March 30

7:08 on a Tuesday night, Alex's first-grade school presentation today on hand-washing went well. Her fourth toktok (talk talk) in five days.

The average life-span of a water system in Vanuatu is 5-10 years. This is in part due to spare parts not being available when you need them (there's no home depot on this island) and in part due to people not knowing how to maintain systems, but the main reason is water systems just don't last that long. Average life-span world-wide is 20 years. Alex and I are encouraging water tanks. They still have their maintenance issues, like cleaning and not letting dirty water (the first rain in months) get into the tanks. The supplies to build a village-size cement water tank cost about $1,000-$2,000 USD. This is more than the villages here have in disposable incomes. They can hold fundraisers or apply for grants. The best plan is probably a combination of both, as a grant application would look a whole lot better if the village could show they are making progress outside the grant money. This first step in all of this is getting water committees up and running in our villages, as water committees would organize fundraisers, talk to village members about water tanks and apply for grants. Alex and I are going to meet with the village chiefs individually to encourage water tanks and water committees. There's also a sanitation and hygiene training that has been endorsed by the World Health Organization that emphasizes the value of clean water. We want to do this training with individual villages as well.