I talked to Debra Snellen from LEAMIS on the phone today, and got an interesting, if overdue, story that I had to share, even though it takes a little explaining.

In the past week or so, I was contacted by a woman who is doing a six-month project in Kenya teaching (among other things) proper hand-washing and water sanitation. She’d seen the soapmaking references on my blog and wanted more information. In our conversation, I discovered that she was using SODIS, a water disinfection technique which LEAMIS taught for the first time this summer. Bob Willems was trained in the technique and taught it both in Kenya and Liberia.

SODIS is a method for cheaply and easily disinfecting water, although it only works with water that is already relatively clear and sediment-free. The process uses plastic soda bottles placed in direct sunlight for a designated period of time. The heat and UV radiation from the sun kill the offending microorganisms.

SODIS only works with PET or glass bottles; other types of plastic bottles could leach chemicals into the water. But most plastic soda and bottled water bottles, both here and in Kenya, qualify. We saved our bottles for Bob throughout the trip, and we found only one bargain-basement brand of Kenyan bottled water that was made from the wrong type of plastic.

I thought SODIS was a great idea and was happy to see it being taught on our Kenya trip. What I didn’t know at the time was how and why LEAMIS came to teach it.

In 2007, Debra and I were a two-person LEAMIS team to Cochabamba, Bolivia. As I’ve shared here and elsewhere, that trip was plagued with misunderstandings and problems. The biggest problem was that the area in which we were working was much more urban than we’d expected or planned for. We had brought along the McGuire water chlorinator which LEAMIS had installed, and continues to install, in many locations. But the pastor who’d encouraged us to bring along the chlorinator wasn’t on site for most of our visit, and the people with whom we were working on that trip weren’t that interested in installing or using the McGuire unit. (Actually, their problem was as much with the bulky filtration system which LEAMIS installs in connection with the chlorinator). The problems with contaminated water in their area were more isolated, and they weren’t sold on the whole big LEAMIS system as a solution.

At the time, of course, that was a disappointment to me, since that was one of the things I’d trained to do during the trip. When our host pastor returned near the end of the trip, he was more interested in the water purification system than the subordinates with whom we had been working. So, right at the end of the trip, we taught the use of the McGuire unit — right up until the time when its electric motor broke.

What I didn’t know at the time — what I didn’t know until today — was that it was our bad experience in Cochabamba which started Debra thinking about alternative answers to the problem of contaminated water, leading her to find the information about SODIS.

I knew that our Bolivia trip was, if nothing else, a learning experience, but I didn’t realize that it was already paying practical dividends.