My Summer Internship

Rajasthan in the summer time....That sounds like a great idea. After all it's a "dry heat" right? Well let me be the first to tell you. 110 degrees is hot, very hot. You can be dry and hot or wet and hot, but it is just HOT.

So obviously my body is still adjusting to both the heat and the jet lag. I just arrived in Jaipur where I'm going to be based for 3 months for my summer internship. I'm actually really excited to be here (even with the heat) both because I'm ecstatic to be back in India, and because I'm working on a really interesting water project for an innovative non-profit called Wello.

So imagine those beautiful pictures from National Geographic of women gracefully carrying pots of water on their head. Now imagine that you have to walk 3 miles in the scorching heat and it can take up to 4 hours of your day just to collect and carry 5 gallons of water back to your home. Not so picturesque.

In their words:

"Wello is a a non-profit organization that manufactures and distributes an innovative water transport tool called the WaterWheel. The WaterWheel is designed to greatly reduce the burden of collecting water in regions that have limited access to sources of clean water by allowing 20 gallons of water to be rolled along the ground, effectively reducing the weight by 80%."

To see a project they did in South Africa check out www.hippowater.org

Wello has the potential of having a big impact in Rajasthan, one of the poorest states in India, where water is already scarce and droughts are becoming the norm. So over the next 3 months I'll be learning about the issues and challenges surrounding water collection in a variety of villages around the state and conducting a feasibility study to gauge the impact Wello could have.

I'm looking forward to talking to lots of people and learning as much as possible. I'll keep you updated on where I go and what I learn, as well as the heat index. So stay tuned...

Regards from Rajasthan

K