Pure water teen's pledge

By SIMON COLLINS

An invention by an 18-year-old student may help to purify water for one of the driest countries in the world, Namibia.

Hanne Becker, a student in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, has found that it is much cheaper to purify water using electrolysis and iron than with the existing chemical treatments.

She is one of four students from Namibia who are taking part in New Zealand's national science and technology fair at the Bruce Mason Centre in Takapuna.

Their 26-hour journey to Auckland via Johannesburg and Hong Kong follows contacts made at a science fair in Taiwan between the New Zealand fair organiser, Debbie Woodhall, and her counterparts in Namibia.

Three students from Taiwan, two from Brunei and the winners of New Zealand's 23 regional science fairs are also attending the four-day event, which is open free to the public from 9am to 11.30pm tomorrow and on Friday.

Hanne, who hopes to study chemical engineering, said she started investigating water purification when her father gave her a report on the subject.

"He said, this is the problem, and suggested that I should go on," she said.

She did, and found that electrolysis was far more cost-effective for purifying water given the prices of the necessary equipment compared with the cost of chemicals in Windhoek.

"I'm sure it will be cost-effective everywhere, but I didn't have the prices of lime and other things for other countries," she said.

With the Kalahari Desert in the east and the Namib Desert in the west, one-third of Namibia is desert. Only 1.9 million people live in an area three times that of New Zealand - 87.5 per cent of them black, 6 per cent white and 6.5 per cent of mixed race.

The Namibian Government, which took power with independence from South Africa in 1990, aims to gradually increase black ownership of land.

But Hanne said that, in contrast to nearby Zimbabwe, white settlers were not being forced off their farms. "They are talking about it [forced land redistribution] but nothing has happened yet," she said.

Elsebi van Sittert, a 17-year-old from the northern town of Tsumeb, said crime rates were far lower than in South Africa.

"My dad leaves our car with the key in the lock and finds it there the next day," she said.

However, both Hanne and Elsebi have friends who have emigrated to New Zealand, and would like to live in the country themselves one day.

"It's a beautiful country," said Elsebi who, like most of the others, has never been outside southern Africa before.

"I will stay in Namibia, but probably I will come to Auckland for three or four years and then I'll go back," she said.

"If it doesn't go well, I will bring my children here, because I would want to give my children as good a future as I have."