Our camera broke!

Alright so our camera is broken, does that mean we can’t write? Well it kind of takes the fun out of it for you all. I’ll try to give you an idea of what we have been doing the past couple of months, which have actually been busy, without boring you to death with giant walls of text.

I believe that you all know that we began giving hygiene talks at the end of January in a new community. We work in the school with the kids and their parents. They are very participatory and the director of the school is very supportive of our work (she quizzes the kids and the moms and dads afterward!). Working there has been something that we really look forward to doing.

February was a whirlwind for us. In addition to the new community and other commitments that we had with the health center, we collaborated with the NGO (non-governmental organization) Water for People. For the last two to three years, they have been doing health education trainings with the teachers in selected schools and, in some of those schools, building hygienic installations like latrines, hand-washing stations, and water deposits. They plan to expand their work beyond the schools to work with entire communities, but first, they had to get an idea of the communities with the greatest need. Obviously every one of the nearly 70 communities could benefit from the work that they do, BUT you have to begin somewhere.

Water for People is an NGO run by Guatemalans that gets its funding from the US. They are concerned with providing access to clean water to people (as perhaps you may have guessed by the name). Obviously water systems are one way of doing this. Another way is to build latrines and train the communities on the benefits of latrines as well as their proper use and maintenance. And they do not just give these latrines away. In addition to writing a solicitation for the project, the community has to provide the labor, provide housing and food for the mason, as well as some of the building materials. Water for People also asks the municipal government that they provide for the project. Water for People provides the most expensive materials, the mason, and all of the education associated with it.

First they had to somehow figure out the communities with the most need for these projects. That was determined by doing surveys of all of the nearly 70 communities in our municipality. So for two weeks, several teams went out to two communities a day to look at the community’s access to water and the state of or level of contamination in the water. The teams consisted of engineers, volunteers (from the US), Mat and I, technicians from the health center, and representatives from the mayor’s office. The leaders of the communities were notified several times beforehand by the municipality about the survey so that the communities would not be afraid when strangers showed up at their houses asking to see their water faucets and latrines, and to prevent guns from being drawn. Stranger danger to the extreme! Actually, it is pretty understandable why people are cautious in the communities; between the armed conflict or civil war (however you call the 30 years of violence this country saw) and governments and companies trying to or succeeding in exploiting the people and/or the land, many in Guatemala, especially the indigenous population or those of Mayan descent, are wary of outsiders.

So as I was saying, it was important that the people knew Water for People was conducting this survey.

The survey was tri-fold. First, we interviewed the community leaders to find out about the community water source(s). If it was close enough, we would go to the source to take a water sample. If not, we would take a sample from a faucet. The leader survey asked for the number of houses for which the water source(s) provides water, how many people do not have potable water, is there enough water, and other questions regarding the water system. The second survey was for the school; the director was questioned about hygienic installations at the school and water access. Lastly, we went to 10% of the homes in the community to ask about the water and if they had a latrine.

Water samples were taken from every water source that is part of any water system in our municipality. We were testing for E. coli in the water because apparently it is the easiest to test for and is a red flag for all sorts of nasty. A surprising number of water sources were found not to contain E. coli, although I still would not drink the water from them without purifying it first. Let me also clarify that not everyone in the communities has water arriving by faucet in their homes. In some communities, the vast majority have “potable” water, but in others, it is about 50/50 – meaning everyone who does not have it gets water from the highly contaminated rivers or wells.

Anyway, the survey took two weeks. Now, Water for People is going to begin projects in the communities that have solicited them. They are starting with latrines and want to especially focus on constructing composting latrines (which sit above ground and turn the waste into fertilizer) in the mountain communities. Why? Well most people just go to the bathroom in the aire libre or open air. When it rains, where does all of that poop go? It slides right down the mountains!

As they prepare to head up these projects, we are going to collaborate on the education aspect, which I am told will begin shortly.
Even though we did not have a camera, I asked Water for People for the pictures that were taken during the survey. Thank you to all of them and especially Reyna for making us CDs!

So without further ado, here are some of the highlights from the survery:

Besides that we have continued working with the midwives and in the schools doing HIV/AIDS prevention education. Again, too bad we didn’t have a camera – we had some fun activities!

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