"Women are close to water"

"Women are close to water." This is something that one of the communities said in our first week in Java. Everywhere we visited in Indonesia and East Timor, it was definitely women who had major responsibility for collecting it, carrying it, cleaning with it, and ensuring it was available.

As I struggled up a steep, muddy hill in Sukubumi, West Java during my first days, I could not imagine spending 6 months of every year making the same trip 3 times a day with a 40-litre jug of water in each hand. Yet the women of that village do. Throughout Java and East Timor, whenever we were in the country, we saw children and women doing this difficult, time-consuming work.

Sukubumi family

Community members in rural area near Yogyakarta; they've found a solution to water woes.

Bali, that tropical paradise of the Western imagination, with its well-watered lawns and infinity pools at luxury resorts beside the ocean, has the same water problem we encountered in Java.  The water from the taps is not safe to drink. As elsewhere in Indonesia, tourists are advised to brush their teeth with bottled water.

You can swim in this Bali infinity pool beside the ocean, just don't drink the water!

In Bali we met with Yuyusa, an Indonesian environmental engineer, who has turned her talents and energy towards water issues and ecology through BaliFokus, an NGO she helped found about 10 years ago; Balifokus is associated with our partner INFID. BaliFokus started with waste issues, but recently has worked with the urban poor to have them set up appropriate technology water points. They have had to rely on their own funding to make it happen. Each contributes toward the technology, with cash and in-kind donations. Yuyusa emphasized that part of Balifokus' work is training government's revolving staff.

Jess waits with me to meet Yuyusa of BaliFokus at Jimbaran beach.

It was immediately clear to our group arriving in East Timor that access to clean water, just as in Indonesia, depended on whether you could afford bottled water. As elsewhere, we were told not to drink the tap water.

We heard various things: In its 10 years in the country the United Nations has trucked in bottled water for its staff, rather than improving water infrastructure. Someone recalled seeing bottles full of water at the UN headquarters at Dili piled as high as the second storey of the building. We saw the empty plastic bottles everywhere: most notably piled up on pristine beaches with the other flotsam.

In this village, someone got creative with all the empties.

Whatever infrastructure may have been left by the Portuguese or Indonesians has not kept up with Dili's growing needs. As elsewhere, the poor cannot afford bottled water and will they boil whatever water is available before drinking. Or not boil it, depending on time and fuel. Not boiling leads to diarrhea, which affects children most.

We brought our own water bottles from Canada, but not the stove and fuel needed to boil the water!

Over breakfast at our hotel one morning, I spoke with Bob, who was working on a National Water Policy for East Timor, for Australian Aid. He comes to Dili every couple of months from his home in England. He specializes in water and sanitation in schools, and told me a horror story of some of the schools that had been built in the last 10 years with aid money. Fully piped bathrooms where there are no running water or sewage pipes to connect to. The same inappropriate, blind "development" disasters  that big dollar "development" projects seem to specialize in. So many needs, so much money, but the money doesn't meet the local needs. Later I hear of an NGO, Peace Dividend Trust, which is advocating to the UN about the ethical use of massive international funds in small countries in crisis. One of their positions is that contractors invest in local infrastructure and staff.

Breakfast room: you'll just have to imagine Bob the water expert sitting there.

I interviewed Keryn who works on water and sanitation in East Timor for Australian Aid (the equivalent of our CIDA). Their goal is to have a water source within 100 metres of every household in the rural areas. This is an ambitious goal, and admirable, as there are currently women and children walking 1 kilometre to get water in the rural areas. They are also working on the Dili water system, but she notes that urban water coverage is considered high because people have access to wells; 30 to 40% of households have taps. The treatment plants are considered good, but the pipes contaminate water as it is delivered.

"The challenge of course, is maintenance of whatever systems are built." There are limited budgets for maintenance. Aus Aid does lots of work engaging communities in maintaining systems and making them accessible to all (democratic management). Some of this work includes conflict resolution.

They have initiated a gender equity policy in all water maintenance training, because, as Keryn says, "Women are much quicker to fix water systems because it impacts their lives most quickly."I think of all the women and children hauling water up steep hills and say "Thank you," on their behalf. As we learned elsewhere, women's time is a major issue: the time spent carrying water is time that could be spent doing other things.

It's also clear to me on leaving this beautiful part of the world, with its abundant natural resources, including water, that changing North American attitudes to bottled water is just one small part of the necessary solution -- any  real change will have to be global and include improved public water access in places like Indonesia and East Timor.