An Insight to Kathleen Estrella: The Ways of the Waterways in Sierra Leone

From Thursday through Friday, my group and have been developing our ideas for our prototype for the Math-Chemistry portion of our project. However, before we can create our prototype ideas we first had to research numerous cultural, economic and political factors of Sierra Leone and how that could potentially affect our prototype and vice versa.

My group and I were shocked at some of the staggering facts we found about the water factors and water supply of Sierra Leone. Today there are over six million people residing in Sierra Leone and nearly half of the population has access to safe water. Only 54% of the people in Sierra have access to potable drinking water, 46% still depend on local streams, ponds and swamps for water (even though many harmful pathogens are dumped into the streams/rivers as well as many harmful and toxic metals). It seemed almost difficult for all of the information o sink in, because we found that many Sierra Leoneans practically live hand in hand with their own waste and excrements due to the lack of water availability and waste management. In addition, because of the 10 year civil war in Sierra Leone many wells were destroyed contributing to the scarce amount of water accessibility.

Based on the information we were finding my group narrowed down our options on what type of water desalination device we would build. We thought that a individual portable water distillation device would be most suiting. We knew that community water supply contributes to injuries because they’ve been linked to vertebral damage, anemia and malnutrition because of the energy it took in order to transport water from a local stream their homes. An individualized water system would provide families with a more efficient and less strenuous method of getting water.

Below is a map of the major rivers in Sierra Leone. As you can see there are numerous rivers that run throughout the entire country, from east to west then north to south. With this in mind, my group and I thought it would be wise to utilize these rivers for our prototype.