Back to work and already feeling crazy

Well, I'm back in Oudomxay now after a crazy two week trip to Vietnam with my brother Paul. First day in the office and already things are happening.

First thing, I recieved a phone call from the German Agro Action Office in Vientiane. A month or so ago I submitted a proposal to do a Clean water and Biosand Water filter project in the village "Ban Bo", a Phonoy and Thai Leu ethnic village about 7 km from Oudomxay Town. The proposal called for the building of a gravity fed water system and the introduction and training for village residents in the construction, use and maintenance of the biosand water filter. For those of you who are not familiar with this technology, it is a simple design that uses concrete, sand and gravel to filter water at the household level. It costs about 8 USD to make one. Our plan is to work with the villagers to build at least 10 of them and then to set up a community based cooperative to build and sell them to other villages and interested individuals. We figure the project is going to take about 6 months. GAA is going to give us just under 2500 USD to get the project off the ground.

Also, the Water for Life Project is getting off to a fast start. Although my office was unable to get any work done while I was gone, we start tomorrow with a big meeting in a village, Ban Konoy, about 15 km north of Oudomxay Town. The meeting will include village leaders from twenty different communities and a number of government agencies. Our plan is to brief them on the project and to solicit cooperation and participation. should be interesting. For those of you who are not familiar with the project...don't worry I will post a blog describing it in detail shortly.