Kat Vater Reports

We were all lucky to have our tests wrapped up, so Friday we got to spend some time at camp and then return to Mae La to pack and meet with AMI.

That morning, Mary, Navid and I did a “training” (as Joel calls it) for the supervisors. These are the logs that operate the system on a daily basis, several of whom we worked with over the past three weeks. Patrick translated everything, as not all the logs speak English. We talked about the salt tracer tests we had done in the distribution system and SP-10 filter. We showed some of our results, as well as how the conductivity probe works. Klo Htoo seemed interested to see what a difference the implementation of the baffles had made on the flow in the SP-10 filter.

We also talked briefly about the 3M Petrifilms, which I used for my microbiology testing. They are much easier to use than the current kit they are using in camp now (which requires them to mix their own broths). The results of the microbial test were shared and Joel tied-in which systems are chlorinated (all except SP 14), demonstrating that the chlorination is effective at removing bacterial pollution from the water supply.

We took them some boxes of cake we bought in Mae Sot, and presented Patrick, Klo Htoo and James with some MIT swag (T-shirts and one of those great CEE bags). After the meeting we walked through camp, which was quite nice. It was the first time I had just walked through the main roads without any purpose. It was nice to notice the fruits and vegetables so neatly arranged and the people about doing daily business. Though the people are contained with a fence and have no rights within Thailand, they are safe here and have created a village.

I shouldn’t say we wandered without any purpose though, because we were looking for some souvenirs. The Karen make beautiful woven and embroidered clothes and we all ended up buying shirts and some other gifts. We ended our walk at the restaurant we ate at everyday (except for two), partaking one last time of the random assortment of posters decorating the walls and the nowhere-level dirt floor.

After lunch we quickly drove out to Spring 17 to take one last water sample, which I’m bringing back to MIT with me. After leaving our contact information with them for when they reach the U.S., we pulled away from Mae La 2. James, Klo Htoo and Bah Blu (another supervisor) were waving to us and we in return.

Some frenzied packing followed our return to the guesthouse before our final meeting at AMI. Annabelle, Fred, Benoit and Joel all gathered to hear our final thoughts and our goals for the coming months. Surprisingly the meeting ended after only about an hour (unlike the previous Friday when our meeting ran 2.5 hours). AMI was quite pleased to have us, because our work should be quite useful to them. It was a great experience for the three of us as well, because we got to see how a health care/water and sanitation NGO works on the ground.

Some of us met for dinner before Joel took Navid to the bus station, so he could catch his Saturday flight to New Delhi. Mary and I caught a bus this morning to Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand. We’re planning on enjoying Thai culture — doing some shopping, taking a cooking class, and enjoying a slower pace of life. Wednesday we head to Siem Reap, Cambodia, to see Angkor Wat. The past weeks have dragged in places, but it’s hard to believe they’re now over. In just over a week we’ll be back in Boston remembering what winter is like!

Monday we dove into data collection as Mary reported. I walked to Spring 10 (SP-10) with Klo Htoo (age 39), the spring coordinator, and James (age 63), a water supply shopkeeper. Klo Htoo speaks a little technical English, while James has a much larger vocabulary, so he serves as translator. They both learned English in school in Burma. James is hoping to move to Australia and is awaiting a visa. On Monday afternoon the three of us headed up to SP-10. It’s quite a hike, because the source is in the cliffs that run high along the camp. Navid doesn’t like the hike, and I agree it isn’t the easiest place to get to. The path is narrow and really muddy and slippery. I can’t imagine it in the rainy season.

On our way up, Klo Htoo stopped at a tobacco shop while James and I kept walking. I started to wonder if we’d gone too far, but shortly we stopped to wait for Klo Htoo. He didn’t come, so we retraced our steps, stopping at various shops to inquire if anyone had seen a guy in a red hat, but to no avail. Eventually we had to go all the way back to Mae La 2, the base of the logistic team, to find someone who knew where SP-10 is. About three-fourths of the way up, we found Klo Htoo on his way back down, walkie-talkie blaring about where we were. We all had a good laugh when we found him. I just have to remember that the shopkeeper doesn’t know the way to the springs at the top of the village.

SP-10 has two small filters that are useless because of the size of the filter media. Our turbidity measurements demonstrated this quantitatively; the turbidity in the water didn’t change from the source to the inflow of the main filter. The main filter is quite dirty and a little low on media, but is still reducing the turbidity from 30 NTU to 15 NTU.

When we finally made it to SP-10 filter, we ran a tracer test to determine the residence time of water in the system. I thought the filter was prone to short-circuiting, which seems to be the case based on the data. The theoretical residence time of the filter is on the order of hours, while the tracer appeared in just over 30 minutes. Some of the logistic team set to work cleaning the filter yesterday and will continue that work through Friday. It takes four days for about six men to manually clean and replace all the gravel media.

Wednesday we spent about half an hour at the filter, most of it reiterating how to construct the baffling so that the flow is more directed. I feel like our message was conveyed correctly, but we’ll be checking in tomorrow morning to see. Next week we’re going to modify one of the useless smaller filters to see if the combination of a clean main filter and variation of the collection-box filter can reduce the turbidity. We’ll also artificially create the rainy season turbidity of about 200 NTU. Finally, we’ll conduct another tracer test to determine quantitatively if the average residence time of water in the filter increases as a result of the baffles.

SP-10 is one of the higher springs in the system and has a large catchment area. The path we climb to reach the filter and collection basins is also one of the paths people take to cross into Burma. On Monday, a man with a gun passed by the filter, but James assured me he was only going hunting. Moving to and from Burma is quite difficult. Patrick told us that he spent one month walking from his home in Burma to the camp when he moved here less than two years ago. He traveled with only dry food and only moved at night. Once he reached the river he was taken across in a boat, and then walked the rest of the way. His story reminded me of the tales of the Underground Railroad I studied years ago.

The first day we went to Mae La, Pete said it was like going from the 21st century (Bangkok, a very modern city) to the 20th century (Mae Sot, a slow moving border town with more bicycles than cars) to the 19th century (Mae La, where the alleys smell of sewage and daily life is completely different from Bangkok or Boston). No wonder the children who come to the Rujira on their way to another country stand and stare at the street, where cars, motorcycles, tuk-tuks, and bicycles fly by at lightning speed compared to anything they’ve seen in Mae La.