clay, which has since been cleared. The smaller rocks on the top of the excavation area will be used for laying foundation bedding.

Jihoon about to enjoy his first homestay dal bhat.

A closeup of Webster’s dal bhat from the same meal, accompanied with muy (a sort of curdled milk) and mango slices.

Today, we hit the ground running and continued from where the first shift left off. We and the construction team completed excavation and, after verifying that it was done to specifications, began arranging the stone bed that forms our design’s foundation. This is expected to be done by tomorrow, after which concrete formwork will be constructed in preparation for concrete pouring and molding on top of the stone bed. This will involve setting up steel rebar, which we expect to receive and cut/bend to our specifications tomorrow, suspended on a temporary wooden frame. I’m pretty interested in seeing how this will look – the rebar network in our design is quite dense and crisscrossed. To ensure that the rebar arrangement will go as planned, we looked over and verified its design at the office.

Back at the homestay, I’m looking forward to the progress we plan to make tomorrow. Once the concrete slab is poured in and set, the rest of the construction should proceed relatively smoothly so I look forward to that as well. Hopefully temperatures stay as cool and rains stay as light and occasional as they are now so that construction goes uninterrupted. Yahoo!

Matt calibrating an auto level in order to accurately verify excavation depth.

The last few days of winding up first shift have been somewhat stressful, since we are trying to prepare for the handover to Jihoon and Webster. Although we had originally envisioned much of the concrete work to have already been completed by this time, we were forced to significantly redesign much of the system upon arrival due to the difficulty of excavating certain rocks and because the community wanted to downsize the project. Most of first shift was thus spent overseeing excavation and renegotiating all of the contracts and designs with NCDC and the community. This entailed redoing all of the structural calculations, making detailed materials and cost estimates, and constructing material acquisition and financing schemes to facilitate project progress. 3 days before team 1 arrival, the massive contract and each of its 25 pages were signed by EWB-Caltech, NCDC, and the Bimal Dhara user committee. Changing the designs and remaking the contract were an excellent learning experience for the entire team. Though we spent months finalizing designs in the states based on our detailed assessment trip, a 2 year old trip and a couple of pictures cannot replace the value of observing the on- ground reality of what the site we wanted to develop is actually like. Only by starting to dig did we realize that certain parts of the system would have to be moved or rescaled to fit the position of the natural bed rock. Moreover, although it was easy for Matt to redo the structural calculations given the adjusted designs, it was much more difficult to explain to the community why such a large amount of steel or such a large concrete pad was necessary to ensure proper wall strength and stability. In the end, regardless of what our team or NCDC feels is necessary for the system, the community must be convinced of its utility in order for them to fully own the system and for the project to be ultimately successful.

Community worker displacing a large rock. The unskilled laborers, which consisted of community members who devoted their time and labor to the project, worked extremely hard. The excavation required strenuous stone breaking and shoveling.

Contract signing day with community user Arun, NCDC engineer Madhu, and Matt.

Designing with Madhu.

An additional point

Speaking of things locals are casual about, they’re also amazing at hiking (heretofore referred to as walking, because, as mentioned earlier, that is what it is here). As opposed to Americans getting in their minivans and driving to a national park, here walking up and down steep, unpaved hills is a fact of life, not a choice to be made while wearing custom Patagonia fleeces. Stray dogs and children both will pass us by as we struggle on the narrow dirt paths. Also, despite the 90% humidity and 80-85 degree heat, the locals don’t seem to sweat and we regularly see women with flawless makeup pass us as we heave uphill with our dripping faces.

On the education side of the project, we visited our first school today: Satyanarayan primary, which is a government funded school, as opposed to a private school. Ilam is a wealthier part of Nepal, so government funded schools are typically small and full of very poor students, as the rich families opt for private schooling. Additionally, government schools are rarely “English medium” like many private schools, where all the classes except Nepali are taught in English. We even heard a story about a tax for speaking Nepali of 5-10 rupees at an English medium private school! Satyanarayan has 29 students enrolled from grades one through five, and when we visited, 17 were present. Though it’s a small four-room building, the school is managed very well by teachers and a principal who care a lot about their students. The snack budget for the school comes out of their own salary, which is very small for a government teacher. We showed the students bacterial plates grown from Bimal Dhara (our spring site), a slow-sand filter that we built, and a hand washing demonstration with the goal of encouraging water safety and sanitation. The language barrier would have been insurmountable, but Sushan from NCDC was a very adept translator, though he did make us take some ridiculously steep, slippery shortcuts to get to the school. We dream of sidewalks.

Jack fruit, khichiri, and momos

Despite not being fans of walking, we love the food here! We eat fresh mangoes and other assorted fruits with nearly every meal. We tried jackfruit, which looks like large garlic cloves and tastes kind of like a chewy banana. Some other stuff we’ve eaten: khichiri (an Indian rice and lentil porridge), aloo paratha, a mashed potato stuffed flatbread that tastes even better than it sounds, homemade momos, which are Nepalese dumplings, and snack food at NCDC like nimki subzhi, a fried dough in potato and lentil stew. We also drink 3-4 cups of Ilam tea a day, which is normally black with a lot of a sugar and some spice, though sometimes we have it with milk. Because boiled water is always safe, we frequently drink tea to hydrate, and tea is always offered if you’re sitting somewhere more than 10 minutes.

We all have been picking up some Nepali, especially Katherine after she got a lesson from Rina, our host Kaji’s wife (and Ronik’s mom). We try it out sometimes on Nepalese people, but they often just speak English back.Here are some phrases we’ve learned:
Meru naam ____ ho: My name is ____.
Tapaiiko nam ke ho: What is your name?
Tapaii lai kosta cha: How are you?
Malai rambra cha: I’m good.
Dan ya bhaad: Thank you. 

We are easing up on our use of dan ya bhaad, because culturally Americans and thank you are like Canadians and sorry: we say it so much it loses meaning. When we visited the school, the principal thanked us and NCDC for coming, but then when we thanked her for letting us visit for our program, she looked very confused and our translator explained “No, she’s thanking YOU”. Also, when we say “thank you” we don’t get a response (there’s no Nepali equivalent for you’re welcome.) Here’s an interesting article on “thank you” in southeast Asia.

We’re looking forward to continuing work on the spring source protection system and the education plan. Stick with us for more updates on them, the food, Anushka’s fall total (right now it’s 8!), the amount of times Katherine has screamed at wildlife (5?), and the amount of times Nauman has anxiously gasped after getting checked in chess (3).

Enjoying cake during the layover in Istanbul.

The first shift of EWB-Caltech’s implementation orientation of the spring source protection project arrived in Nepal three days ago, after a 10-hour flight from Chicago to Istanbul followed by a 7-hour flight from Istanbul to Kathmandu. We spent the next day in Kathmandu.

It’s the rainy season in Nepal, and though it rained in the afternoon, it cleared up enough for us to get local SIM cards (the cell carrier of Nepal is NCell) and do some sightseeing.

We visited the Swayambunath Stupa, known to tourists as the Monkey Temple, which is Kathmandu’s most important Buddha shrine. The name is the “self-created” stupa translated, because according to Buddhist legend, when the temple was founded 2,000 years ago, a single perfect lotus grew in the center of a lake that filled Kathmandu Valley. “When the bodhisattva Manjusri drained the lake with a slash of his sword, the lotus flower settled on top of the hill and magically transformed into the stupa.” Referenced from http://www.sacred-destinations.com/nepal/kathmandu-swayambhunath-stupa

We got to see the monkeys up close, which live in the surrounding forest.

Getting breakfast at Electric Pagoda.

Drinking black tea at BK’s place in Kathmandu.

Monkey Temple

 

Near the Swayambunath Stupa, there is Buddha Park, with three huge, golden Buddha statues. “The Statue of the first world peace ambassador Lord Gautama Buddha (height 67 ft) was built by the Tilicho Khangsar Service Committee of Manang District. The foundation stone was laid by Lama Sherep Gyaljen on 21/6/1999 and completed on 9/8/2002”, from the sign in front of the statues.

The next morning, we took a 1-hour flight to Bhadrapur, from which we took a Jeep up a mountain for two hours to finally reach Ilam. Ilam means “winding way”, and that sure is accurate! We took a never-ending amount of turns up a mountain to get to our host Kaji’s house.

After a great meal of dal bhat (Nepali lentil soup and rice, the national dish of Nepal) and vegetables [picture] and a good night’s sleep, we went to NCDC today to meet with its members and discuss the logistics and feasibility of our spring protection project. We also met members of the EWB CU-Boulder team, who have been in Nepal for four weeks. Afterward, Aryan guided us to a lookout with an amazing view of the entire region of Ilam.

We also stopped by a local restaurant and got some veggie pakoda, which are fried veggie patties. Then we walked back down into the bazaar and picked up some wire mesh for making our demonstration filter column, which we’ll fill with sand and gravel to make a small slow-sand filter similar to our actual protection system.

Some of the things I’ve discovered about Nepal:

• Out of 365 traffic lights in Kathmandu, only 5 work, and we saw none of them. Also, pedestrians share the road with cars and motorcycles (not that surprising) but the system of stopping when you’re about to hit someone works surprisingly well. Also, when there are lane markers, they appear to be mostly a recommendation depending on how many people are on the road at the time. There have been some tight spots where I thought the road was too narrow, but the driver successfully maneuvered through.
  
• There are many wild dogs and cats, and chickens, cows, goats, and other farm animals roam around everywhere. This may sound weird and self-centered, but I’m not used to getting ignored by dogs.
  
• There are routine power outages, and the wifi is a fickle mistress.
  
• We drink tea at every opportunity. Ilam is one of Nepal’s major tea producers, and Ilam tea is especially good because it has a bit of a spice to it. [picture of tea fields] Nauman is a huge fan of tea, and no matter how hot the tea is, he can usually suck it down within minutes.
  
• We drink tea at every opportunity. Ilam is one of Nepal’s major tea producers, and Ilam tea is especially good because it has a bit of a spice to it. [picture of tea fields] Nauman is a huge fan of tea, and no matter how hot the tea is, he can usually suck it down within minutes.
  
• It is very, very humid and I am getting used to being moist all the time.
  
• Since we are in the mountains, there is not a lot of flat land, so we’re usually walking up or down hills. What people in America call hiking is really just walking here.
  
• The landscapes of Nepal are beautiful and the food is delicious. We’re looking forward to starting our school program and construction on the spring source protection system soon!