In July 2008, I and six other students from Cambridge University travelled to the North West region of Thailand in order to build and install a drinking water system for a remote Karen village that previously did not have access to one.

The team consisted of five Engineering students, a Chemist and a Geographer, all third years apart from one, who was a first year. The charity which organised the project is called ‘The Karen Hill Tribes Trust’ (KHT). This charity works specifically with the Karen people in Thailand, providing not only clean drinking water systems, but also sending teachers and funding for some local students to gain a higher level of education. As a brief background, the Karen people are Tibetan in origin, being found today mostly in Burma (7 million) and North East Thailand (400,000). Although originally nomadic, the Thai-Karen have settled mostly in small villages where they rely on their own farmland for the staple foods of rice and vegetables. Although the government does invest some money in basic services, they do not provide drinking water and even an electricity supply is not yet found in all villages.

KHT install roughly ten clean drinking water systems every year around the region, with their aim to give every Karen village its own supply as soon as possible. These systems drastically cut back the incidents of illness and death amongst the villagers due to water-based diseases, most notably typhoid and cholera.

All the water systems are of a similar design with subtle variations depending on the specific situation and size of village. The following is a brief description of the layout of a system from the source down to the village:

• The source (a stream) is dammed to create the small head of water required to provide the pressure needed initially to force the water through the filter tank.
• A filter tank is built a short distance below the dam, consisting of two chambers both partially filled with layers of sand and stones to remove sediment from the water and charcoal to kill the bacteria.
• A trench is dug between the dam and the filter tank and from the filter tank down to the village (approximately 30cm wide and 30cm deep).
• Two, 2m diameter, 3m tall storage tanks are built just above the village.
• A few taps are placed at key places in the village.
• Plastic piping is laid to connect the dam to the filter tank, the filter tank to the storage tanks and from the storage tanks down to the taps in the village.

The village chosen for this water project was called ‘Ban Maejor’ and had a population of fewer than 300. It was situated a two hour drive from the nearest local town of ‘Khun Yuam’, about 70 miles west of Chiang Mai. The village had a government-installed electricity supply and water supply (not suitable for drinking). Working for KHT were three trained Karen staff who directed and oversaw the whole project from an Engineering perspective, instructing us on what to do each day. Their names were Aka, Vera and Padatoo; they each spoke fluent Thai and Karen with Padatoo also speaking perfect English. In addition to the three KHT staff and the seven of us from Cambridge, many of the locals helped out, often doing some of the more physical lifting and carrying.

The following is an account of our experience of installing this water system from arriving in Khun Yuam to returning after the project:

Saturday 5th - Sunday 6th July:

We arrived in Khun Yuam on Saturday evening and met all the KHT staff for our first briefing on what we needed to be doing to prepare ourselves for the village. On Sunday we bought all of our tinned and non-perishable food along with any blankets, mosquito nets and other necessary non-food items. This weekend was also an essential break before moving into the village so that we could acclimatise ourselves to the new height, being up in the mountains.

Monday 7th July:

We got up early and bought the remaining fresh meat and vegetables needed for the first week of the project. The travel into the village took just over two hours by land-rover, mostly on tarmac although closer to the village the road quality did deteriorate somewhat (along with the ride comfort, it has to be said)! Once in the village we got our room set up (mats, mosquito nets etc.) and unloaded all the food into the kitchen hut. All we had to cook on were two small portable concrete bins with large holes cut in the front to feed the wood into. Everything was made in one of two woks whichrested on top of the cooking bins. Our rice was kindly provided by a family in the village. Without modern appliances (such as kettles, grills, microwaves, ovens etc.), it took us around two hours each night to prepare, cook and then clear up our meals.

Tuesday 8th – Friday 11th July:

Each morning we got up at 6am in order to light the fires in the kitchen, cook breakfast, prepare ourselves a packed lunch and get ready to head off to the source. We left the village at around 7:30am each carrying a hoe and a length of plastic piping to take up the hill. The walk from the village to the source took around an hour and a half, climbing up many hundreds of metres. The final section of the climb once we walked up past the paddy fields and into the jungle was really quite treacherous due to the slippery nature of the path. We were walking up a slope and the path was simply where the undergrowth had been cut away. This left the ground very muddy which, combined with the slope, left us going up on all fours for sections! On the whole this was fairly amusing, although at times there were some large drops to the side which made us somewhat more concerned!

The first job on Tuesday was to cut down a few bamboo trees and saw the wood into sections to be used to make a mould for the filter tank. Once done, the villagers got to work skilfully turning the wooden tubes into sheeting. A few minutes walk above the source were large piles of sand and stones which had been dredged from the stream in preparation for making the concrete needed for the dam and filter tank. These were moved down to the source bucket by bucket, a job we spent a lot of time doing, along with many women from the village who had come to help. The stream was blocked with large stones which formed the bulk of the dam with the gaps filled with concrete.

By Wednesday morning the path up to the source had been hoed out more widely and with foot holes so that climbing up was a lot easier! Once the bamboo mould for the filter tank was finished, concrete was poured in and left overnight to set. In the meantime, a trench was dug between the dam and the filter tank and beyond the filter tank back down the hillside. By Thursday morning, the concrete forming the filter tank was set so the mould was taken off and the surfaces smoothed down with fine concrete. The layers of stones, charcoal and sand were added, thus completing the tank by Friday morning. In the afternoon, everyone, including many villagers, was focused on continuing the trench down through the paddy fields until the site for the storage tanks was reached. This trench was nearly 3km in length and represented a lot of very tiring work in hot humid conditions.

Saturday 12th – Sunday 13th July:

Saturday was spent finishing the last small section of trench to the tank site and then entirely levelling out a 6m x 3m area next to the track to the village. This involved firstly removing quite a large number of trees and then a lot of soil as we were digging into a hill and needed the whole area to be horizontal. We received delivery of some more fresh meat and vegetables on returning to the village, to replace the stock which had either run out or gone off! That evening, we sat with the locals for a while drinking some of their ‘rice wine’ (everything consumable is made from rice one way or another it would seem!). We did not understand much of what was said although sections were occasionally translated for us by Padatoo, this seemed not to matter too much though!

Sunday was a complete day off although a couple of us went to the village church service in the morning. Again, we didn’t understand anything that was said but just enjoyed seeing another culture operating in a unique way.

Monday 14th – Wednesday 16th July:

These next four days were almost identical being spent building the two storage tanks in the levelled out area and furthering the trench. We got up at 5:15am each morning and went straight to the tanks before breakfast to mix and pour the next layer of concrete. We then returned to the village for around 8am for breakfast and had the rest of the morning off. The early afternoon was spent continuing the trench from the tanks down to the village before finally returning to the tanks for the second layer of the day (the first layer having set by then).

On Monday morning, however, we did not get a rest as we needed to chop bamboo and build the scaffolding required for pouring some of the higher layers later on. All in all the scaffolding was pretty secure although I doubt that any serious health and safety assessment in the UK would have passed it as OK! This was Thailand, though, and these things seem not to matter quite so much! On Tuesday evening, we hosted some of the villagers for a ‘traditional’ western meal of pasta with a tomato sauce and homemade garlic bread. I think this went down well but they smiled all the time anyway so whether it was enjoyed or not is hard to tell! The tanks were done by Wednesday morning as each layer was 60cm tall, thus 5 layers were needed for the 3m total height.

Thursday 17th – Friday 18th July:

These two days were spent smoothing down the sides of the tanks with fine concrete and constructing the lids, which were held up whilst setting by bamboo poles inside the centre of the tank. Once ready, Padatoo climbed down into the tanks through small man holes left in the tops, smashed all the bamboo supports from underneath, fed them back through the lid in buckets before climbing out again using a bamboo ladder!

Thursday evening was a little eventful on the cooking front as too much oil was poured into one of the woks whilst cooking, creating a fairly dangerous fire. One of the villagers offered to pour a bucket of water on to the wok although we kindly suggested (in our finest Karen) that pouring water onto an oil fire was not such a great plan! Fortunately there was a tee-shirt to hand, which when soaked in water was sufficient to put the fire out, not a great situation to be occurring in a wooden kitchen but it all turned out OK in the end! Well, the wok was a write-off as it was pasted with crispy tee-shirt but that is a small price to pay, I guess! By Friday afternoon, the trench had reached the village and all the pipes had been installed connecting the tanks down to the taps.

Saturday 19th – Monday 21st July:

Saturday was spent entirely at a different village as we were invited to go and visit a wedding being held nearby. We missed most of the service itself sadly but got to enjoy the food afterwards and were able to meet the bride and her family. This happened also to be a village in which KHT has already installed a water system so we got to see the results of a different project! Sunday and Monday were both days off apart from the task of painting the group sign to go in front of the tanks.

Tuesday 22nd– Wednesday 23rd July:

Tuesday morning was spent putting up the sign and having our photos taken on and around the tank with the villagers and the KHT team. In the evening we enjoyed a big village party in which the whole village gathered under the church (which was on stilts) to share food and drink together. There was also a small ceremony in which we were thanked for our efforts and we were able to give some thanks back to the villagers (with a good deal of translation in between!).

We packed and left on Wednesday morning, returning to Khun Yuam for lunch.

Thursday 24th– Saturday 26th July:

We were fortunate enough to be taken on a jungle trek by Salahae (an important local politician and KHT associate) from Thursday afternoon until Friday night. We carried our own food around with us and slept in a bamboo shelter for Thursday night! There were a handful of local villagers who came with us as guides and were kind enough to carry our cooking equipment for us which lightened our loads slightly. The trek was very tiring but a fantastic experience involving some stunning views and a few “hairy” moments, most notably with a Cobra which I found rather too close for comfort whilst I was going to the toilet on one occasion! Fortunately for me, the snake had just eaten and so did not attack me although I was informed shortly afterwards that a bite would have otherwise been likely and the result extremely serious!

We spent Friday night in Khun Yuam and returned back to Chiang Mai on Saturday morning.

Final reflections:

This project was a fantastic experience to enjoy another culture and give a lasting gift to a people less fortunate than ourselves. All seven of us in the team loved the whole experience, despite its many challenges and tests. The Karen themselves were a joy to be around, always smiling and so helpful whenever they could be. Although we could not speak to them directly in any depth, we learned a lot about their culture and their style of living which is so different to our own in many ways.

As a group we were together almost without a break, cooking, working, sleeping and living in the same space for the entire project in sometimes stressful situations. I think this was perhaps the most challenging element to the whole experience but as a result we all learned a lot about ourselves as individuals and about how to cope when around the same people for a long time. That said, as a group we got on very well and worked together effectively in doing everything we needed to. We didn’t know each other all that well before we came out to Thailand; we certainly do now!

I would recommend this project to anyone looking to get involved with practical volunteer work abroad; it was a really beneficial experience for all of us.