We spent our mornings with Robert, Dulcie, and the boy's maticulously rinsing sand, rigorousiy washing rocks, and gently pouring cement into the molds. Naturally, Helen, Robert and Dulcie being brit's meant that we had mandatory tea breaks throughout the morning. I think the alligator farm next door was to keep us motivated and our tea breaks to a minimum. I can't believe Helen was washing sand willingly!

The big payoff was when we got to deliver the filters. Life is quite nice when your morning dispatch takes you either right through Angkor Wat or on a longboat into a floating village. In the bottom center photo you can see a filter that had already been delivered the week prior.

Producing these filters is a very straightforward construction process, they require virtually no maintenance, they cost only $45 per unit to make (but they sell to the village for $2 so it has intrinsic value), they can filter up to 80 litres of water a day, and the water tastes great!

I find it disturbing that worldwide over 1 billion people have contaminated drinking water when there is so many organizations throwing so much money at the problem. Bureaucratic red tape? Corruption? Negligence? Apathy? Take your pick. Whatever the problem, Trailblazers is on the front lines circumventing the bullshit and dealing directly with the problem. Ben, the operations manager, is a straightforward Aussie who's the type of guy who could easily be running a much larger organisation, but fortunately for us was running this one.