We recently had the chance to make it out to El Limón to finish documenting the final results of our USAID Small Project Assistance (SPA) Grant. Without further ado, here are the results.

Here are a few highlights of the results of our SPA project. We only had the chance to see ten floors today and left the rest for next Sunday. Due to Sarah’s ankle injury, we haven’t been able to get out to the community as much as we’d like. Finding a reliable ride out the community, paying the driver, and then trying to find a way back to town is quite an ordeal. Nevertheless, we would like to start going out to visit more, especially now that we get the typical little kid response – “HOLA MATEO! HOLA SARITA! ADIOS MATEO! ADIOS SARITA!” at the top of their little lungs.

The floors are typically constructed by hand using a wheelbarrow, trowel, and a long section of PVC pipe to smooth it all out. A typical room only takes a few hours.

Here, Jacinto is showing off a new floor:

We had a group pose for us in their freshly-cemented kitchen. Notice how clean those bare feet are! The kitchen is usually a popular choice because it’s where the majority of women and children spend their time during the day. Another good choice is the patio area outside of the rooms of the house. All of the traffic during the rainy season creates mud, and mud breeds hookworms. Notice how no one is wearing shoes? At first we were opposed to using the cement to make patios – until we saw how the pigs, dogs, and sometimes cows are right up in there “doing their necessities” in the open air. Better to have something to wash off, especially when it gets wet and wild.

Maria Gloria de Leon opted not to build a floor and instead built a pila, a do-it-all water deposit/sink. We did not have very strict requirements and let each family choose which room to build the floor and, if they wanted to construct something else, how to use the materials. Our only requirement was that the construction had to benefit or improve the health of the family. In this case, it is beneficial because they can hold and purify the water, clean the pila when it gets dirty, and wash clothes and dishes more frequently and easily. There was no way to do this beforehand, just a faucet, a couple of rocks, and a little puddle in the mud.

Maura in the middle of cleaning her floor. She heard we were coming and wanted to make sure it was spic-and-span. This is a cool picture because it shows the biggest advantage of concrete floors – being able to clean them! We love going to her house because she always fills my backpack with whatever fruit tree happens to be in season. This time, we got a metric ton of these weird hybrid lime/lemon/orange citrus fruits.

I’ll do a “before and after” comparison when I get some more free time this week.

The weekend before last (October 17-18), Sarah and I had planned to have a meeting out in El Limón to give a health talk and to plan the details of the Small Project Assistance (SPA) grant. We’ve been working in El Limón for the past year, giving health charlas every two weeks with the promise of bringing a small amount of money through SPA and we are finally reaching that goal. Anyways, we get out to the community on that particular Sunday and begin our ritual of waiting an hour and a half for everyone to trickle in and gear up for the meeting. After waiting an hour, we begin to feel like something is off. Where are the regular early-birds? When there is absolutely no one after thirty minutes, forty-five minutes, an hour – you begin to feel like something is off. Wait! What’s that in the distance? Someone’s coming! And up rolls Don Martín, the mason for the project and an all-around decent guy, only to tell us that “Hey, there are parties all over the municipality and no one’s going to show up.” We end up chatting with him about the project and life in general, and then pack up to walk the five miles back to town. At least we got some exercise. As it turns out, there was a miscommunication between the President of the COCODE, Roberto, and the Treasurer, José. Roberto had to leave in a hurry to get to Guatemala City for some paperwork that was due and José was the guy in charge of transport for the community to get the party and figured Roberto would call us.

Sarah calls up Roberto during the week to plan for the next Sunday (October 24). So, we get out there at two and begin waiting once again. Feeling a little sour from the week before, we decide to forgo the charla and just work out the details of the concrete floors. People begin to roll in, and we breath a sigh of relief. And then we notice something odd – not only are people coming in droves, there are people here who have never come before! Amazing! Roberto must have done some serious motivating to get all of those people to come. We hold the meeting, working out all of the details, and basically leaving the project in their hands. If we do all the work from start to finish, we are not helping in the long-term because they come to expect headache-free projects (otherwise known as “gifts”).

Okay, now we’re caught up to today. After our monthly Health Promoter Workshop in the morning, we decide to call up José to see where they stand on their end. Turns out he already bought the sand and cement to begin the construction of the concrete floors! Not only that, but the sand has already been delivered! They plan to divide it and distribute everything today or tomorrow, and begin construction shortly after. We’d love to help out and build a couple of floors but it seems as though they are determined to do the project themselves. For example, at the planning meeting, they were all convinced that “every family for itself” was the best approach when we tried to suggest the idea of one or two teams doing all of the work, passing house-to-house. They’ve made it clear that they are perfectly capable of doing this themselves, and to micro-manage may come off as condescending. We’re definitely walking a fine line – on the one hand we want to make absolutely sure everything goes as planned, but on the other hand we don’t want to insult them by doing just that. They already have the distribution lists, the materials, and the will. The only thing we can do at this point is help build!

And that, in a nutshell, is our working life in the Peace Corps.