Published Monday, November 29, 2009
By Trudy Rubin, Inquirer Opinion Columnist

HERAT, Afghanistan - As the United States struggles to find ways to funnel aid money more effectively to Afghans, it should take note of the efforts of a Montgomery County businessman.

Aldo Magazzeni of Perkiomenville builds water systems for poor Afghan communities - for a fraction of what a big foreign contractor would charge.

A tall force of nature with wild graying hair and beard who looks at home among Afghan elders, Magazzeni takes time off from his industrial-fastener business, leaves his patient wife, Anna, to manage their farm, raises funds from schools and Rotary Clubs, and buys the materials for his projects. Poor villagers contribute their labor and host him, and he calls on local engineers for advice.

Voilà! For $20,000 to $25,000, up to 10,000 families gain access to clean drinking water in a project for which a contractor would charge at least $200,000. It may not be possible to replicate Magazzeni, who is willing to sacrifice his personal life to help others. But his work shows how much further aid money can go if local people help design and build projects meant to better their lives.

Magazzeni had done volunteer work in Haiti and was an admirer of Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who has set up hospitals in Haiti, Rwanda, and elsewhere. Farmer's motto, Magazzeni says, is "I'll teach people how to care for each other. No huge programs. Keep it simple, and people will help themselves."

Magazzeni set out for Kabul in 2004 because of the Iraq war. "I wanted to work for peace in a country left behind in a previous war," he said. He also wanted to climb Mir Samir, the peak described by Eric Newby in his book A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Much like Greg Mortenson of Three Cups of Tea fame, Magazzeni reached the summit, but he met Panshiri villagers who took him in.

The locals asked for his help in bringing clean water to their village. They were walking 500 meters down to the Panshir River for their water.

Magazzeni consulted with a local Afghan engineer, went home, sold an antique BMW for $8,000, and returned to the village. Pretty soon, thanks to a holding canal, two storage tanks, a small electric generator, and pump, a water system was born. It wasn't long before Magazzeni was committed to six more villages, then 18, creating gravity systems that piped water down to village storage facilities. Ultimately, he found a local Afghan foundation to help maintain the systems.

Through new Afghan friends, he met Suraya Pakzad, an activist who runs programs and shelters for women in Herat, a city near the Iranian border that is safer than points to the south and east. Magazzeni and Pakzad soon joined forces, combining her work with women, with his zeal to bring clean water to women and children.

"In Herat, for a lot less money I could benefit so many people," Magazzeni says. He raised more money to connect a women's and men's jail to a main water pipeline. "We dug 2,400 meters [11/2 miles] of ditches, me and 25 prisoners watched by guards with rifles," he recalls.

What he soon discovered was that big donor agencies like USAID will spend huge amounts to install main lines, but poor communities may never get connected. So he decided to "do things big organizations don't want to do."

He linked up with the Herat water department and engineer Numatullah (Afghans often use one name), a neat, compact man who has become his faithful partner. "I was amazed he wanted to pay for it himself to help poor people," Numatullah told me. "I am very happy to work with him." Together they have completed four projects, bringing water access to more than 25,000 families, for less than $70,000. Local communities provided the labor.

I drove with Magazzeni down the dusty, unpaved alleys of Shalbafant, a poor working-class district of Herat, where families in walled mud-brick homes can now tap into Magazzeni's pipelines. Numatullah said he preferred working with Magazzeni to working with local nongovernmental organizations. "Often a lot of local NGOs look to make money for themselves," he said. "With Aldo we use the last cent, so we don't lose any money."

The Afghan engineer also pointed out that international aid workers come with tanks and soldiers for security protection, and never enter these poor alleys. "Masses of people get eliminated from benefits because they don't fit into the structure," he said. Those are the people that Magazzeni wants to serve.

I witnessed the gratitude of the community when I attended a ceremony at the local mosque in honor of Magazzeni's fourth project, complete with a ribbon-cutting over a spigot. Local elders gathered in the mosque along with Herat's deputy governor and two women: me and Pakzad. One community youth said: "Children and women suffered from lack of water in these poor places." Magazzeni, tall and fair in a mosque full of turbans, said: "When people come together and help each other, they can fix problems that are making people sick."

What struck me about the ceremony was how fond the local elders were of Magazzeni; he clearly had become part of the community. "What I really cared about," he told me later, "was how many I helped and how many would walk away with a more open approach to others in the world."

Magazzeni is working with students and faculty at Pennsylvania State University and Burlington County Community College to develop courses where students can work on Afghan water projects. Penn State students raised $7,000 to partner with an Afghan village. You can find out more about his projects at www.travelingmercies.org.

As the United States struggles to revise an aid system dependent on big private contractors, there are clear lessons to be learned here. Afghans need to see that their lives can be made better in the near term. Small projects with low overhead that involve local people in their creation may produce a greater impact than something big and grand.

Contact Trudy Rubin at trubin@phillynews.com.
This article can be found online here.