Work In Progress: Into the Field

Welcome to Kiembeni Blue Estate, a peaceful collection of aqua-roofed homes adjacently to the similar, yet red-roofed, Kiembeni Red. Peaceful from a distance, but its water network tells a different story. Along the pipelines, dark deals go down, water disappears and sewage infiltrates spaghettis which venture off the main lines. And who is the culprit, the cause of this turbid underworld? Some blame the leaks, others the vacuum-inducing lack of water but one villain skims over the rest: unaccounted for water (UfW). Water which just disappears, with leaking mob bosse sending it to the depths of the earth. 

However, Kiembeni is not left completely to the whims of water-impurifying fiends. For what is that coming over the hill? Is it a ndege (a bird)? Is it an ndege (a plane)? No! Able to distinguish a volumetric meter from a velocity meter with a single glance, faster than a speeding matatu (if said matatu had four flat tires), it's Customer Survey/Serial Metering Girl!

That's right, I have a super hero alter ego. The whole office side of the job is really just my Clark-Kent-eqsue cover. In real life, I'm out in the field, checking meters and taking names.

With my trusty sidekick, Meter Reader Man, I venture into the compounds of Kiembeni, inspect meters, take readings, count tanks and complete surveys on consumption patterns and water availability.

Nyamawi, my meter reading/translator friend.

Conducting customer surveys and designing a scheme for installing precision meters in Kiembeni has been my main task this summer. Customer surveys were really interesting to create and conduct and the one of the main things I learned is that, however much you plan in the office and however many lists you make, once you get to the field, everything changes. You have to be able to adapt to anything. Which is why it is good to be a Surveying Super Hero.

The survey sheet I created. I could fill this out in my sleep at this point.

 One of my extra special super powers is an extraordinary knowledge of domestic water meters. I know them down to the serial number by now. One of my co-workers even suggested that I write my thesis on meters. And I am pretty sure that, combined, I have more pictures of monkeys and meters than anything else on my camera. Just check them out for yourself:

Dunwell Single-Jet Velocity Meter

Kent Polymer Volumetric Meter
(with a leaky gate valve.
That's unaccounted for water (UfW) for you)

ARAD Model P Volumetric Meter
(this was an exciting find --ARADs are rare)

Kent S130 Velocity Meter (most common)

However, this immense database of meter knowledge is not easy to come by. If I really was a super hero, one of my catch-phrases would be "Challenges of the Field." That really isn't a very catchy phrase at all actually, so I would probably choose something more like "There's a snake in my meter chamber," to take a leaf out of Woody's book, or  "Holy hose pipe, Meter Reader Man! " or maybe even "Go go engineer-in-training skills!" (which probably would be pretty useless).  However, "challenges in the field" does portray an important theme to field work. There are challenges everywhere.

Meters are often hard to access:

Yes, I followed my sidekick over this dangerous  dump of debris to get my meter reading.

Or sometimes, they are buried under banana trees:

See that speck of blue down in the left corner? That's a meter. People are supposed to elevate their buried meters within three months of being informed to do so. Otherwise their water is disconnected. However, with such a nice banana tree, the debate water vs. banana gets to be tricky. And you can always just bribe the meter reader. A few bananas every time they come by and I'm sure they'll let you keep your tree. 

But nothing will stop Meter Reader Msichana Muzungu! Through pouring rain, slopping mud, and baking sun, I climb over tires, skirt around boiling pots of water, leap over laundry and conduct my survey. It has been quite an adventure. I've even made some friends along the way:

My friend here got very excited every time I came to check her meter.
She even gave me a few yards of fabric so I can make a beautiful African dress to remember Kenya by. 

And finally, after many weeks of toil, my great reward: to see my serial metering set-up actually in the field. The precision meters in series with the sample meters are so beautiful, it almost makes me tear up a little. 

After drawing a bagillion sketches and learning all about plumbing and fittings,
 I was amazed that my scheme actually worked out. 

The point of all this surveying and serial metering is to develop a consumption pattern for Mombasa so we know how much water people are using and when they use it. Serial metering also helps us to check the meters in the field and see if they are correctly registering the amount of water being used or, as is often the case,  if they are under-registering and contributing to that dastardly UfW. Which is all very exciting stuff. If you don't believe me, just look how excited they are:

Emily and Mrabo, our plumbers. Serial metering is so much fun!

And finally, after a long days work, the sky blue Coast Water-mobile arrives to take me and my water-saving cohorts home.

Time to leave the dusty roads of Kiembeni for another day.

But wait! What is that you say? You haven't had enough? You want to hear more about the adventures of the young intern as she dons her (imaginary) cape and fights water-borne injustice? Well alright, let us take a brief trip over to Changamwe and check out the status of the reservoirs there.

The view from afar looks pretty tame, but let's get a little bit closer.

The inside of a reservoir. How intriguing. Yes, those are holes in the roof and garbage floating in the water. And what is that scrabbling and chattering in the distance? 

Oh, monkeys. Naturally. Because who wouldn't want a fluffy ball of mischief running around where your water is stored? Reservoirs make a great home for monkeys.

Luckily, they treat the water. Because that is what reservoirs are for. To hold and treat water. And chlorination is a good method of water treatment. Just open the tap and dump some in.

Ah, but treatment and filtration is all upstream of the monkeys. So the water from Mombasa taps is straight from the monkey den. And I still use it to brush my teeth. Crazy, I know.

It seems to me that these reservoirs need a more in-depth exploration.

Down into the reservoir I climb. Luckily, there were no snakes in this one. Only a few lizards. Just another day in the life of Msichana Muzungu: Engineering Intern Extraordinaire.

P.S. Soy Tu Deuna is drawing to its dramatic conclusion this week. The evil Roscendo has pulled a Phantom of the Opera and kidnapped the noble Valentina and taken her down to his sub-terranean lair. She is now in very ill with a fever but still has enough vivacity to spit in Roscendo's face when he tries to feed her soup. And Jose Miguel is battling bats and Roscendo's attempts to kill him to save the life of his one true love. Oh so much drama!