He has been hit by an assassin鈥檚 bullet and has grappled with one of the world鈥檚 largest bats. Ian Thorpe鈥榮 student days in the 1980s also included a stint as adviser to the president of me Comoros islands. Now his mission is safe drinking water for Africa. Reviving an ancient pumping technology, he reckons he can give a child a lifetime鈥檚 supply of clean water for less than die price of a bottle of Perrier. He spoke to Fred Pearce after his design won this year鈥檚 St Andrews prize.
Tell me about being an environmental adviser to the president of the Comoros islands; and how did you get shot at?
It was surreal, especially for a student. The president, Ahmed Abdallah Abderemane, gave me his chauffeur-driven car to go to the remote villages, and I was the first white person the villagers had ever seen. My task was to find a long-lost bat. The chauffeur would get out of the car and salute me as I went off into the rainforest armed with the only words in Comorean that I knew: 鈥淚鈥檓 looking for fruit bats.鈥�
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I was in the presidential palace when the president was assassinated in 1989. A group of mercenaries had a deal to take a percentage from fuel revenues, but the president had stopped paying them. It was late at night and I overheard an argument and a scuffle involving the presidential guard, followed by gunfire. As I made a run for it through the palace grounds, I was shot at and took a bullet in the hip.
What brought you to Africa for the first time?
I first went to Africa as an 18-year-old gap-year student. I taught in a rural school in eastern Zimbabwe, where they made me head of science and maths. My department was a cardboard box containing a few materials and a couple of books, the classroom was an area under a fig tree, and I ate maize porridge for almost every meal.
The water supply for the village was an open well a couple of miles away. One day, a snake fell into the well, died and decomposed. As a result there was a dysentery outbreak, and two of the children I was teaching died. It had a real impact on me.
Back in the UK doing a degree in environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia, I researched different technologies for providing clean water. In 1991, after my studies, I returned to Zimbabwe to carry on teaching and to try and put some of these ideas into practice. Working with two other teachers, Tendai Mawunga and Amos Chitungo, I set up Pump Aid and we started experimenting with different water pump designs.
How did you come to settle on an ancient design?
It鈥檚 called the elephant pump and it is based on a water-lifting device used in China 2000 years ago, in which water is drawn up through a pipe by plastic washers knotted to a loop of rope. It uses a bicycle system to lift the water from the well, though you can also fit a hand-crank or a small wind turbine, or even a solar panel.
What are the advantages of an elephant pump, and how did it get the name?
One of the women working the pump invented the name. She said that the spillway of the pump looked like an elephant鈥檚 trunk. And when people stand on either side to operate it, from above it looks like an elephant鈥檚 ears.
The pump is a community enterprise: local people contribute bricks, help with the digging and do all the maintenance. When the rope starts to fray, it can be replaced with any rope. Most villages have some, or they can use tree-bark twine, which they make themselves. The washers are critical. The Chinese used discs made of leather. We hit on washers made from waste plastic. We train people to take an existing washer and press it into wet clay to make a mould. Then they just melt any waste plastic in a tin can, pour the liquid into the mould, and they鈥檝e got another washer.
When did the charity begin to take off?
Pump Aid got serious after 1996, when we installed a hundred pumps. We started at the school where I had first been a teacher, St Matthias school, near the border with Mozambique. So far we have installed 1200 pumps in over 200 villages in eastern Zimbabwe. There are some places where the water tables are too deep, but we reckon 70 per cent of rural Zimbabwe and wide areas of the rest of Africa could benefit.
Why not use a conventional pump like other aid organisations?
Conventional piston pumps installed across Africa cost between $3000 and $8000 each, including drilling and installation. They cost a lot to maintain and use materials you have to buy from a shop. As a result, two-thirds of them are out of order. Our pump produces just as much water, but it is simpler, more robust, costs only $300 and is virtually free to repair with village materials. Nearly all of our pumps remain in use.
In what ways have you seen the pumps benefit people?
Diarrhoea results in a huge number of children missing school. But absences drop right off when the pumps are installed. And the pump really changes girls鈥� lives. In Zimbabwe most girls have to collect water in the morning before going to school. If they have to go a long way, they are often late for school. They may get beaten by the teachers for being late. And if the teachers want water during the day they send a girl to get it, so they miss more of their lessons. Having water on site means those girls have an equal chance of education.
鈥淎 child dies every 15 seconds from unsafe water. It鈥檚 like 15 jumbo jets full of children crashing every day鈥�
What would you say is the potential for this technology?
A billion people around the world don鈥檛 have clean water. A child dies every 15 seconds from illnesses caused by unsafe water, most of them in Africa. It鈥檚 like 15 jumbo jets full of children crashing every day. And yet a child can have clean drinking water for the rest of their life from an elephant pump for about one dollar.
Twenty-one African countries have invited us to do pump trials. We also want corporate sponsors, such as mineral water companies. A penny on the price of a bottle of water would provide clean water from an elephant pump for one child for a year. A UK water cooler company, AquAid, is donating 拢20 for every water cooler it installs. And the company鈥檚 sales have gone up thanks to the association with Pump Aid.
How did your strange relationship with the Comoros islands come about?
During my gap year, I wanted to go to the Seychelles, but I only got as far as the Comoros islands because I ran out of money. I stayed with fishermen while I was there, which was an amazing experience. But when I left, I felt guilty that I knew nothing about the country or its culture. So at university, as well as researching water pumps, I found out about the Comoros.
There is a species of bat endemic to that region, which was discovered by the British explorer David Livingstone. It is now called the Livingstone鈥檚 fruit bat (Pteropus livingstonii) and is one of the largest flying mammals in the world, with one specimen having a wingspan of more than 2 metres. But the species is endangered by deforestation, and at the time it had not been recorded for 11 years. So I got some money to lead an expedition to look for it.
The president of the Comoros islands was keen on my work, which is why he made me an adviser. The zoologist Gerald Durrell, who was at Jersey Zoo on the Channel Islands, sponsored me to capture some fruit bats for breeding.
How did you eventually find one of these giant bats?
We trekked for six weeks in the rainforest before one evening we found this huge animal gliding like a pterodactyl in the crater of an extinct volcano. It was black, the size of a cat, with huge wings and Mickey Mouse ears. On the first expedition I fell from a tree in the rainforest grappling with one of these bats. So we put up nets in the canopy, and that worked. Now a captive breeding programme is under way.
Any other scrapes?
I was shot again while a friend and I were camping in Mozambique. We were held at gunpoint by Renamo guerrillas. We made a run for it, and I got a bullet in the ankle before hiding in the bush and crawling back across the border. I have also been spat in the eye by a Mozambican spitting cobra. It would have blinded me had my eyes not been washed out with milk straight away.
You are a fluent Shona speaker and well integrated into Shona society. What do you make of the spiritual and cultural life that you see?
Even now in the villages, people can tell you stories going back 30 generations. But there is increasing westernisation. People buy small black-and-white TVs and sit around glued to them. They don鈥檛 tell the stories so much any more, and a lot of traditional knowledge about the environment and plants will be gone within a generation if it鈥檚 not recorded now.
I worked for some time with a former paramount chief of the Shona, Abisha Mutasa, to record their culture. He wanted to build a library of Shona knowledge. Just before he died he gave me the task, which is one reason why I keep going back to the villages.
Often people do things that to an outsider may seem totally irrational. But the more people I meet around the world, the more I realise that everyone operates rationally within their understanding of the world. Especially in the west, we have to break down our arrogance and try to understand this.
Does the political situation in Zimbabwe make it more difficult for you to work there today?
Many NGOs have pulled out because of interference, but we at Pump Aid feel secure. We try to avoid politicisation. We make clear that we assist people on the basis of need and nothing else. There is this battle between the international community and Zimbabwe, and the people who are suffering are the people at the grass roots. There is a Shona proverb: 鈥淲here elephants fight, the grass dies.鈥�
