Bamenda, Cameroon Africa. January 2011 (Cameroon News) – The Life and Water Development Group Cameroon (LWDGC) in tandem with overseas groups have developed a new product to remove bacteria, dirt etc from water making it safe for drinking.

The Life and Water Development Group Cameroon (LWDGC), with technical support from Engineers Without Borders of United States have developed a very simple machine and have also trained technicians on how to build and deploy bio sand filters.

The initiative that was flagged off in 2004 by Peter Njodzeka, LWDGC has put in place a group of technicians who are the brains behind the Bio sand filter that was set up in 2010 at Nkuv village.

Njodzeka the details of whose unique invention was mentioned with a lot of appreciation in the innovation that changed the world blogg of the World Watch Institute stating it to be an invention, “with a rather simple goal, I wanted to see the people in my area have clean water and we kept expanding. That’s how it started.”

Peter mentions that during his childhood in Nkuv, a remote village in Cameroon where he was born and brought up, nobody had access to uncontaminated potable water.

“The water available for drinking was also used by livestock and wildlife, as well as for the whole village’s washing,” he said.

He still remembers that in his village there used to be frequent deaths of children every year who suffered from diseases that they had caught by consuming the contaminated water and at any point in time a particular household would have a minimum of one ailing member who had been suffering from a disease of a similar variety in the previous six months.

“That’s how everyone lived when I was growing up. But when I left the village and came to Yaoundé, the capital city of Cameroon, I saw that things were so different from my village and I wanted to change things to make them better.”

In 2008, Thirst Relief International USA entered into a partnership deal with LWDGC with the aim of offering availability of potable water with a totally out of the ordinary technique.

They were planning to use the contaminants like mud and bacteria themselves to remove the contamination from the dirty water making it totally safe to drink.
They wanted to employ this method to get potable water to around six villages which also included Nkuv.

The project was also directed towards providing wells and latrines for 23 schools, as well as offering training on the importance of maintaining hygiene and carrying on sanitation.

LWDGC and Thirst Relief International are constructing bio sand filters and also training the houses in the village as to how they can use them.

They are also being educated on the maintenance of these filters and all these activities have resulted in not just improving the state of drinking water making it better for consumption but in the deal there has also been a tremendous improvement in the number of diseases that the villagers have been suffering from mostly because of the infected water that they previously used to drink.

Bio sand filters are constructed by employing the use of an iron mold. The base of the filter is typically made out of concrete and the center is composed of crushed rock which has been crushed into varied sizes and patterns.

The next two layers are composed of gravel and the third and final layer us made out of fine grained sand.

The three layers are pressed one above the other and then water is poured over these layers for a time frame of over three weeks.

This process ultimately results in the formation of a bio-layer which forms the top most layer of the filter.

Once that final layer has been put in place, the filter is estimated to eliminate almost 99 percent of the bacteria in water that is filtered through it and is all set to be used.

The drinking water steadily passes through these various layers filtering itself in the process through the numerous layers of bacteria that have been placed there through a natural process and the sand and the filter rate is around one liter per minute.

The water that trickles out from the pipe that is connected via the concrete from the bottom to the side top outlet of the filter is totally contamination free and ready to be used for drinking or for cooking.

If maintenance of the filter is done on a periodic basis a biosand filter can be used for up to a whole year without having to spend too much money or effort for maintenance.

When LWDGC has synergized with a community to distribute the filters, the first thing the organization does is to convene a whole set of workshops, which educates the people on the basic principles of hygiene and sanitation which comprises of the proper way to wash hands and other methods to be undertaken regularly to reduce the incidence of diseases.

Peter feels that these workshops are crucial because most of these people do not realize their importance.

“And then there is the task of convincing the community that dirt and bacteria are enough to actually clean their water. “No one believes us when we say that everything that will filter the water is already in the water,” continues Peter.

But the lesson learnt once is never forgotten and their lives undergo a radical makeover after that. The bio sand filters “really help the community” said Peter.
“When we finish working with a community they always tell us that they don’t have the sickness like before. It’s helping and saving the lives of people.”