Students in Service Without Borders experienced the complexity of engineering agricultural solutions in a remote village in the mountains of Nepal, where ease of access to materials takes months of planning. Even getting to the site itself was a feat.
After months of planning, four students from the College of Engineering and two advisors from the College of Natural Resources and Environment set off in May on a 17-plus hour journey across the globe where they then took four planes and a 3-mile hike to reach their destination: the village of Dhumba. They were accompanied by Lynn Resler, professor in the Department of Geography, and Tom Hammett, professor in the Department of Sustainable Materials, who also incorporated a Nepal trip into Service Without Borders 10 years ago.
Dhumba has seen many changes over the years, from earthquakes and severe weather that fundamentally changed village life to improvements in infrastructure. For the last 10 years, students and faculty in Service Without Borders have been aiding the village in building and improving their irrigation channels, taking them from hand-dug channels where water retention was poor to cement channels where the water flows more freely and is retained successfully.
“This work is important because the water is not easily accessible to communities lower down in the area. Directing water to these places while maintaining the natural flow helps irrigate crops, which is a large part of the villagers’ income,” said Maggie Scarborough, a junior majoring in biological systems engineering.
Working in the village, one of the first challenges students faced was the location of the channel. The topography of the village does not always allow for a channel to be dug on flat ground. Large sections of infrastructure have to be built on the side of steep hills where the natural gravitational pull can be used to bring water down from higher up in the mountains. Trees and other vegetation are also obstacles to maneuver and something students had to take into consideration for this project.
“The terrain here is rugged. We’re up at 11,000 feet in one of the most rugged and deep river valleys in the world, so just getting people and materials here to complete the work is a challenge,” said Nate Foley, a junior in biological systems engineering. “On top of that, we were working on the side of a steep cliff. Last year, we were more on a plateau, but as we moved closer to the water source and higher up into the mountains, the rugged terrain made getting materials to the top difficult. One way we adapted was to be strategic about where materials were placed as we were preparing to dig the channel, along with creating new paths that while longer, were safer to navigate than a steep walk up.”
