SODIS Seminar

Many of our seminars at HAFF start with a time of devotions, after the opening prayer and perhaps a song. At this July seminar of Project Healthy Family for facilitators who offer seminars on health for their community as well as classes in literacy, one of the pastors in the group was asked to lead the devotions on a scripture of his choice.

Here Claude Souffrance, our community outreach coordinator for Project Healthy Family, is presenting material he received from a Medical Ambassadors seminar in Gonaives. recently. He is introducing the group to the SODIS process of purifying water in transparent bottles (www.sodis.ch). In this picture he is demonstrating how you know a bottle is transparent if you can see your fingers clearly. Bottles can then be set out in the sun for a specified number of hours depending on available sunlight, and all germs will be dead.

People really enjoy getting their turn to read out loud in a group session in Haiti, and started complaining this day when someone read too long. For many reading is not a very fluent process. Many people read under their breath or quietly while the leader reads aloud. There is so little written material available in Haiti that everyone is excited to be taking home their own SODIS booklet. They wished HAFF could make photo copies for everyone in their groups -- some 625 people.

This page features some electron microscopic pictures of germs -- called “meekwobes” in Kreyol. Early pages explain how microbes travel and multiply and ways to avoid them. Later pages tell how to use the SODIS method and how dirty the water can be and still be purified. Everyone is impressed when Claude talks about drinking SODIS water that had come out of a local river known to be contaminated.

What could be more handy than your own personal bottle of clean water to take far away from home to the garden each day? Everyone got very excited as Claude demonstrated how easy it was to put the small bottle you had purifying on your roof, right into your pocket. It really isn’t enough water to take for a whole day of sweaty work under the tropical sun but is more than many take -- and it is clean!