By Kylie and Morgan Greenwald

For teenagers, summertime gives students a much-needed break from the rigors of school. For us, Morgan and Kylie, we chose to use our time off to distribute water filters in Asia. This month, we traveled to Thailand and Myanmar to help both villages and schools.

In December of 2017, we traveled to Thailand for the first time. On this trip, we distributed filters to Good Morning School and made note of the water situation in Mae Sot, Thailand. Mae Sot is a district sharing a border with Myanmar and is populated by many Burmese migrants. Because Burmese migrant children are not allowed to attend Thai schools, migrant schools, such as Good Morning, have been constructed in this border town. For our second trip, we returned with more water filters to help villages and schools we had made note of before.

Thailand has two seasons: the rainy season and non-rainy season. Due to the abundance of rainfall, many of the villages and schools we visited had catchment systems. Although these contraptions gathered rainwater, this water would have to be filtered in order to become safe to drink. For drinking, many of these communities trekked to the nearest store to buy bottled water. Therefore, the distribution of the water filters in these communities was very beneficial, given the amount of rain and the haul needed to buy bottled water.

One of the villages we visited in Thailand was located in the Phop Phra district. As mentioned above, Thailand has an abundance of rainfall. While driving to this village, we reached a bump in the road, literally. The rain had made the dirt path ahead muddy and extremely bumpy. Despite the driver’s skills, the van could not go on. What next? It was time to put on our walking shoes! The walk was quite far, we are guessing at least a mile. Additionally, we hadn’t even walked the entire way because the car had driven us partially already! While walking, we held on to one another to avoid falling because the mud was slippery. Finally, we reached the village. This walk had shown us how difficult it must be to have to go fetch bottled water during the rainy season.

Additionally, in Thailand, we visited a garbage dump community, where its members live off of the waste of others. There are water sources nearby, including a river and lakes. The river water is used for cooking and washing, but not drinking, because it is most likely chemically contaminated due to the waste. Additionally, the lakes are unused because the quality of the water is unknown. Therefore, the most important and pure water source in this community is the groundwater. As Waterbearers, we hope to bring drinking water to these people by writing a proposal to construct wells with filtration systems.

Now on to our first trip to Myanmar, what an adventure! We began the day by going through immigration. Once in Myanmar, we drove to our first location: a monastery school. Afterward, we delivered water filters to several other monastery schools nearby. Often times, these schools had water wells for both cooking and bathing, but not drinking. By donating our filters, we gave these schools the opportunity to drink their water from the wells.

To conclude, our trip to Thailand and Myanmar was simultaneously gratifying and eye-opening. The pure joy on the faces of those who we distributed water filters to made the trip feel fulfilling. However, on the other hand, seeing the challenges faced by the people we encountered made us think about our everyday lives and how we take so much for granted. Lastly, our water distribution in Thailand and Myanmar would not have been possible without our Waterbearer on the ground, Ruby. She helped us plan out where we were going to distribute our filters and served as our translator.