From Yemen Today Magazine: http://www.yemen-today.com/go/development/3376.html
31/12/2009 06:48:00 by : Sammi Aryani
Khadija al-Zafeni walks two kilometers to collect water from a rain-fed cistern three times a day. “My children were constantly sick because of the water.
Khadija al-Zafeni walks two kilometers to collect water from a rain-fed cistern three times a day. “My children were constantly sick because of the water. Each of them was stricken with severe diarrhea every month. It would reach the point to which they would be skinny and frail and sleep all day. For a mother, it’s hard to watch your children suffer like that.” This is the daily condition for the staggering 44 percent of Yemenis who currently live without access to clean drinking water, one of life’s most basic necessities, but also the one most easily taken for granted. However, Khadija is gratefully using the past tense, for, thanks to Richard Boni’s colloidal silver filters, her family has now been granted the right to drink water free of disease. As the Silver Filter Company expands, this could be the reality for the rest of Yemen’s rural and urban poor.
Yemen’s water crisis has already shown its pervasive effects on the lowest levels. As water becomes ever scarcer, far too many people are driven to drink from filthy surface water. The cistern in the village of al-Zafen has been dubbed “the milky pond” because the water is often opaque. Before the clay filters were introduced to the village, 80 percent of its population was suffering from severe diarrhea. The rate of illness was not just harming the quality of life for those afflicted, but it was having a debilitating economic and social impact.
Workers would be decommissioned for weeks at a time, robbing their families of their much needed income. There is no hospital or pharmacy in the village so the cost of transport and medical care reached as high as five to eight thousand rials a month. For households with over six mouths to feed and who live on only a few dollars a day, the financial burden was substantial. Al-Zafen is not a particularly impoverished village. With 70 percent of Yemen’s population living in a rural environment and, of that population, only 48 percent having access to clean drinking water, al-Zafen provides a snapshot of how many Yemenis live. So, as the villagers would happily attest, an easy-to-use and affordable water purification system is nothing short of a godsend.
The village of al-Zafen was chosen as the site for a pilot project by the Social Fund for Development to test the efficacy of the clay filters. The results have been promising. The filters are comprised of a clay pot set inside a plastic bucket with a nozzle at the bottom of it. All one has to do is pour water, no matter how dirty, into the clay pot and wait for the clean drinking water to drip into the plastic bucket. As it drips it is exposed to the disinfecting silver that saturates the pot. The silver, which presents no health risks in such miniscule amounts, kills off 99.89 percent of the microbes that live in the water. Toxins are filtered by the clay and the resultant water ends up being cleaner than the average bottle of water. Even in test runs where sewage water was used, the resultant water was clean and drinkable. Skeptics often have trouble getting past the filter’s rudimentary appearance, but its simple design belies its potentially life-saving properties.
Tariq al-Zafeni was a skeptic when the Social Fund workers gave him a silver filter in 2008. “It didn’t run on electricity, it’s made out of clay, you don’t have to change anything inside of it. I thought this would be worthless. But I know now that it is like a gift from God. It’s the simplest thing, you don’t even have to clean it everyday.”
Its simplicity and effectiveness are its strength, and Yemen’s development community has started to take notice. Garreth Richards, the general manager of Care International Yemen, provided his testimonial: “The silver filters present development workers with the ideal water purification system. It’s simple enough that anyone can be taught how to use it, and it’s proven to be effective. There are no risks like chlorination which, when used incorrectly, is at best ineffective, and at worst poisonous. When Care deals with projects that involve drinking water, we use and will probably continue to use Rich Boni’s filters.”
In fact, Care is not the only organization taking note. The UNHCR uses thousands of the silver filters in their refugee camps. The Islamic Relief and the Red Cross also purchased thousands when Hadhramaut was struck by floods in 2008. A fully decentralized water purification system is saving thousands of people from the agony of gastrointestinal disease, as well as the thousands of rials a month spent on medical attention, and it all happened by the virtue of a happy accident.
Michael Klinger, the former country director of the GTZ in Yemen, built a kiln with the intention of making clay irrigation equipment, the market for which proved to be too small. The kiln sat there until it was realized that they could cheaply fire silver filters. The idea came from an American NGO called Potter Without Borders, which has been the biggest driver in spreading the filters around the world. After simply providing a training program to Boni and his potters, they left the company to develop independently. Richard Boni was working on the filters from the beginning. “We started with only a couple of hundred misshapen blobs of clay. Slowly we started to streamline our method, and perfect our product. Now, we quite easily bang out a thousand a month.” Under the auspices of Boni, the company has grown to its current level. Through his incredible attention to detail, he has made a product that is trusted by the development community. And attention to detail is one of Boni’s strongest assets.
“No matter what, the silver is going to kill all the bacteria, and the water will be safe to drink. But I still take pride in my work, and consistency and presentation are everything.” Richard Boni has dedicated the past 18 years to improving the lives of poor Yemenis. “In 18 years of working in development, this has been the most meaningful thing I’ve done.” However, he is aware that there is still much room to grow. “Once people around the country know how much illness is in their water, and how effective the filters are, I see silver filters becoming a household name.”
Mr. Boni is correct in that the biggest challenges facing Yemen when it comes to waterborne illness is awareness. Tariq al-Zaffeni knows that many Yemenis were just like him before the silver filter. “Before the silver filters, we didn’t even know that you could get sick from water. We used to take the water from the cistern and pour it through our scarves to get rid of the large debris. We thought that was enough.” Awareness does not only entail informing people of the problem, but also presenting them with solutions. Al-Zafeni is adamant that if other villagers are given the chance to invest in a water filter they would. “I feel sad that our neighbors don’t have these filters; our lives are actually better than theirs because of a filter. There needs to be a way to bring these filters to every village in Yemen. They are sick and they don’t even know what the cause is.”
At every level, from the heads of development and aid groups, to the researchers on the field, and to the villagers who are directly affected, there is a call to expand the capacity and reach of the silver filters. Waterborne disease is a major cause of stunted development and child mortality, as well as a huge drain on household budgets. With over half of Yemenis afflicted with stunted growth, and the highest child mortality rate in the Arab World at 73 children per thousand, Yemen needs a simple solution that can be utilized in the kitchen by anyone. Perhaps this would improve the fluidity of Yemen’s rural economy, and revitalize a workforce that suffers from anemia, malnutrition, and diarrhea.
The Silver Filters Company recently held a training program for potters from Somaliland, so it is already gaining international attention. They hope that within a few years, their operation will expand to accommodate a second kiln, the building of which is costly and time-consuming. But it would double the capacity of the company, thus helping thousands more become healthier and more able members of society.
