Water-use interviews and observations
Interviews were conducted with community members to
characterize water abstractions in the watershed and quantify
total village water use. Total village water use was used to assess
appropriate pumping rates that were estimated in the groundwater
flow model. Initially, unstructured interviews of water-use
behavior were conducted during casual conversations while
attending celebrations and friendly visits, as recommended by
Devereux and Hoddinott (1993). Through these interviews,
personal village observations, and supporting published literature,
it was established that water was mainly extracted from the 64
hand-dug wells, by adult women (ages 15e50), for domestic and
small-scale agriculturally productive activities such as gardening
and raising livestock. Water from the wetland was primarily
a drinking water source for livestock, but occasionally the women
would use it for washing clothes. This information, along with
suggestions from USPC female staff, was then used to create
a structured interview to quantify the amount of water an adult
woman extracted on a daily basis throughout the changing
seasons. The interview responses were averaged and normalized
by the number of family members that depended on each woman
for water to estimate the average volume of water used per capita
throughout the year. The amount of water used per capita was
then multiplied by the village population to calculate the village
total.