Fort Lewis College students Levi Martinez, left, and Brian Campbell carry a load of cement up the 4-kilometer trail to the water source outside the village of Huai Houk in Thailand last May. The two, along with five other FLC students, were part of an Engineers Without Borders trip to the small village, where they installed a simple water system./Courtesy photo.

by Amy Maestas

On paper, the diagram for moving water nearly 4 kilometers from a natural spring to a Thai village below seemed rudimentary, given 21st-century technology. The proposed system was mostly plastic pipes and joints.

To the handful of Fort Lewis College students who designed it, the water system seemed almost too simple to implement. After all, they are engineering students with advanced data, education and the latest gadgetry at hand. If they wanted to, they easily could have planned to construct a system that showed these off.

But FLC professor Don May kept that in check. As advisor to the FLC student chapter of Engineers Without Borders, May shared a story with the students to help them understand that in third-world countries, bigger isn’t better. May told them about a philanthropic group constructing a complex water system for poor residents in Guatemala. The group used modern devices that would hold and treat water for residents downstream. The system was so advanced that no parts were available in the country to replace them, and it was too intricate for a layperson to repair.

When a group member returned to the village a year after the project, the system was in disrepair – and the holding tank was being used as a swimming hole for the village children.

It was the first of many lessons for the students.

“That’s when I told the group to keep this project as simple as possible,” May says.

Last spring, seven FLC students, along with May, their faculty sponsor, traveled to Huai Houk, a small village in a mountainous region of Thailand, where 300 Lahu tribe people live. Their mission was to rehabilitate a water-supply system for the villagers. Village residents had used bamboo, PVC and garden hoses to fashion an existing system, which was exposed to natural elements, lacked water pressure and was shoddily constructed. The system had stopped supplying water, and villagers had taken to retrieving water in buckets from a filthy and polluted river hundreds of yards away.

When student Chris Morris first saw the system, its simplicity surprised him. He realized quickly that the students’ draft on paper would not only suffice for the village, it was imperative that it provide an uncomplicated solution, as May suggested.

“I saw the village and how the people lived and at that point knew that what we had designed wasappropriate and sustainable for their type of living,” he explains. “I realized that you don’t use widgets and gadgets if you don’t need widgets and gadgets.”

The system was so rudimentary, May says, that the City of Durango wouldn’t have approved its use even 50 years ago. But because the villagers proposed the need for a new system – according to their desires – the students and May obliged, even deferred to a group of people who they learned to treat as peers.

For six days, the students and 40 village residents worked 12 hours a day hauling supplies up and down the mountainside. Moore says they expected to work many more days in the village, thinking the construction would be more taxing. But, he says the residents worked hard and deliberately, helping the project fall into place quickly. Ultimately, May says their help saved in labor.

The group’s journey spanned 18 days. Members arrived in Thailand two days before they traveled to Huai Houk. In Chang Mai, a more modern city of 80,000, the group bought supplies for the project. The group then traveled to Huai Houk, where they met John Simpson, a professional engineer who acted as project facilitator and interpreter.

Even with Simpson’s help, student Brian Campbell says everyone involved experienced culture shock. It took a couple of days for the villagers and students to warm up to one another, he explains. The children warmed more quickly.

“Especially when I took out a Carvers Frisbee,” adds Campbell.

The students tossed it around a bit, showing the children how it worked. After a few tosses, May thought a child had picked up on the technique. He threw it to the young boy, who stood there motionless while the Frisbee struck him in the head.

Moments later, the children were engaged in a game Westerners have played for decades. The Frisbee, Campbell says, became the focal point of their interaction with the children. It was such a hit that they played with it until it broke.

“I know that the next time I go, I’m going to take at least 100 Carvers Frisbees,” he adds.

The group learned far more than the minimal meaning of throwing plastic for entertainment. They also learned to work with foreign climate and topography. Heat and humidity made them sluggish and sick. The altitude and dense terrain challenged their conditioning.

Moore laughs at how they all assumed that, after living in Durango and being physically active, none would find the hike up to the natural spring so taxing, even when carrying supplies. But Campbell recalls the day the group had to haul 100-pound cement bags nearly 4 kilometers uphill. The bags were so heavy, it took two students at a time to carry it on a fashioned pole carrier. Each duo would carry it 200 paces, then switch with another duo. It took them two hours to reach the top.

Meanwhile, two village 13-year-olds passed them with gusto, Moore explains. The two boys – one barefoot, the other in flip-flops – had cut the cement bag in half. Each carried 50 pounds in a makeshift basket of bamboo. The two boys reached the spring in 30 minutes.

Campbell says there were several cultural lessons learned on the trip as well. The group once had to change its plans because of Lahu religious beliefs, which stipulate that all natural objects possess souls. When the group proposed merging water from two different sources, the Lahu village shaman would not allow it. Each source, he explained to the group, has a different spirit and therefore could not be mixed.

“The Lahu do everything they can to appease the spirits,” says Moore. “We had to honor that.”

The final lessons learned were inestimable, Campbell says. He and Moore say the entire group was touched in several ways, especially in realizing that although people may live differently, they are still equal. Group members also carry memories that are daily reminders of making life better for others.

“Since returning, I have not gone up to a water fountain without thinking about that walk the village residents were making before we got there,” says Moore. •