A dirty creek and its consequences

As promised, this post will continue to develop on one the issues that was brought up over the course of the bicycle tour I took last weekend. During the tour, we rode over a small creek that ran through two neighborhoods in Dar. The creek was squalid. There is no other way to describe it. The smell had wafted down the path towards us (a fragrant mix of decomposing things and human waste), and you could smell the creek far before you could see it. Unsurprisingly, the creek looked as disgusting as it smelled. It was a dark brown color, and the fetid water hardly flowed downstream as a result of all the trash: it was prime real estate for mosquitos that spread diseases like malaria (which kills around one child per second worldwide) and dengue fever. Since it was winter, the water level was relatively low, but apparently during the rainy season the water rises high enough to flood the houses on both side of the creek. Toilet holes mix with wells (which are close enough to each other to begin with that it would not surprise me if ‘mixing’ occurred before the rains begin) and the river, and houses flood as well. In short, the creek causes problems for the communities living next to it. It is a prime example of how environmental issues impact social ones. And, if our guide is to be believed much of this could be changed if the initiative was taken to develop community consensus about the state of the creek.

Unfortunately, that sounds easier than it is. Creeks flow from somewhere, and the state of the creek was not just a consequence of the communities living alongside it at the juncture I saw, but also up-creek, and presumably up-river as well. It is a prime example of what has become known as the tragedy of the commons – if a common resource is available to everyone, nobody has the incentive to do upkeep on that resource, and eventually the resource is destroyed. If the water was clean it could be used not only for drinking water, but it would also prevent the growth of mosquito colonies that grow in standing water. Additionally, during the rainy reason, flooding would not spread squalid water across the communities surrounding the creek, and kids wouldn’t be stuck playing near and in such a gross body of water.

However, because of the scale of the problem it presents some difficulty. It is far easier to give out mosquito nets to families than to stop mosquitos from breeding, but the latter strategy is far more effective. While mosquito nets are a great idea, and effective, if used correctly, there are some problems with their implementation. First, most of the nets that are distributed are too small, according to our guide. Typically families sleep together on one bed, and the nets that are given out are not large enough to cover the whole area, so families simply do not use them.

Second, the mosquito nets are by-in-large not made in Africa. Health issues like malaria are often seen in isolation from development, but they are intimately tied together. If you can promote development by employing workers to make mosquito nets, you can raise standards of living in the communities hit hardest by malaria and empower and educate the people in those communities to further prevent the spread of malaria. This also would reduce the cost of manufacturing and distributing the nets, following the initial investment in the required machinery and worker education. It’s easy to give Africans mosquito nets, but the only effect of the gift is that Africans now have mosquito nets. Nothing has been done to change the power-relations surrounding those nets. The truth of it is that there are economic interests at stake in the production and distribution of these nets: aid organizations, and their manufacturing partners specifically, have a vested interest in the way nets are distributed now.

Finally, mosquito nets don’t deal with the root of the problem (malarial mosquitos). If you can combat malarial mosquitos by cleaning squalid water and spraying in those areas where they are concentrated you are truly dealing with the root of the problem, instead of simply using a band-aid. The band-aid may always be necessary, but you can’t be under a mosquito net all the time. Indeed, at dusk, when mosquitos are out in numbers, nobody is under a mosquito net. Nets do help diminish mosquito populations, because they have less to feed on, but they are far from the solution to malaria. In short, it’s important to look at health and development issues from an interdisciplinary perspective if we are to hope to make forward progress in both fields simultaneously.