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| Tim Journey |
William Kenneth Journey, always known as ‘Tim’ Journey, born Jackson Mississippi, USA on 2nd August 1943, died at his home in Richmond, Virginia on 27th December, 2025, aged 82.
Tim trained as a biologist but had such a good grounding in science that he could be equally at home in biology as in fluid dynamics, and he was given to dabbling in any matters that interested him.
He could speak a couple of languages. When he did his time as a Peace Corps Volunteer, he was sent to Guatemala where – for some time - he lodged with the Madam of the local bordello. He obviously had a soft spot for her – and she for him – but he maintained that the only advantage of this arrangement was easy access to beer. He worked for a period as a stevedore in Bremerhaven, extending his German learned at his university. On completion of his contract, he was found to have contracted TB, and was hospitalised where the sister-in-charge of his ward helped him overcome boredom by sourcing books for him to read. Here, he learned about the Celts in Europe (in German, no less).
It should be noted that Tim only worked for UNICEF for 20 months as a WatSan Programme Officer in Bangladesh, from January 1973 to August 1974. This was shortly after Bangladesh had become independent of Pakistan; a catastrophic flood which killed hundreds of thousands; and a famine where the body carts came round every morning in Dhaka to collect the bodies of those who had died in the night. As Tim was not suited to a career in a bureaucracy, he sought further technical stimulation undertaking some research through Wellington University in Canada while he was employed by IDRC (International Development and Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada).
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We next see him being appointed to a joint UNDP/World Bank Handpump Programme as their man in Bangladesh in early 1981 as a Handpump Specialist.
At this time, a simple calculation showed that there was absolutely no possibility of achieving universal coverage of safe drinking water in rural Bangladesh by any date, let alone the date of 1990 being proposed by the United Nations. The technology being used did not match the needs so I had cobbled together a simple direct action handpump which was a start, except it was far too heavy to pump. Then I heard of this ‘Handpump Specialist’ at the World Bank, so went to introduce myself, and see if he had any ideas to resolve my problem. Let’s pass over how the conversation went, but I think I called him an ass and he called me an idiot for not having considered buoyant pump-rods. Neither of us found this to be offensive at all and, in fact, seemed to be a sound basis for good, professional cooperation. I just asked how he would go about creating this buoyant pump-rod ? Such was the first meeting of two technologists which led to a friendship lasting till now, some 45 years later. Happily, both of us were fixated on developing an alternative to the (then) existing New No 6 handpumps which were being provided to Bangladesh in 50,000 units every year, and which simply could not resolve their problem, pouring good money after bad.
A full history may eventually be written, but we were both in too much of a hurry to start writing about something which hadn’t yet been created. If we could just create a suitable technical alternative, and if we could find a way in which the users of the pumps (almost exclusively women and children) could be used to define what they needed at a cost sufficiently low that the majority of families could eventually purchase a share in their own community pump, and operate and maintain it without the need for government support, then there was a possibility of universal coverage of safe water.
Happily, MAWTS (The Mirpur Agricultural Workshop and Training School) had a workshop that could produce almost any shape of plastic, wood or metal item necessary and it had recently had posted a Swiss engineer to assist the school. He was Erich Baumann who was a formidable colleague who was willing to engage with us even when our ideas seemed to be completely hare-brained.
Tim trained as a biologist but had such a good grounding in science that he could be equally at home in biology as in fluid dynamics, and he was given to dabbling in any matters that interested him.
He could speak a couple of languages. When he did his time as a Peace Corps Volunteer, he was sent to Guatemala where – for some time - he lodged with the Madam of the local bordello. He obviously had a soft spot for her – and she for him – but he maintained that the only advantage of this arrangement was easy access to beer. He worked for a period as a stevedore in Bremerhaven, extending his German learned at his university. On completion of his contract, he was found to have contracted TB, and was hospitalised where the sister-in-charge of his ward helped him overcome boredom by sourcing books for him to read. Here, he learned about the Celts in Europe (in German, no less).
It should be noted that Tim only worked for UNICEF for 20 months as a WatSan Programme Officer in Bangladesh, from January 1973 to August 1974. This was shortly after Bangladesh had become independent of Pakistan; a catastrophic flood which killed hundreds of thousands; and a famine where the body carts came round every morning in Dhaka to collect the bodies of those who had died in the night. As Tim was not suited to a career in a bureaucracy, he sought further technical stimulation undertaking some research through Wellington University in Canada while he was employed by IDRC (International Development and Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada).
*****
We next see him being appointed to a joint UNDP/World Bank Handpump Programme as their man in Bangladesh in early 1981 as a Handpump Specialist.
At this time, a simple calculation showed that there was absolutely no possibility of achieving universal coverage of safe drinking water in rural Bangladesh by any date, let alone the date of 1990 being proposed by the United Nations. The technology being used did not match the needs so I had cobbled together a simple direct action handpump which was a start, except it was far too heavy to pump. Then I heard of this ‘Handpump Specialist’ at the World Bank, so went to introduce myself, and see if he had any ideas to resolve my problem. Let’s pass over how the conversation went, but I think I called him an ass and he called me an idiot for not having considered buoyant pump-rods. Neither of us found this to be offensive at all and, in fact, seemed to be a sound basis for good, professional cooperation. I just asked how he would go about creating this buoyant pump-rod ? Such was the first meeting of two technologists which led to a friendship lasting till now, some 45 years later. Happily, both of us were fixated on developing an alternative to the (then) existing New No 6 handpumps which were being provided to Bangladesh in 50,000 units every year, and which simply could not resolve their problem, pouring good money after bad.
A full history may eventually be written, but we were both in too much of a hurry to start writing about something which hadn’t yet been created. If we could just create a suitable technical alternative, and if we could find a way in which the users of the pumps (almost exclusively women and children) could be used to define what they needed at a cost sufficiently low that the majority of families could eventually purchase a share in their own community pump, and operate and maintain it without the need for government support, then there was a possibility of universal coverage of safe water.
Happily, MAWTS (The Mirpur Agricultural Workshop and Training School) had a workshop that could produce almost any shape of plastic, wood or metal item necessary and it had recently had posted a Swiss engineer to assist the school. He was Erich Baumann who was a formidable colleague who was willing to engage with us even when our ideas seemed to be completely hare-brained.
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| A Tara Pump |
There were many advantages to this arrangement. Tim was not ham-strung by the minutiae of the bureaucracy and I could see in him, the superlative creativity that was necessary to find a suitable alternative. As I had responsibility for the UNICEF handpump budget, I was able to be an effective brake when Tim’s creativity got the better of him.
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| A typical Tara Installation |
We used village women to tell us what they found useful in our various early models. After all, they were always on site when a pump failed, so who better to guide us than they ? We found that they were quite forthcoming about their opinions of our efforts. As we were not able to follow what they were saying, our national officers were good guides. If they collapsed laughing at what one of the women said, we knew it was most unlikely to be polite and was casting aspersions on our masculinity.
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| "I can do it" |
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| A typical Tara installation audience |
Many are the stories about the development of the Tara Pump – some of which have already found space on the XUNICEF News and Views blog - but it is what happened in around 2005 to 2007, appeared to show that this informal, multi-agency cooperation had already had one very interesting effect.
While some of the early Tara pumps were made in Bangladesh, the numbers were modest. During this development period, we happened to be invited to Delhi for some celebration, and took the opportunity to visit Inalsa, one of the major producers of the India Mark II handpump. On arrival, we were shown a Tara look-alike which was surprising as we hadn’t at that time even produced a Standard Drawing. On looking at the sample in their yard, we asked if someone could possibly fill a bucket from the pump ? When the bucket was produced it was clear that it wasn’t possible to get it under the spout so a bit of design management might be useful. However, if these manufacturers could tool-up so quickly, and if they had a bit more technical guidance, they might be able to supply Tara lookalikes for large areas of the alluvium surrounding the Ganges.
Move on some 25 years when it was apparent that very large numbers of Tara pumps had already been smuggled across the India/Bangladesh border (thereby avoiding excise tax), and we felt a reliable count of handpumps would be useful. What we got was surprising, because the arsenic problem had peaked in this period.
The Government response to the arsenic problem was to test every single handpump/tubewell in the country to see if the arsenic limit was breached. For those that failed the test, the handpump was painted red (Beware !); and those that passed, were painted green. While this process was on-going, every single handpump in existence was numbered. As can be seen, this study provided the surrogate we needed to estimate the total numbers of Taras in Bangladesh around 2007, in the order of 4 million units.
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| Miniature Tara |
While these numbers did not prove that universal coverage had been attained, it did show that - providing that the trends remained the same – universal coverage is attainable. In reality, one handpump can serve around 250 people which, at the time we were working on the Tara, represented some 35 families. While one cannot expect a complex society to behave to simple arithmetic formulae, it is also true that only a relatively small percentage of the population needed to buy their own pump and share the water it produced. It also shows that there are ways to avoid the patronage system if technical designs put the power in the hands of the users.
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No single person can be credited with the creation of the Tara handpump, but one thing is absolutely certain, that the Tara would not have been possible without Tim Journey, who wasn’t even working for UNICEF during its creation.
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For those interested, Tim Journey’s elder daughter wrote the family obituary for Tim:
https://www.legacy.com/legacy/tim-journey
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Tim was a committed to the cause , warm to the friends and at heart a simple honest person . I was specially attracted to him in the pump crowd where he was straight to his point , articulate with simple explanations and a clear scientific mind . His life journey must have ended but Tim will be in our mind forever . RIP 💐 Gouri
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