INNOVATION January-February 2017

The climate, too, was a challenge, “I had to get used to being constantly sweaty,” as was the fact that Li was “pretty much the only woman in an entire office of men. They were good but you could feel people trying to work it out in their minds: ‘ She’s an engineer.’” There were times, says Li, when working in Malawi wasn’t the most exciting, “due to the slower pace of the work, especially at the beginning of my placement.” In the first year, much of her time was supposed to be spent offering technical assistance and support with collecting data and using resources more efficiently, but she found that she first needed to help office staff improve their competence with computer programs such as Word and Excel. During her second year, however, things picked up, and she worked on collecting case studies and innovative approaches developed by water districts across the country. Her reports were then used to help develop a national framework for the operation and maintenance of a sustainable rural water system across the country. Since her return to BC and Tetra Tech in 2014 to work in solid waste management, Li continues to use the skills she learned in Malawi. “The experience has helped me work more closely with people from diverse backgrounds,” she says. “I’m a better facilitator, I think, and better at building empathy, which means I’m able to deliver a better product.” Developing Water Infrastructure for Agriculture, Ethiopia, 2002–2007 Doug Edwards, P.Eng., served as the in-country Canadian Field Director of a project called Water Harvesting and Institutional Strengthening Tigray (WHIST) in the Tigray region of Ethiopia from 2002 to 2007. Tigray is the most drought-prone region of a drought-prone country: a massive drought in 1984/1985 caused more than a million deaths across Ethiopia, most of them in Tigray. Funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (now Global Affairs Canada), WHIST was intended to ensure disaster of that magnitude never happened again. About 90 percent of the people of Tigray live on subsistence agriculture, and often their only food is a flatbread baked from

wheat, teff, or sorghum. With more water, they could plant a range of other crops that would improve their diet and also give them something to sell to improve their standard of living in other ways. “But the country simply lacked staff with the experience to design and build suitable, sustainable structures for water harvesting and irrigation,” Edwards says. “Our team of professional Canadians was involved in training local engineers, geoscientists, surveyors, and agronomists to identify areas that were suitable and sustainable for growing agricultural crops, and how to build small dams for water and rock weirs for diverting streams. We didn’t want to come in and build the projects for them, but rather give them the skills and experience they needed so they could do it themselves. Some had master’s-level degrees, but no practical experience. They were all really eager to learn.” Now working for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Kamloops, BC, Edwards is glad he had the experience he did in Africa, but does not necessarily recommend it for everyone. The poverty was a shock, as was the lack of hygiene and the fact that the Tigray people built their dams and weirs with their hands. “The women carried sacks of dirt and rocks on their backs,” he says. “It was an awesome experience—life- changing even—and it gave me a broader understanding of When Doug Edwards, P.Eng., worked in Ethiopia’s Tigray region to help residents access water for agriculture, under the former Canadian International Development Agency, the residents built the resulting dams and weirs by hand. P hoto , Doug Edwards, P.Eng.

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