Fresh water tanker (credit: Preeti Singh)

On a stiflingly hot day at the end of May, the tour company’s blissfully air-conditioned Suzuki SUV slowed down to a stop along a dirt road leading to our destination, a water-side resort on the coast of Kerala, near the southern tip of India.  What could be the trouble?  Broken down car, livestock lingering in the road, plain old traffic?

It was a traffic jam, but one that consisted of a shiny TATA tanker truck parked in the narrow lane, dozens and dozens of plastic buckets and curved steel pots of all sizes, and people who seemed to be racing against time to make sure every one of those containers in the road was filled with fresh water.

I’d spent the previous few days marveling at the amount of water everywhere I looked in Kerala, from the extensive backwaters on which the tourist houseboats motored toward evening thunderstorms that wet the landscape but provided no escape from the humidity.

I had seen a pair of women doing laundry on the stone steps that occasionally cut the canal wall down to the water’s edge, the stones convenient for rubbing the soap deeply into the clothes and the water for rinsing afterward.

I’d seen an elderly man bathing on another set of canal steps once the sun started to set and it no longer seemed so pointless to take a chance on cleanliness.

I myself had found huge bottles of chilled, filtered water ubiquitous in roadside shops and restaurants.

But to see people scrambling for water?

Containers for water (credit: Preeti Singh)

Although I had a million questions—Why wasn’t there infrastructure for tap water? How often did the truck come? How much did this cost them? What did they do if they ran out?—I waited, silently watching until the road cleared, to keep forging ahead to the resort that didn’t lack for a single amenity from a swimming pool to hot showers.

But this nagged at me. Later that night, I Googled safe drinking water in Kerala and learned that although this state gets three times more rainfall than the rest of India, topography allows 40 percent of it to flow into the sea. Growing population pressure means the remaining amount of water is insufficient to meet people’s needs.

But through World Bank funding to the state government over the last many years, communities were to devise and manage their own water supply schemes. More than 3,000 of these projects were reported as of 2008.

I can now hope that the seemingly desperate scene I encountered was actually a home-grown solution to provide safe drinking water in the community. And I hope it wasn’t the symptom of a terrible natural resource and infrastructure crisis driving the poor to suffer unimaginable illness and thirst.

The only certainty I do have is that staying in my air-conditioned cocoon didn’t, and of course couldn’t, yield the answers to my lingering questions.

Rosa, Before (credit: Dominic Chavez)

I have traveled around the developing world since I was barely out of my teens. I’ve been in more places forgotten than remembered. But people often stay with me. Rosa does.

I met her last fall in a rundown quarter of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She was 16, with black unruly hair that ran in all directions, and she wore a pout –- partly because a man I was writing about was telling her how disappointed she had made him. The man, Nasir al-Amin, had been spending his vacations for the past five years helping put children through school in Addis. I am in the process of writing a book on how Americans are trying to help children in Africa, and Nasir is a key person in the book.

For Nasir, Rosa was special. He had known her for four years. She had lost both her parents to AIDS. And Nasir was putting Rosa through school, along with 57 other Ethiopian kids. But the other 57 were doing well in school; Rosa was not. She had dropped out of a photography school, and for two days last fall Nasir tried to get her back on track.

Rosa had health problems — an irregular heart beat, and depression, it seemed — and Nasir gave her money to see a doctor and enroll in school. But after seeing her in late September, Rosa never showed for a meeting to give him receipts and a report on how it went. For several months afterward, Nasir thought all was lost. He sent out emissaries to find her, but he heard nothing. Nasir feared she had turned to sex work.

Six months later, I returned to Addis, and went looking for Rosa.

I called a social worker to ask for help. He said he would call around. A few days later, I showed up at his office. An acquaintance of his had found Rosa’s phone number, and had talked to her. Even better, she had agreed to meet me in a few days. But I didn’t have a few days –- I had to meet her that morning. I was flying back to Washington the next day. The social worker said he couldn’t help me right away. I pressed him. He left to speak with his boss; he received permission to go with me.

Rosa had moved to a nearby slum. But when we arrived, she wasn’t there. The social worker called her, and she promised to come immediately. Five minutes passed, and then she called out our names. We rounded a corner, and there was Rosa, older somehow, her hair shorn, bigger, much bigger. I approached and it was obvious: Rosa was pregnant.

She took us to her sister’s house — her sister was a waif, Rosa 20 days from delivery. Her stories poured out. Just the day after we had seen her in the fall, a doctor told her she was pregnant. A day later, her uncle had beat her for going out with boys, beat her so bad that her blood ran down her back and chest. Then the uncle took scissors to her beautiful hair and cut huge clumps indiscriminately. Rosa retreated to her room, and shaved her head. The next morning, her uncle kicked her out of the house with nothing. Rosa moved in with her boyfriend’s family’s home, where she remained still. But her problems hadn’t ended. Her heart was giving her trouble –- racing one minute, causing her to gulp for air another. Two doctors had told her in the past few days that she was in grave danger now, that giving birth put her and her baby at risk.

I sat across from her, wondering what would become of her. She would have a baby in days. She would be caring for her baby, she wouldn’t be going to school. Sixteen-year-old Rosa was a memory. I went looking for her, but she was lost.

Farmer and children (credit: Bee Wuethrich)

It is the rainy season, and there is no rain. We take the road toward Monkey Bay, and pass a pick-up truck, people wave wildly. The driver stops the car; it is Justice and Eddie who have jumped out of the pick-up, and who run toward us. “Forgive me if I am tired today,” Justice says as he settles into the back seat. “I returned this morning at 3:00 a.m. from a funeral in my home village.” His cousin’s daughter, four years old, dead of malaria.

We drive. Through Mangochi, past the Hotchkiss gun, across the Shire River bridge, and wind up the hills west of Lake Malawi, long and dusty. Dustier still the dirt road that branches off, abandoning thoughts of trade with Mozambique to cross a plateau crisp with brown dry leaves and shriveled ears of maize.

It is nearing harvest time, the hungry season, when last year’s stores of food are running out, cash is short, and it is not yet time to bring in the harvest. It is like being on an ocean with nothing to drink, these endless fields of drought-plagued maize.

According to recent newspaper reports, people are beginning to eat seed processed for planting—fumigated with chemicals to protect it from insects. And they are selling the fertilizer purchased with vouchers to raise cash to buy food.

“I bought my mother a sack of maize for 2000 kwacha,” a man tells me. “It is a 100 percent increase in price.”

Then, look at this. The farmer leads us through his village, over rutted roads. Green in an ocean of brown whispering leaves. We see a field of maize taller and greener than the rest. An abundance of big cobs jutting off of each strong stalk. The farmer has planted a different seed than his neighbors, an improved drought resistant variety. He sells the seed in his village store to farmers who travel miles on foot or bicycle. Most farmers purchase it with vouchers issued by the government. It is known as “Champale” or poundable, the hard outer kernel lends itself to be ground into maize flour, and its yield is 30 percent higher than the local variety. As the farmer shows off his field, his family gathers, many of his 14 sons and daughters. They are smiling, his wife give us a thumbs up.

Demonstration plot (credit: Bee Wuethrich)

The seed farm that grows this improved seed sold 50,000 packets this past year—enough to feed an additional 150,000 people. They sold it through a network of 29 agro-dealers, spread out across a region that encompasses one million people.

One of those agro-dealers used his income to buy a car, so that he could distribute the seed to another three outlets. The route took him half a day and covered some 30 kilometers. Before the start of the growing season, he sold 2,000 sacks of seed.

“I know the people,” he says. “This area is where my home is. I want to assist. That is why I spend my money on fuel. In other areas there is drought. But in my area, because the farmers got the seeds early, they are going to survive.”

For now, success in Malawi’s green revolution is measured in survival.

Editor’s Note: This story was reported in March 2008.