Money, we desire it, but we despise the greed it induces. We wish the world could operate without it, but we pragmatically realize that it is how we value goods and services. Others will claim that the coldness that money inspires (i.e., business economics) is proof that money drives us humans away from the very nature that defines us as human, are warm caring emotions. Well! I really would like to have the cold, heartless power of money on my side right now.
The water systems that I am implementing are done so by the community which will benefit from it. The community is not paid for their labor, as it is seen as their contribution to the cost of the system, since they are unable to provide any significant funding. I find this method both fair, and it allows them to receive a water system even though their local and/or national governments can’t afford to provide the funding. Not all agree with me on this, I have heard that it is not fair that the poor should have to work for free to get water while the rich in the big cities get their water system (in the wealthier parts of the bigger cities) through paid labor.
Having the community build the system limits the speed of construction, complicates logistics, and makes for an unreliable construction crew. The community only can work so many days a week on the system. They have fields to tend and, maybe even, money to earn (though there aren’t many sources of paid labor in Passabe). Sure, water is a monetary benefit, but they already obtain it free of monetary cost; they pay in the labor of carrying it, which is not from too great a distance. Since the project is rushed, I have to complete the eleven systems that I have quickly. Being that I am limited on the speed with which I can work in any given community that means to finish quickly I must work in all or most of the communities simultaneously, making for a logistics nightmare. I would much prefer to work in two or three systems at a time and I as I finish one move on to a new one. The third is that the work force that I might have in a community is highly unreliable. Some days we will have sixty or more community members, but not enough work for them. The next we won’t have any, but a lot of work. If it is market day, people won’t work. If the morning starts out rainy (like today) it is difficult to get the community to work. Sometimes the community will decide the night before that they want to work and won’t tell us, while another community will decide at the last minute that they don’t want to work after having stated that they would. This leaves us with technicians and materials in the wrong communities. Furthermore, many of the communities are experiencing system construction fatigue. My projects take months to build. In the beginning the communities are excited and motivated making them eager to work, but after months of construction and no water their motivation has faded until work is a chore.
Even though I agree with the projects policy to not pay the local communities to build their own water system, I wish I could pay them as it would really speed up the construction time and decrease logistics issues. A good example on how money speeds up the construction process is are method of obtaining gravel. To build concrete tanks and water catchments, we need gravel. However, as I’ve written before, there is no easy way to get gravel as there is no quarry. So, in Passabe, we decided to start a local operation to make our gravel. We pay them $1 for a box of gravel which is around 40 centimeters cubed (I should know this but I can’t recall at the moment). The community on their own motivation will break big river rocks into gravel of the size we need for 8 or 10 hours a day. When we need a lot of gravel, the rock breakers will be hammering away until while after midnight and start again at 8:00 in the morning. It is needless to say that we have never run short of gravel.
If I could pay the communities, I am certain that I would always have plentiful labor. I could get my work done in a timely matter. And I could be done with this frustration of changing my weekly work plans and priorities on a daily basis. Oh, that would be nice!
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