Families devote hours each day and up to 20 percent of their income to securing water, Wong said, severely limiting the resources they can direct toward their economic prosperity. The problem is worst in the dry seasons, when people are forced to draw from shallow wells tainted with trash, scum and chemicals, he noted. The wells often give them water-borne diseases, but they cannot bring themselves to drink the salty water from government-sponsored boreholes.

"That's just not a good way to live," Wong said.

Wong is a sophomore in the year-long leadership development program Service Opportunities in Leadership. The program's centerpiece is a community-based research project that is collaboratively designed with a community partner. For his project, Wong traveled to Mbarara, Uganda to assess the effectiveness of the Institutional Rainwater Harvesting Network, a system set up by the Mayanja Memorial Hospital Foundation to ease the water deprivation in the community.

The recipient of a scholarship from the water sector in his native Singapore, Wong has long had an academic interest in water deprivation. But he knew his studies did not give him a full understanding of the problem.
"I wanted to experience water deprivation for myself," he said. "We need to understand not just in the intellectual sense but also in the visceral sense what it means to live without water."

Water scarcity is a subject of public discourse in Singapore, a country that used to heavily depend on other nations for water. Upon moving to the United States to attend Duke, Wong was surprised by Americans' attitudes toward water. A number of states, such as California and Arizona, are in a perpetual state of drought, and even North Carolina wrestled with a severe water shortage several years ago, but most citizens do not give much thought to their use of the precious resource, Wong said.

Wong, an economics major, explained that he sees the world as an interplay between incentives and rational decisions.

"In parts of the world where water is expensive and hard to obtain, people know how to use it well. In places where there isn't social pressure on people to use the water well, people just simply don't make full use of it," he said. "People here use a huge amount of water to water their lawns, wash their cars and leave the taps running... They don't have concern for the water they are using."

Such an attitude would be unthinkable in Uganda, where every drop of water is prized. Without drinking fountains in their classrooms, even school children must make a long trek if they become thirsty in the middle of the day, Wong said.

At first, Wong was daunted by the scope of his project-it seemed like too much for one person to tackle in just two months. He slept only six or seven hours a night and gave up any hope of free time.

"I felt the weight of the entire problem on my shoulders," he said. "I felt like I was running a marathon."

At the beginning of the summer, Wong still had what he calls a "romanticized vision" of a leader as someone who is firmly stationed ahead of his followers giving directions and never fails to know what to do.

But Wong did not have all the answers. And he slowly came to realize that even if he did, this leadership style would not work in Uganda. Wong's research revealed that while local communities had sufficient financial resources to sustain the Institutional Rainwater Harvesting Network, the long-term success of the system hinged on the villagers' belief in the value of the project.

"That really helped me understand that leadership is about relationships, about understanding people and their needs and building on that to come together and solve problems and empower people," he said. "Sometimes you just have no idea how to move forward, and all you can do is rely on these relationships and have trust in the people you work with."

Wong had trouble forming these pivotal bonds at first. He was keenly aware of how different he was from those around him and feared the cultural divide would keep him from forging real connections.

"I was obviously foreign. I didn't fit in at all," he said. "They weren't sure what to make of me. They weren't sure why I was there."

When Wong took the time to get to know those in his adopted community, he found that the investment paid off handsomely. He made an effort to learn the local language, Runyankole, and abandoned his camp for a few nights to take advantage of the villagers' hospitality, sampling their cuisine and drinking their richly brewed tea and coffee.

"Those nights in the village were some of my most peaceful. I felt like I gained a very great appreciation for a simple life," he said. "I would go through moments where I wanted to give up, but the energy that I got from helping people gave me so much encouragement.... When I started learning their local language, learning their culture, then they knew, ‘This guy is here to get to know us.'"

Wong credits his stint as a soldier with preparing him for the rigor of his research project in Uganda. While completing a mandatory tour in the Singaporean military, Wong began the process of stripping away leadership's romanticized veneer.

"I was called to lead men who were very different from me, and that really helped me to reflect on my own weaknesses," he said. "It underscored how much more I had to go. That process of wanting to learn and being open to change really started in the military."

The vision of leadership that Wong solidified in Uganda inspires him as he moves forward in his Duke career and thinks about his life beyond the university, though he cannot predict the shape his future will take.

"I will keep [my experiences in Uganda] with me for a very long time.... According to the definition of leadership I now have where a leader is someone who empowers people, I definitely feel called to serve in that role," he said. "I don't have a fixed idea of how to go about doing that, but I definitely have it in my heart to serve in that capacity."

Having witnessed the value that his coursework had thousands of miles away from the classroom, Wong says he will select his remaining classes at Duke to build a skill set to address global water deprivation. With his research project in Uganda completed, his desire to combat the problem burns as bright as ever-but he is reluctant to call it his life's work.

"Man, I'm like 22, I've got my whole life ahead of me," he said with a laugh.