ahi maté (electricity dead)

As mentioned in my previous post, ahi maté is a great excuse to stop work and chat. You might care to complain about the government, the dodgy generators they’ve bought, or anything else that’s bothering you. The acronym of the current coalition government is AMP (Aliança com Maioria Parlamentar), but some wags claim that it really stands for Ahi Maté Permanenté.

This is a little unfair, as most parts of Dili only get ahi mate a couple of hours a day, which by developing country standards is pretty good. There is even a schedule, not that they seem to keep to it. In fact, we’re pretty lucky in Dili. In the foho (lit. hills, but shorthand for poor rural areas) you’d be lucky to get a grid connection at all. Even in other towns there’s usually only power for a few hours in the evening.

Most of East Timor’s electricity comes from huge oil-powered generators. Recently, these seem to have been breaking down more often. It’s also rumoured that there’s more ahi maté towards the end of the year because at that time the money for fuel is running out. The government is investing big-time in old Chinese heavy oil generators, but this is being criticised in some quarters as short-sighted. One of the country’s leading NGOs, La’o Hamutuk, writes persuasively on this issue, see here.

We have a generator in the WaterAid office, which means that it doesn’t all grind to a halt for us. However, the house I’m staying in is not so blessed, so I’m drafting this post by candlelight. It’s actually quite good to live without power for a while. It reminds you that this is the daily reality for the 1.4 billion people who don’t have access to electricity, and indeed for most people here in East Timor. If you’re interested in rural energy, I thoroughly recommend the work Practical Action are doing around the world, see here.

Udan boot (big rain)

(update: Ed from PDT has posted a good blog here which also touches on this. As the drainage issue is topical, I'll give it a proper treatment in a longer blog post in the future)

Udan boot (lit. big rain) and ahi maté (lit. electricity dead) are two of the best conversation starters here in East Timor. Both are excuses to stop work and chat. They’re also great excuses for a blog post, so here are a few thoughts on the former.

If udan boot happens, the done thing is to stand in your doorway, marvel at the great sheets of rain coming down, and laugh at the foolish people still attempting to get around. With udan boot it’s also obligatory for any boys under the age of 18 to take their shirts off and run around throwing water at each other. I’ll join in one of these days...

Often, the udan is boot enough that the streets flood pretty quickly. The above photo shows my street under water earlier today, and that’s nothing. You can bet that the people in the poorer and lower-lying parts of town are getting their houses flooded with all the crap from the street and drainage channels. That often includes raw sewage, just in case you were wondering.

There is a system of drainage channels in Dili compared to cities. It's not great, but better than what I've seen in other developing countries. Nevertheless, they often fail to handle udan boot properly and arguably need upgrading, which the government looks set to do. However, one might question whether investing millions in drainage for the capital city is pro-poor. After all, poverty in Dili is relatively low compared to rural areas, and a comparably high proportion of people in Dili have access to water and sanitation. Scarce budgets should potentially therefore be allocated to parts of the country where they are most needed.

On the other hand, the capital city is the economic centre. If things slow down or grind to a halt whenever it rains hard (which let’s face it is pretty often), GDP will take a hit and this will affect the whole country negatively. There are also clearly negative effects on people's health (mostly likely the poorest) in Dili from the regular floods - I wouldn't be surprised if a few people had died from water-borne diseases. Furthermore, stories of the city flooded with raw sewage will put tourists off, meaning their vital foreign currency will go elsewhere. Personally I’ll reserve judgement until I fully understand the pros and cons from talking to more people about it.

The frequency of udan boot has been increasing this week, leading me to believe that the monsoon could finally be starting. December is usually the wettest month, with the monsoon gearing up a bit earlier. However, this year things have been very strange, arguably due to the la niña effect. Uncharacteristically, there has been sporadic rain throughout the dry season, which means that the hillsides are still green – normally they would be red and dry by now. We have still enjoyed (suffered?) dry season temperatures however, which means 30-32C every day…

Making toilets desirable but also affordable for the poor

There is consensus in the sanitation sector that in countries with low access to sanitation, an absolute policy priority is creating demand for toilets. Giving people free or heavily subsidised toilets has repeatedly been shown to fail. This is because if people do not have genuine ownership of its construction, and if they are not adequately taught why sanitation is beneficial, they may not use their shiny new toilet (or may use it for something else, like a store-room…).

Many people argue persuasively that there is still place for some subsidies, particularly for the extreme poor, but that is a discussion for another day. So, creating demand is the key, and zero-subsidy approaches like Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS, see link here) have been proven to create demand effectively in Timor-Leste. But what about supply? It is no good creating lots of demand for sanitation if there is nowhere for people to buy the necessary parts. A lot of attention has therefore recently been given to the idea of ‘sanitation marketing’. This is the concept of treating sanitation as a product to be made attractive and sold by the private sector, meaning anyone who can make adequate parts. The approach involves creating demand through modern marketing techniques, but also ensuring a sustainable supply through support to small-scale sanitation masons.

The most basic pit latrines are essentially free, because most parts can be made from wood and stones which are both easily available. But these materials do not produce a good product which will last much longer than a year. Simple pit latrines can also smell. In short, whilst simple pit latrines are a crucial first step on the ‘sanitation ladder’ they are simply not desirable. People who aspire to modernity and development want a proper toilet which does not smell, but this requires more complex technology, which of course costs money.

Generally, people in Timor-Leste equate a ‘proper’ toilet with porcelain pour-flush pans imported from Indonesia. But these are expensive, and can cost up to $15 in Dili, which doesn’t include the cost of getting them to the rural areas where most people without sanitation live. This is simply unaffordable when half of the population here live on less than $1.25 a day. So how to bridge the gap between a wooden shack with a hole, and an imported porcelain pour-flush pan?

The answer is to build local sanitation markets; training masons to produce products which people want, at an affordable price. WaterAid has recently been investing ‘start-up’ capital in sanitation masons in Liquiça district, such as the roadside sanitation shop in the photo above. The people who run this shop have a furniture business alongside their sanitation shop. In their shop, they sell the moulded cement pans (as shown in the picture) for $5 each, and make a decent profit on each one which creates an incentive to do marketing across the community to get more people to buy them.

It’s early days, but they’ve sold 40 or so in the last few months, and Oxfam recently got Januario, the entrepreneur, to train some other masons in another district. I’ll write a longer post on Januario’s shop in a few weeks

Bagoroto gravity scheme – pipes and tanks

A few weeks ago, Dinesh, José and I went with some staff from WaterAid’s partner HTL to review a recently installed project in Bagaroto, which is in Maubara sub-district of Liquiça, about an hour west of Dili. The picture above is one of the houses in the village. It was an interesting experience for me, because whilst I have seen rural water systems before in Zambia, Madagascar and Nepal, this was the first time I had seen a ‘gravity scheme’.

Gravity schemes are common here as Timor is a very hilly country. It rains a lot in the mountains, and springs rise which can be capped and the water piped down to the villages. Timorese have actually been doing this for centuries with bamboo half-pipes, but they break easily and the water is open to contamination.

The main advantage of a modern gravity scheme (beyond secure pipes) is the big cement tank, which is normally placed uphill just outside the settlement. These tanks are quite large and ensure that, even if the spring doesn’t provide much water in the dry season, a decent supply of water can be saved in the tank for some time.It also ensures that there is good water pressure in the tapstands which are installed very close to the houses.


This system in Bagaroto was a great example of a gravity scheme. It had been installed a few months earlier by HTL, one of WaterAid’s local partner NGOs. Most International NGOs like WaterAid work with local partners as it’s the most sustainable way of doing things. The local NGOs are best-placed to understand their national context, and their organisational capacity is strengthened through long-term funding arrangements.

We were there to check up on the scheme a few months after installation, and fortunately everything was functioning properly. One thing that struck me was the distance which the pipes travel. It was a good 20 minute uphill trek following the pipe up the hillside to the source. As the hillsides are both steep and rain-sodden, landslides are common, see e.g. the picture above. This was an old landslide which was now very stable, and the partner had skilfully placed the pipes to skirt round the outside.

After a sweaty trek we finally arrived at the capped spring (see picture), and everything was in order. Whilst doing the trek up the hill, it struck me what back-breaking work carrying water up such hillsides must be. Before this scheme, the villagers had to trek 400m down the steep hill into the valley, and then back up again carrying containers of water.


I say ‘villagers’ but really I should have said ‘women’. Unfortunately, fetching water is seen as women’s work in most of the world. This is one key reason why water supply interventions are good for gender equality, freeing up women’s time to do other things, and meaning that girls aren’t kept away from school. The new tapstands in Bagoroto are all within 10m of the houses (see a photo of a tapstand at the top of this post), meaning that collecting water is no longer a chore.

The challenge now is making sure that the system is sustainable. East Timor has one of the worst failure rates of water schemes that I have ever encountered. Recent surveys by Plan and Oxfam suggest that up to two thirds of schemes fail within a year or two, which beats sub-Saharan Africa hands down. There are many reasons for this, which I’ll cover in another post. You can be sure however, that WaterAid Timor-Leste and its partners monitor their schemes carefully to pick up any issues as they arise.