Successes come in pairs

Check out more pictures from this trip and past trips at: http://picasaweb.google.com/kendradey/

Our January trip to Ecuador ended up being as successful as I could have possibly imagined. We finished installing nine rainwater tanks in La Encañada. An example is shown to the left. They consist of a bamboo gutter, a covered 550 liter plastic water tank on a platform, and the necessary hosing and adapters to deliver that water to the bathroom toilet and sink and a kitchen tap. We installed these systems over the course of six days of community work and for under $1,000 total budget.

We made laminated versions of these signs and put them up in every household to remind them how to maintain their rainwater tanks, how to use the secure 8 liter drinking water storage containers we provided, and how to dose each of them with the right amount of chlorine to have 100% safe drinking water.

On the last tuesday before we left, we went to the mayor of the Mera Municipality, which includes both La Encañada and Santa Ana, and presented a report on the work we had done. Basilio later reported that he felt the mayor was floored by the document, and he promised to provide all of the materials should they want to do such an installation in another community. I think he probably will too, since it is such a great deal for him -- give around $1000 worth of supplies (a fraction of the usual tens of thousands of dollar infrastructure projects they deal with) and have a community feel like the mayor has really done something substantial. It's a great deal for us too: the Santa Ana technical team gets all of the expensive supplies paid for, and Sacha Yaku only has to provide a small amount of administrative funds and pay for the time put in by the technical team -- expenses that the municipality is not willing to or able to make.

The technical team in Santa Ana is already getting requests for water quality testing, hygiene and health workshops, and rainwater tank installations. They are working on a proposal right now for a small community that sits in between La Encañada and Santa Ana called Chinchayaku. Although one never can tell with these things, the mayor is in office until April and wants to make communities happy in order to get re-elected, so I think it is quite likely that this project will go through!

And all of that is merely the first of our pair of successes. The other success is in Santa Ana. Not only do they continue to have water all day everyday, but we also manage to close off that pesky channel the water was escaping through in the river intake. What took us weeks during the first summer in Santa Ana (2006), took us three days this time. And it is a good thing it only took three days, because three days was all we had! We literally poured cement on Wednesday, came back to Santa Ana for the traditional 'despedida' or goodbye party, and then left at 6am on Thursday morning. Here are some photos of the operation:

(Hauling rocks and sand through a swamp and up a hill to the river intake. Men and women worked together to carry several cubic meters of material up the hill for this wall.)

(The temporary dam of sticks and plastic we built in order to have a dry place to build a concrete wall)(The construction scene)

(Jesus Moya finishes off the concrete wall)

So Santa Ana has clean drinking water, so does La Encañada, and we hope that it is only a matter of weeks before Chinchayaku does as well. Not bad for one trip.

Clean water for a new community

A short update from the amazon rain forest of Ecuador.(This is the group I am working with - Emily, Nicole, Fatima, Kendra, Dorothy)

We've spent about 5 days now in La Encañada, a new community with just nine families. (The moon rises over La Encañada)

Turns out we'll be able to give them all water systems from the start. There are fewer families, the local government chipped in some money, we got a little extra from the MIT Public Service Center, and suddenly we have enough funds to make it happen!

Its a funny thing – we know were doing our job right when we are essentially superfluous. The team we have put together from Santa Ana is amazingly capable – with everything from leading planning meetings, to selecting the right trees to cut down for platform construction, to teaching basic hygiene to children in the school, to leading a water and health workshop in the whole community. (One of the platforms we've built for the rainwater tanks)

It is a pleasure to sit back and watch them work, mostly speaking to the members of Encañada in their native language Kichwa. They mix in enough spanish words and ive picked up enough Kichwa that I can mostly tell what they are saying. Every once in a while i'll make a suggestion , like why dont we install one tank today so we are sure we know how to do it, and Basilio, or Melida, or Esteban will jump on the idea, start speaking to the others in Kichwa, and they'll act on it.

That's not to say that I have been completely useless – the other day I unclogged a toilet that hadn't worked for two years. The family was pretty elated since they had been just going out in the woods for all this time. Its the little things that count…

I have to confess that the performance of both the Santa Ana team and the 9 families that make up the community of Encañada has exceeded my expectations.

Melida and Esteban did a fantastic job on the hygiene and health workshop, with only a little coaching from me. A bit more work on project management and documentation skills, and a bit of funding, and I think this team could really go into a new community and give clean water.

Tomorrow we have the day off and one of hosts in Encañada is taking us on a hike up to a hill from which we are supposed to be able to see santa ana : )

In Santa Ana once more

I´m back in Santa Ana Ecuador for the fifth time now, this time with four other students and big plans to form a team from Santa Ana that will help other communities implement individual rainwater tanks. It rains so much here that 500 liter tanks are big enough that families have enough water for drinking and cooking almost all the time, and the tanks are around $80 each so it is a pretty reasonable price to provide clean, accessible water (we´ll be running hoses from the tanks with a little faucet on the end which they can put in their kitchens, which are usually separate structures from their houses with thatched roofs and a fireplace to cook on).

On January 6th we leave Santa Ana for one of their neighboring communities, La Encañada to implement five of these systems along with the team we have formed in Santa Ana. Then these families will pay back the cost of the system over a year so that the community can buy 5 more, etc. There are only 15 families in La Encañada, so after 2 years they´ll all have the systems.

As for the community water system in Santa Ana, it has its problems but they are way more minor than they were before. The new operator is this amazing 15 year old boy named Inoc, the son of Melida, one of the most responsible women in Santa Ana, so we are really excited about the community´s choice. (Inoc and Kendra fixing a leak in Santa Ana)

We´ve been working with him over the last 3 days and we´re getting pretty close to fixing up almost all of these little problems -- an amazing improvement over trips past. Slowly but surely Santa Ana is getting a handle on how to operate and maintain this system.

(Inoc standing at the river intake. Notice the semi-crooked wall in the background (the wall we built during the summer of 2006) and the water escaping to the front (where we need to build another such wall)

I love being back here. I love the people, the place, and this crazy water system that we´ve patched together over and over again. Santa Ana feels like a second home by now, but there are always new things to do and learn. It was my first News Years Eve here so I got to see how they build and burn life size dolls as a symbol of forgetting the past, then dance all night long. We made it till 4 am before we went to sleep.

Then last night we went hunting toads by moonlight on the other side of the Pastaza River. The technique is to listen to their calls and track them very quietly, then shine a flashlight on it once you are close enough and grab it with your hand. It was so beautiful under the stars and the moon, wading through shallow pools that form on the bank of the river. I think today we´ll get to eat frog maito (maito is a traditional way of cooking fish or birds or other kinds of meat wrapped up in a bananna leaf and cooked in the fire).

(On our day-trip to La Encañada, we brought a computer donated by TecsChange. These are some photos of its journey -- by horse).
(And by canoe).