Paul Sagot: "We're going to hear about Saniforce!"

Your mission was decided in a few hours and you left in three days. Tell us about it.

Paul Sagot: The mission was planned, but with another Veoliaforce volunteer who ultimately couldn’t free themselves up. When the team from the Foundation called me to ask if I could leave the day after next, I didn’t even know where Uganda was on a map! But I was able to grab my bag and go. Within Veolia Water, my department's organization was able to compensate for my absence and, for some areas, we explained to our clients that some deadlines would be pushed back. They were understanding. And at the management level, Guillaume Thibault, my territorial director, gave me his consent after ensuring the continuity of the department's missions.

What was the context of the mission?

PS: I went on a sanitation issue in a refugee camp in the West of Uganda. Having never experienced this situation, I was expecting to sleep in a tin shack, similar to what you might see in the media. But in Kyangwali where we were, tens of thousands of people have settled, sometimes for several years. A life has been built around these gradually established habitats. We, on the other hand, were lodged in a standard hotel near the camp from where we left each morning to go to the site.

Your mission was to deploy the Saniforce...

PS: ...except that it didn't arrive until several days after us! So we prepared the ground for its deployment, checked the facilities, and mobilized the team, made up of refugees who had become volunteers with the Uganda Red Cross. There was a real challenge in mobilizing these people while waiting for the Saniforce, dealing with the difficulty of multiculturalism: some spoke French, English, others local languages. We adapted in order to keep the collective energy and enthusiasm for deploying a new tool intact.

And when the Saniforce arrived?

PS: The solution is impressive! It's "plug-and-play", with of course improvements to be made to perfect the device, but there's a real opportunity there. We could really sense the interest of the humanitarian workers on the subject: many came to visit the site.

You were on the ground with two other experts. How did you divide the tasks?

PS: Romain Verchère, a permanent member of the Foundation in charge of the innovation program, organized the deployment of the Saniforce with all the local partners. Gabriel David, a Brazilian academic writing a thesis on the Saniforce, focused on data collection, particularly analyzing the heating times of the pasteurizer. On my part, I worked on all the stages of treatment to optimize certain aspects and validate their start-up. Every day, we face operational issues which, in the end, are also opportunities. They have allowed us to train, during the mission, employees of the Ugandan Red Cross in solving common problems. The most difficult part is working in a context where you have nothing. At the slightest missing bolt, you have to find solutions either to get supplies several hours travel away, or to circumvent the problem. In short, it involves a lot of resourcefulness, but that suits me well.

How do you handle the return from such a mission?

PS: On a development project for a new solution like the Saniforce, it's hard to lose interest in the subject once you're back. On site, it was already very frustrating, every evening, to leave the site when we were seeing progress day by day, even hour by hour. Back home, I went straight back on call at work. But I'm still very tuned in to what's being done with the Ugandan Red Cross in Kyangwali. Because I'm sure of it: we're going to hear more about the Saniforce!