The Savage Traveler: Nicaragua: Part 3

Thursday, June 26: During the night, by mutual agreement, women used one side of the school and men the other for a “pee pad” rather than making the hike to the latrine in the dark. The sun rose about 5:30 and along with it the noise level of the animals so, slowly, we did too. After breakfast of packaged dry toast and jam and Special K cereal we packed up some of the water purifiers and drove the main dirt road to a side road which deteriorated more and more, and we took it as far as the bus could drive. Then half of us climbed in the back of Felix’s pick-up and drove to Chamarro, where the road ended at Don Felix’s house and the village school. While we waited for the rest of the group some of us went into the school and talked to the children and teachers a little bit. The school had three rooms—3-5 year olds, first & second graders, and third & fourth graders. The 3-5 year olds’ teacher looked to be about 13 herself but she had a child in the class along with three other kids! Connie’s Spanish made it possible for us to visit a bit and learn about the school. We also used the latrines at the school; the only ones in the community—at their homes, they all “go in the bush”.

One of the things CEPAD has done in this area is to organize the farms into village-like associations. As the leader of Zompopera, Don Pedro is sort of in charge of seven associations, each of which has its own leadership council. CEPAD requires that leadership councils include women with power and voice. Each council decides what they want to do for their community for the 5 years while CEPAD works with them. Putting in the water purification systems is one of the projects the Zompopera region wanted. All of the rocks, gravel and sand had already been delivered to the homes that were getting the systems and the leaders worked with us to show us where the homes were. They also did a lot of the “heavy lifting” along the way. The homes are not “clustered” in one area like we think of a village and some were 45-60 minutes hike away from where we began. Don Felix is the president of Chamarro so he met with us as we were shown how to put the filters together and set-up one of them in the school. Then we broke into three groups and headed out in three different directions with the parts to start installation.

Marv and I were in a group with Daniel from Agua Clara, Carolina for our interpreter, Carol, and Alex. Don Felix went with us to carry the barrels and show the way. We hiked up the hillside, over a creek and through the jungle to the first home, which was his son’s. His daughter-in-law and 2 year old granddaughter greeted us and we began our installation. As we would find with most of our installations, the support shelf where it was being installed was too high for Carol or me to be much help. The process is to put in the L shaped PVC pipe across the bottom and up the inside. Then the pipe is added which comes out the predrilled hole near the top and forms the “spigot” from which the clean water will pour. A layer of large gravel is put on the bottom, covered with water, and evened out. Then the barrel is leveled on the shelf. A layer of smaller gravel is added, covered with water, and again evened out. Half of the sand goes next with more water. A small packet of shredded copper is mixed with a bowl of sand and makes an additional layer for ionization. Finally more sand fills up to about an inch below the spigot and water to cover it. As each layer is added the sides of the barrel are pounded to “burp” the air pockets out. By the time we got to the top layer of sand the water was beginning to flow out of the spigot into a catch pail. The purifier forms a sort of “swamp” biotic layer on top and in 3 or 4 weeks the water that comes out is purified. There are no moving parts and the only requirement is that water is added twice a day and it never is allowed to dry out. The oldest ones have been installed for nearly ten years and are still working. And CEPAD has found nearly 95% being maintained on their revisits, which they do periodically to check the water purity.

It only took about 15 minutes to install that one. Then we hiked further up the hill to install our next. This was a very nice looking pueblo home. It had two rooms off an open entry way. To the left was the sleeping area and to the right, the kitchen. Like pretty much every home, there was a two level cooking stove with a fire going and the smoke exited out an open gable at the top of the wall below the roof. The woman here had a bandana covering her mouth and we found out from Carolina that she had an infected tooth that was causing her a lot of pain. While we worked Carolina tried to convince her that she needed to get an antibiotic. When we finished we hiked further up the hill until we came to what looked like a cliff. When Carolina saw that she said, “My Spanish doesn’t go that far” and she sent the men to do the installation and had Carol and me return to the house, where we chatted with the woman. As we talked, her teenage daughter returned from delivering lunch to her father in the field. We found out that the girl really wanted to go to high school but the only school is the one where we are staying and it meets on weekends. It would be an hour’s walk at least and there are drunken men along the way who make it very dangerous. A 15 year old girl had been killed just a few weeks before and so none of the families wanted their daughters to go now. She made a point of telling us that there is NOTHING in their community in the way of health services or education, repeating “Nada, Nada.” It was pretty depressing and distressing to hear her despair. I will let Marv describe what they did while we chatted:

It was a very steep climb to the top of the ridge where we found the next home. It was very primitive compared to the others we had seen. No brick or adobe; the kitchen walls were made of one and two inch limbs lashed to a wooden frame. The living quarters were walled with heavy black plastic. It had a corrugated steel roof just like every other home we had seen. The view from the ridge top was wonderful, forest and farm fields all around. We did not meet the mother at this home. The father met us and helped set up the purifier. The water for the household had to be brought up that same steep hillside from the stream below. His daughter was there--we had met her at the school earlier. Like other children we had seen she wore clean clothes and we could see freshly washed clothes hanging out on a line to dry. She had a new puppy she wanted to show us. It appeared to have just learned to walk. Very cute!

After setting up the three purifiers we made our way back to the school where we were supposed to meet the other groups around noon and go back to Don Pedro’s for lunch. After waiting a bit and finding no one else returning, we decided to make do with trail mix and candies we had with us and bananas from the two bunches Don Felix had picked up at his son’s house and given to Carolina. We picked up more parts from Felix and hiked up the steep road to install systems in two more homes in a cluster of three just off the road. Part of us did one while the rest of our group installed the other. There was an older woman, her son, and four boys at the house where I worked but it was unclear who lived in the house. This was a dark and dreary home and something just seemed off about it. We asked why the boys weren’t in school and the man said that there was no teacher for them, but having just been at the school we knew that wasn’t true. We stayed for more than half an hour waiting in the “yard” for Felix to come and pick us up but nothing was happening and our frustration was growing. Alex finally decided to hike back down and see what was going on. We decided that it made more sense for Felix to take our group back to the bus, since not everyone could ride in the pick-up truck at one time. So Marv and I followed Alex and convinced Felix to do just that. William was also available so we returned to the bus. We found another group there, having put in purifiers in homes near the bus. A small group of hearty souls hiked up a steep hill to put in one more purifier, getting caught in the rain on their way back. In the meantime Felix came back with the last group and we all returned, hot, hungry and very tired, to Don Pedro’s. We cleaned up a little bit, gobbled down a very welcome dinner, met briefly to talk about the frustration of the hurry-up-and-wait day and the conditions we found in Chamarro and to open our Prayer Partner gifts and collapsed from exhaustion in our beds. Sleep came much more easily that night.