1. Helping the
people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote
a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote
a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.
First of all, I would like to
remind you all that two out of three goals of the Peace Corps are essentially
hanging out and sharing your culture (aka teaching people how to make banana
bread). So I have been shaking hands and kissing babies for the last six
months and you should know that I'm getting really good at it.
The other weekend I went to visit my friends in the
Comarca Ngabe-Bugle and help out with Carolyn's water seminar. Water
seminars are designed to teach about the mechanics and technical aspects of a
gravity flow aqueduct system as well as the budgeting of funds, contamination,
and organization.
One of the first activities we did
was a community map. This is a great way
for people to visualize the information they already have on their aqueduct
system and figure out where the gaps are.
Another teaching tool we use is the moqueduct or
model aqueduct constructed from a few 5 gallon pails, a bunch of clear tubing,
and a pinch of creativity. We use it to
show how changes in altitude, distance, and tube size affect flow. Also how sediment can enter and clog the
system and where to look for air blocks.
Remember how you used to give
presentations using Power Point and one of those fancy clickers that no one
actually knows how to use?! That is a faint memory for me. Charla
paper is what we call it here. A charla is any sort of informational talk
and charla paper is just blank newspaper on which we draw pictures with
a normally limited amount of skill and marker color choices.
Back in Limón, we started work days the other week and we
are currently digging ditches for our pipeline from the spring to the storage
tank. It is currently buried about 6
inches deep and we’re moving toward over two feet deep because the owner of the
land is looking to turn the land into a cow pasture. This week we were working in an area where
the pipe is under a lot of pressure and it just kept exploding at the seams…
all week. Which makes a girl like me
scream bloody murder and run in the opposite direction.
We got water back on Thursday, but not after
a lot of frustration on Wednesday. My
everything is sore. I didn’t have the
patience to watch a 16 year old with a 6-pack nudge some dirt around, so I
borrowed his shovel and showed him how it was done.
Other things on our list include putting up a fence around
our storage tank, building concrete tapstands at homes, and creating a set of
rules or a managing document for our aqueduct.
A tapstand in the making!
In an ideal world, my job is to work myself out of a job. I am training people to be able to train other people in the same way that I'm doing. Sometimes I see glimmering rays of hope as people in my community take the words out of my mouth and other days I see people burning PVC pipe. It's a marathon, not a sprint. :)
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