Nineth

Good news…Nineth and Sergio are fully recovered from their motorcycle accident and back to work full time!

Maine Communities

The Agua Pura team had a challenging experience with filter beneficiaries in San Jeronimo del Pinal. Three families had snails in their filters and various others found tadpoles and mosquito larva. Unfortunately the community does not have an appropriate water source and they do not regularly sediment their water. Therefore, whatever was in their water source, went directly into their filter. However, the community did not see it this way and some of them were convinced that Agua Pura had put the bugs in the filters purposely and that now they were drinking water full of snails, tadpoles and larva. So, Agua Pura went back to the community in April and held a meeting to clarify this misunderstanding. Unfortunately, the families with the complaints did not come to the meeting. Therefore, we held another meeting in May and this time everybody came. In the beginning 60 families did not want their filters, but after 3 long hours of explaining how the filter works the Agua Pura team was able to convince all but 3 families that the filters do work and that we had not put bugs in them on purpose. Later we returned to the community and visited all of the houses to make sure people were still on board.
(Now we have a question during our Community Agents training that says True or False: The Agua Pura team puts bugs in the filter…People seem to get the picture now.)

After finishing the delivery and installing of the communities in San Francisco de Ojuera we held Use & Maintenance community meetings in the five of the six communities there.

We finished delivering and installing filter in Los Valditos, San Nicolas in record time and everything went well due to the cooperation from the community.

Los Vaditos

The Community Agents training in San Nicolasito, Nueva Celilac was a great success. We originally planned to train 3 Agents, but when we got there 5 showed up and they were so enthusiastic that we trained them all. Allison, the Peace Corps volunteer, developed new didactic material and activities to be used during the trainings to review what was learned in a fun and interactive way; the Community Agents loved it!

Paso a Paso

This activity is called Paso a Paso (Step by Step). The steps to install a filter are written on cards and the Community Agents have to work together to put the steps in the correct order.

Guy at door

This guy wasn’t a Community Agent, but he stood at the door and observed all day.

Carroll Creek Communities

Santa Ana has been one of our most challenging communities, but we finally finished reinstalling 87 filters there over a two week time period. However, we still have to change filters with leaks and have been backed up in the process because the filter workshop had not consistently been producing materials. Before the close of the project we will return to Santa Ana one last time to supervise all of the filters to make sure the new filters are working well.

Hoy SI Circulamos

The Honduran government attempt to confront traffic problems and high gas prices by prohibiting each vehicle from driving one day a week didn’t last very long so the Agua Pura truck can continue to work seven days a week (as it often does).

Water Analysis

Our water analysis testing has been a challenge for us, but after consulting various sources (especially Tamara Risser from Maine), doing trial testing, getting new Coliscan and purchasing some simple yet useful equipment we are back on track. While the Maine group was here in February we discovered that the tweezers were causing some cross contamination. Therefore we purchased a mechero so we can flame our tweezers in between each sample. In addition we will clean our equipment with alcohol wipes before beginning analysis to insure that there is no residual contamination from the previous tests. Also, we will perform control samples with purified water before and after each testing seesion to make sure our procedures are working.

Visit from the National Agua Pura Team

On May 8th, Maria Reginal Inestroza, the regional director of Agua Pura Central America and Oscar Andino, the new administrative assistant, visited the Agua Pura Santa Barbara project.

From left: Oscar, Maria, Hector

It was a great opportunity to review our annual Rotary report for Maine with Maria, introduce Oscar to the project and visit the workshop of Eric Rodriguez. The Santa Barbara Agua Pura team, Maria & Oscar, and members of the Rotary Club filter committee all met with Eric to discuss his interest and ability to work with filter production.

From left: Eric, Mario, Hector

We are still discussing filter prices and possible sources of sand. In the past we have gotten our sand from the river but it has been inconsistent and we have had lots of problems with washing the sand and not having consistent flow rates when we install the filters. The Santa Barbara Rotarians, Nineth & Eric have all gone out to the riverbanks to take samples of possible sand sources, but have not yet found anything promising.
Maria has been investigating the possibility of a central source for sand and has found a provider in southern Honduras. We are still discussing the economic feasibility of this.

Annual Rotary Report

After about two months of reviewing receipts and bank statement we finally finished the annual Rotary report and audit for the Maine Matching Grant. The report was approved almost instantly and we will receive funding for year two of the project. Thank you to Jim Dawson, from Maine, for all his help on the report; we never could have done it without him!

Monitoring

A few months ago Allison & Katie, two Peace Corps volunteers living in Santa Barbara designed a monitoring and evaluation form and database to help us keep track of our monitoring and create reliable statistics for the Agua Pura projects. So far we have used the format in 4 communities (3 from Carroll Creek and 1 from Maine).

New and Improved Filter Carrier

When the Maine group came down in February they brought a filter carrier with them to test out. It worked very well, but we found that the metal wires dug into the cement filter on the edges and thus we had to put cardboard or cloth around the edges to protect the filter. In May Jim sent us a new and improved carrier with rubber tubing covering the metal to protect the filter.

Agua Pura Video

While Rolf Stengl was here one of his goals was to create a video of the filter project in Santa Barbara. A few weeks ago we received the final product of all his work and it is very impressive. The video does a wonderful job of portraying the realities of living in rural Honduras and the various aspects of the filter project.

San Francisco de Ojuera

March was a busy month in the municipality of San Francisco de Ojuera. We held socializations, capacitations in six communities and trained 17 Community Agents.

Rolf leading a Community Agents training for the communities of
La Palca
San Ramon
La Estancia
El Galivan
Santa Fe

El Chaparron

In El Chaparron the delivery truck couldn’t make it all the way into the community because of the roads so we unloaded the filters and loaded up the Agua Pura truck as well one of the trucks from the community to transport the filters the rest of the way. Fortunately, there were lots of community members around to help. Delivering filters in El Chaparron

The Community members of Santa Fe have come up with a few creative ways to transport filters given that the filter carrying devise that Jim brought down in February was being used in another community.
We also held a Community Agents training in San Jeronimo El Pinal and delivered and installed 98 filters there! This is our largest community yet.

Top: Community Agents, Bottom from left: Sergio, Mauricio, Rolf

From left: Blanca Rosa (community member), her grandson, Allison (Peace Corps Volunteer)

Solicitude for Filters

In March we also finished installing filters in El Capulin, Nuevo Celilac. In February when the group from the Maine Rotary Club was here we received a solicitation from El Capulin while installing in El Conal, a nearby community.

Solicitation

El Capulin, Nuevo Celilac, Santa Bárbara Febuary 2nd, 2008

To the International Rotary Club,

We send you an attentive and cordial greeting to all the members of your institution, wishing you much success in your delicate functions on behalf of those interested.

The motive of sending you this solicitation is to see if by your dignified means you can support with the water purifying filters project in order to improve the health of all, especially the children. The signatories below are ready to help with manual labor as well as economically once the project is in place.

We hope for a positive answer from you as a cooperating organization to poor communities.

Signed by 23 members of the group with ID number

Note: We installed 50 filters in this community in March and February 2008.

Ramon

Ramon was our driver during the Maine trip and liked Agua Pura so much that he just never went away…he is now helping us install filters on a day to day basis to get things moving along quicker.
Sergio on left, Ramon on right

New Delivery Truck

In the past we have always had Marvin Chavez, the owner of the filter workshop deliver the filters to the communities. However, his prices have gone up steadily and he was no longer able to meet our need for deliveries due to limited space and time. Fortunately we were able to find another company to deliver filters for us at a lower price and they can deliver 25 filters at a time as opposed to 15 with Marvin. The truck they use has walls so we can stand the filters up during transport and thus save time, money and gas. We will continue to look for the best available companies for filter transportation based on price, availability and reliability.

Sergio loading filters onto the new truck.

$29 is the new magic number

From the start of the filter project we have paid $25 per filter. However, due to past increases in materials such as cement, PVC and sheet metal the production cost of the filters has increased. Therefore we negotiated a new price of $29 per filter with Marvin.

Hoy NO Circula por Honduras

Starting on April 7th, 2008 each vehicle must choose one day a week between Monday to Saturday when it will not drive in order to save on gas prices and reduce congestion. The Agua Pura truck will not be allowed to be driven on Mondays. We will use this day to focus on planning the week and the health promoters can always use the motorcycle to visit communities.

Moto Accident

On Friday April 18th Nineth & Sergio had an accident on the motorcycle. Sergio is sore and a little scrapped up, but nevertheless was back to work on Sunday. Nineth on the other hand bruised her right knee badly and has a hairline fracture on her right foot. Currently she has a boot on her foot and a brace on her knee. They would like to put a cast on the foot but are going to wait until the scrapes heal so her foot doesn’t get infected inside the cast. We hope they both heal quickly.
Even with a broken foot Nineth still has a positive attitude (or maybe it is just the pain killers taking their course)

Annual Report & Audit

Nineht & Allison in Santa Barbara and Jim in Maine have been busy working on the annual report and audit for The Rotary Foundation. For all Matching Grants above $25,001 an audit is required with the annual and final reports. It is the first time the Santa Barbara Rotary Club has had such a large sum, long term Matching Grant project and thus had necessity to do an audit, so it is a learning experience for all of us.

All Suited Up

Sergio is ready for the rainy season (although we have had a welcome cold front the past week the rainy season is still a ways away).

Good-bye Douglas

Douglas Diaz our trusty treasurer will be leaving Santa Barbara in the next few months. He will turn his responsibilities as treasurer for the project over to Melvin Sagastume, the current club treasurer. We will miss Douglas.

Carroll Creek

Sergio has been visiting the Carroll Creek communities of Santa Ana, El Carmen and Buena Vista to check out filter use and will be continuing to re-visit Carroll Creek communities over the next few months to tie up all loose ends.

El Balsamo, Ilama

Allison, our Peace Corps volunteer, Andrea, a visiting volunteer and Rotarian Dr. Alvaro Perez went to El Balsamo, Ilama to do hand out deparasiting medication. The new Community Agents were an incredible help in organizing everyone and making sure that families that couldn’t come still got medication. The whole community was waiting for us when we got there and the whole process took just a few hours.

Maine Rotary Club Visit

February was absolutely packed with Rotary; groups from Maine, Minnesota and Canada were here from February 9th-March 1st. Between visiting groups and our normal filter goals the Agua Pura team was kept busy, working 28 out of 29 days this month!

Alter months of communicating with members of the Freeport and Portland, Maine Rotary Club by e-mail and Skype we finally got to meet a few of them in person. On February 9th a group of five showed up to spend a week in Santa Barbara to work on the filter project.

From left: Allison, Paul, Kaitlyn, Tamara, Marjorie, Jim, Hector

Paul & Kaitlyn are both software engineers from San Diego, California who came along for the ride because Paul’s mom is Jim & Marjorie’s pastor (thankfully they both speak Spanish, so they were very helpful). Tamara is a civil/environmental engineer from Maine and is the wife of a Rotarian. Jim & Marjorie are both engineers (mechanical & chemical respectively) from Maine and are members of the Portland Rotary Club. So, if you add that up, it comes to five engineers!

We were incredibly busy all week, visiting communities, meeting with the local filter manufacturer, local Rotarians and tying up administrative loose ends. Each member of the group brought important skills and was able to contribute to the project in a meaningful way. Tamara was able to help us evaluate our lab procedures for our water analysis, Paul & Katie helped with translating, Jim brought us a great filter carrier (they weight 300+ lbs) and Jim & Marjorie helped us straighten out contract, budget and planning issues. Most importantly they all had great attitudes, were patient and flexible, which is very important down here.

Sunday we all met in the office to do an overview of the project and talk a little bit about the culture and city of Santa Barbara.

Then we headed over to the filter workshop for a tour and a filter installation demonstration. They were ready for us when we arrived and had a welcome sign hanging above the filters.

From left: Tamara, Marjorie, Jim

While at the workshop we also gave our new filter carrier a trial run. Jim brought down a carrier made of steel cables that can support a small or large filter and can be carried by 4 or more people. This type of devise should come in very useful for us when we are delivering filters to homes, especially those with difficult access.
From left, clockwise: Jim, Paul, Rolf, Mauricio

Monday we went to El Conal to deliver 16 filters. The community is about 1 hour away from Santa Barbara with difficult access. Actually, we had no problem getting there, the challenge came with getting out. The Agua Pura truck had to help toe the filter delivery truck on the return trip because of the steep hill out of the village.

We used the filter carrier for the first time and it worked great.
While there we were treated to numerous types of oranges and other fruits that looked just like clementines but tasted wholly different. First, the people that were working with us climbed up into the trees to get them down for us…
Ramon, our driver, in the tree

And then peeled them for us…

Monday night Jim, Marjorie, Nineth & Allison met with Hector, Rene & Douglas from the Santa Barbara Rotary Club filter committee and Maria & Willam from the Agua Pura staff to go over administration. It was great to be all together in one place talking face to face, since most of our communication happens over e-mails half in English and half in Spanish. We were able to come to an agreement on a number of important issues and re-establish our commitment to the project.

Tuesday we started off the day with a quick visit to the hospital for a tour and to drop of a suitcase full of hospital supplies donated from the states.
From left: Morjorie, Dr. Peraza (Assistant Director), Jim, Dr. Mejia (Director), Dr. Marly (Rotarian)

Then we headed to Descansadero to do monitoring of filters that the Maine group installed last September during their visit. During the monitoring Nineth & Mauricio took multiple water samples in order to test the water quality and our lab procedures. Once we got back to the office Tamara helped Nineth and Allison go through the water analysis procedures step by step to identify any problem areas.

From left: Nineth, Tamara, Allison

Wednesday we went back to El Conal to install the filters we had delivered on Monday. Unfortunately we discovered that 6 out of the 16 filters had leaks, which prompted us to do some serious thinking about how we can prevent this in the future.
Paul installing a filter

Wednesday afternoon we returned to the office and analyzed the water analysis from the day before. We concluded that our lab procedures and current equipment were working just fine and we do not need to make any substantial changes or buy new more expensive equipment (that was a relief).

Thursday we went to Zorca to deliver deparasiting medicine to the filter beneficiaries.
Marjorie deparasiting

The Mobil Clinics project also accompanied us and performed basic check-ups.

Friday Kaitelyn, Paul, Tamara & Rolf took a trip to Copan Ruinas to visit the Mayan Ruins. Meanwhile Jim, Marjorie, Nineth & Allison worked on a revised budget and plan for the project, met with Marvin from the filter workshop to talk about improving filter quality and met with Douglas, the treasurer, to review the finances. Finally, we finished off the week by attending the Rotary meeting Friday night in the new Casa de Cultura.

Overall it was a very productive trip and also a wonderful opportunity to meet a great group of people.

Deparasiting

To date we have done deparasiting in six communities under the Carroll Creek grant: Jimilile, La Española, Zorca, Buena Vista, El Carmen/Berlin and El Balsamo. Overall the process has gone very smoothly although it took us a while to get it up and running. Before doing the deparasiting we send one of the Agua Pura Health Promoters to the community to notify the community leaders and the community agents so they can pass the word along to the rest of the filter beneficiaries. We generally set up shop in the school and the families come to us. In the beginning the community members thought it was just for the kids, but we have since made sure to emphasize that we will be giving medication to everybody with a filter. In the beginning we weren’t sure if we should give medication to women to take home to husbands and other children that couldn’t come, but have since decided that this is a good idea in order to reach as many people as possible.

Just two days after the Maine Rotary group left, a large group from Minnesota arrived with doctors, dentists, carpenters and engineers. Rolf, Mauricio and Allison went to Buena Vista to do deparasiting while the Minnesota crew pulled teeth, did check-ups and surveyed the proposed water project there.

Mauricio handing out deparasiting medication.

Rolf helping with translation for the Minnesota Rotary Club medical brigade

Ambassador Charles Ford

On February 22nd Charles Ford, the US ambassador to Honduras came to Santa Barbara to spend a day learning about the projects going on here. To start off his visit he met with four of the Peace Corps volunteers from Santa Barbara to hear about their projects.
From left: Molly, Aerka, Charles, Allison, Katie

After lunch he went with the Santa Barbara Rotary Club to visit the filter workshop and learn about the Agua Pura project. Then that night he spoke at a dinner with the Santa Barbara Rotary Club, the Minnesota Rotary group, the Peace Corps volunteers in town to translate for the Minnesota group, and Nineth & Allison from Agua Pura. He argued that Honduras is in a position to develop and right now small businesses in particular can take advantage of the US market through CAFTA. He talked about the “American Dream” that so many Hondurans have and suggested that instead of paying a coyote $5,000-$7,000 to get you to the US you invest that money in a small business and strive towards the “Honduran Dream” (In Spanish this is really catchy because it rhythms). He also compared Honduras to some of the Asian Tigers, citing how in the 1960s, Honduras was better off than South Korea and now South Korea is leaps and bounds ahead of Honduras. He used this comparison not to make the Hondurans feel bad, but to give them hope that they have the potential to develop within just one generation as South Korea did. His speech was respectful but did make some strong points that change really has to come from within the country. I asked a few Rotarians what they thought about his comments afterward and they seemed to agree that in the end they really are the ones that need to change to see their country change.

El Balsamo, Ilama

We held community agents training in El Balsamo, Ilama, a Carroll Creek community. Soon after the training the agents showed that they were committed to the project by doing a great job of preparing the people for deparasiting. When we arrived in the community everyone was ready and waiting for us and the process only took about an hour. The community agents even volunteered to take medications to those families that weren’t able to come themselves.

Maine Communities

In February we finished installing filters in the three communities of Linderos, San Antonio del Monte and El Conal.

We have also held community meetings and community agents trainings and started installing filters in the four communities of El Capulin, Quebrada Grande, San Jeronimo del Pinal.

We are currently starting work in two new municipalities of Santa Barbara, El Nispero (Tontolo, Nejapa, Paraiso, Barbasco, Nueva York) and San Francisco de Ojuera (El Galvilan, Santa Fe, El Chaparron, La Estancia, El Pilon, San Ramon, La Palca). In order to save time and money we will do one single community agents training in each municipality.

Choluteca

Choluteca

Prompted by the high number of leaks found in the filter we installed in El Capulin we decided to take a trip to the Choluteca filter workshop to learn from their successes. Marvin, the owner of the Santa Barbara workshop, his daughter Ingrid, Nineth and Rolf drove down to Choluteca to talk with Carlos (Choluteca Agua Pura supervisor) and his crew for an afternoon and a morning. Carlos and the crew were a great help. They showed us their whole operation, washed sand for us, mixed and poured filters for us and discussed their installation process. They mentioned that all the staff including the concrete and sand guy have a filter at home. So they can honestly tell people the filter works and base their talk on their own experience.

Marvin was interested in everything he saw, and is enthusiastic about filter building. He asked lots of questions. Ingrid took pictures and notes in a notebook. On the way home they started discussing how to change things in the workshop. Marvin and his wife Melanie came out for a full day of filter and supplies delivery, so she could understand what happens in the field.

We are now conducting a number of sand washing experiments to see if we can come up with a more consistent product. It seems that river sand is inconsistent to begin with, so with the same washing process you will get different flow rates, depending on which part of the sand pile you use. We may get a quote from the Choluteca sand supplier, to see about getting sand shipped from there, as the Choluteca sand washes easily with only two washes and is consistent. It may be cost effective to go that route.

Hygiene and Sanitation Charlas

Charla=talk

Hygiene and santiation are code words for washing your hands at critical times, and using a latrine instead of defecating anywhere that is convenient. The CAWST manual includes the following statistics. If people just change to clean water, intestinal disease and diarrhea goes down 21%. If you just teach people to wash their hands, disease goes down 35%. If you just install latrines, disease goes down 37.5 %. The combined reduction is 93%.

So the key is not to simply provide clean water and latrines, but to get people to understand the chain of bacterial contamination. To be healthy people need to actually use the latrines, and get into the habit of washing their hands at 4 key times- after going to the bathroom, cleaning their infants, before cooking, and before eating. That applies up North too :-)

We try to incorporate more of the health talks and habit changing information in our community education sessions and return visits. In the last few weeks we have been dividing the filter talks. For example, Mauricio will do a short introduction, then Rolf will do a 30 minute health talk, followed by Mauricio going into detail about the filters. Essentially, when we introduce the filter concept to a village we are travelling salesmen.

Rolf uses interactive learning, with little lecture and lots of questions and involvement by the audience, to get them to think about their own village and their own habits. Earlier this week in La Palca we got spontaneous applause after the health talk from our audience of 81 households. What a rush.

APPM National Meeting

On January 14th-17th all of the Agua Pura para el Mundo projects from Honduras met in Siguatepeque for the annual APPM meeting. The staff from Santa Barbara, Choluteca, Copan, Tela, La Ceiba, Trujillo and a representative from Danli were all able to attend. It was a wonderful opportunity for Mauricio, Sergio and Allison to meet the staff from different projects since this was the first national meeting they had attended. It was also an opportunity to meet the new APPM Administrator, William.
Maria & William

We started with presentations from each project to share our current progress, experiences and lessons learned. It was interesting to see how different each project is and how approaches work in different regions even within Honduras. For example, some projects receive wonderful support from the Secretary of Health and are able to work with them to do all their water testing. Also, aspects such as terrain and occupation of the filter beneficiaries make a difference. There is a new project starting in Tela, on the north coast, and they plan to install filters in some communities with no road access, which adds a whole new element to transporting a 300+ pound cement filter. Also, the projects vary widely in their duration and the number of filters to be installed.

We also learned some important lessons from the other projects, such as effective ways to collect counterpart payments. Each family that receives a filter pays a ¨counterpart¨of 150 lempiras (about $8). During our Carroll Creek grant we gave the filter beneficiaries two months to pay this counterpart. This didn’t work out for us very well, because people would never end up paying. Now, Sergio has to return to past communities to collect money. Other projects collect the counterpart money either before or during installation of the filters with much higher success, so we plan to follow suite and do the same.

Despite the differences between projects we all agreed that the Community Agents training and thorough monitoring are indispensable.

Next, we received a presentation from Lucy Vallejo, a representative from Handals, which sells products for water analysis. She reviewed basic information about water quality and contamination and demonstrated how to use various water testing products. Every APPM in Honduras does microbial testing for fecal coliformes, however we all use somewhat different equipment and laboratory techniques. Over the past few months we have been having some trouble with our water analysis in Santa Bárbara so it was an important opportunity for all of us to compare what works well and what doesn’t. We are currently considering how to improve our quality of water testing by changing laboratory techniques and/or investing in new lab equipment.
We also had the pleasure of talking with a representative from the Secretary of Health about epidemiology in Honduras as it relates to water contamination.

After hearing from Handals and the Secretary of Health, we moved on to internal administrative issues within APPM Honduras. Although it was not the most exciting part of the workshop, it may have been the most important. We were able to work together to come up with a uniform reporting method that we could all agree on. From now on every project in Honduras will use the same format to report project progress and financial expenditure. We also created a new monitoring questionnaire to measure the success of filter use within each project and with the help of Katie Strass, a Water & Sanitation engineer with the Peace Corps, we were able to create a database to analyze all the data.

Maria & Nineth working on formating

William, the new administrator for APPM, then continued by talking about annual planning. Since each project has specific goals and deadlines it is important that we have a plan to be able to achieve our goals and meet our deadlines. Currently the Santa Barbara team is working on establishing our goals, identifying the activities that will allow us to achieve those goals and how we will measure our success. We are also working on the elaboration of a 3-6 month calendar that will help us stay on track with each of our Matching Grants.

From left: Mauricio, Nineth, Sergio, Allison

Clinicas Móviles

Mobil Clinics is a project run out of the Santa Barbara hospital which sends doctors and nurses to communities in Santa Barbara without access to primary health care. The Agua Pura team met with them to figure out which communities they work with and how our organizations could collaborate. Currently, we have one overlapping community with the Carroll Creek Matching Grant and will have a number of other overlapping communities with the Maine Matching Grant. We think the relationship will be beneficial for both Agua Pura and the Mobil Clinics. First, installing filters in the communities where the Mobil Clinic work will improve the health of the community members, thus benefiting the Mobil Clinic team. Second, the Mobil Clinic staff can do informal supervision of the filters, encourage filter use and reinforce good hygiene and sanitation when they visit their communities with filters. Third, we can work together to hand out anti-parasite medication and may be able to share the cost of the drugs. We have scheduled to do deparasiting with them in Zorca, one of our Carroll Creek communities on February 14th.

Deparasiting

After months of working to get the deparasiting component of the project started we finally have things up and running thanks to the help of the Rotary doctors and various donations of medicine. There are currently five doctors in the Santa Barbara Rotary Club and all of them have committed to help us with do deparasiting. We met with the doctors to discuss the type of medicine we would use and when each of them could accompany us to the communities to hand out the medicine. Although handing out the medicine is simple, having a doctor with us gives us added credibility in the community and allows the Rotary member an opportunity to support the project.

We were thankful to get a total of 1,100 doses of anti-parasite medicine donated to us from Robert Turner and Agua Pura. Robert Turner is a college student from Idaho who visits Honduras multiple times a year to work with filters and do deparasiting. He gave us 500 doses of Albendazole in tablets and 200 doses of Albendazole in suspension. Maria also gave us 400 doses of Albendazole in tablets. We were able to use these medications to do our first deparasiting in Jimilile, Arada. Overall things went very smoothly and quickly. Albendazole is straight forward, safe and easy to administer. Babies from 1-2 years of receive 200 mg in liquid form and everyone above 2 years of age receives 400 mg in liquid or tablet form depending on their age. There is no weighing necessary and the entire amount is given all at once. The tablet is chewable and tastes surprisingly good (Allison, our Peace Corps volunteer, ate one), little kids had no problem sucking on it. Although the tablet is chewable and tasty many of the women that came in to get the medication were either scared or embarrassed to eat it in front of us. We would give it to them and tell them to eat it and they would just hold it in their hand and smile and say they would eat it later. We preferred they all take the medication in front of us so we could insure that they wouldn’t use it or give it to somebody else. It took quite a bit of coaxing for some of the women, but we got all of them to eat it on the spot.
The liquid form also tastes good (Chris, our last Agua Pura volunteer, had some) but it can be more of a challenge to get the babies to drink it. They have a tendency to cry and spit it up.

This baby is surprisingly cooperative.

Although the process went very smoothly in Jimilile, it was our first time and we still need to work out a few kinks. Originally we thought that we would only give medication to those who actually came to us and got it, yet we realize now that this will almost always leave out a large portion of the community. In total, there are 244 beneficiaries in Jimilile, but we only gave medicine to 134 people, mostly women and children. Very few men or older boys came because they were working on the coffee farms. Although women and children are the most important groups to reach, we would still like to reach as many as possible. Therefore, we need to consider the possibility of giving extra medication to the female head of the household if she comes but her husband or children can’t come.

We are also considering the possibility of giving another type of medication in addition to or in place of Albendazole. Although Albendazole is preferable because is easy and cheap ($0.03 for one tablet and $0.50 for one bottle) it does not kill amoebas that are commonly found in Honduras. Therefore we are investigating the possibility of coupling it with another medication that will kill amoebas, to do a more thorough job.

Linderos & San Antonio

This month we have started working in Linderos and San Antonio, two new communities under the Maine Matching Grant. These two communities actually solicited Agua Pura for filters after they heard about a neighboring community with filters. They met independently as a community and came to use with a list of people who already wanted filters. This community initiative is very important and has helped the entire process go smoothly. We have already held socializations, capacitations and Community Agents training and have finished installing filters in both communities.

New Agua Pura Volunteer

Volunteers are an indispensable asset to the Agua Pura projects in Honduras. Not only do they contribute to virtually all aspects of the project they also gain a meaningful experience from serving. Currently, three of the projects in Honduras are working with long term Agua Pura volunteers and two work with Peace Corps volunteers. As we become increasingly busy here in Santa Barbara, we feel a need for extra help. Therefore, we have requested a full time Agua Pura volunteer to work with the Santa Barbara project.

In the meantime we have the wonderful opportunity to work with Rolf Stengl, an Agua Pura/CAWST volunteer from Calgary, Canada, here to work with us for two months. Rolf has traveled in Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and Ecuador. Even so, Rolf says “Honduras and this project is totally different. Today in El Balsamo we went on roads and trails right out of an Indiana Jones movie, including the hanging bridge. I’m amazed they got filters in there. It’s worth it, as everyone we talked to say their health has improved and they use the filters daily. This group is a fun bunch, and I’m glad to be working here.”

December 2007

Although we only worked a few weeks in December we were able to get a lot done. We did monitoring in El Diviso, El Carmen and Buena Vista. Held community meetings in El Carmen and Buena Vista and trained Community Agents from San Francisco de Ojuera, Buena Vista and El Carmen.

Buena Vista, Atima

Buena Vista, Atima is a community over three hours away from Santa Barbara. It is by far the poorest community we work with. They have no electricity, no running water, no pilas and no latrines.

They don’t have fences either…

They get their water from about 15 different wells (more like holes in the ground) and have to carry it back to their house. The women usually make three or more trips per day, each trip taking 5-30 minutes depending on how far away the well is from their house. During the dry season they wake up at 4 am to go to the well to get water before it dries up. This can take hours because all the women are there at the same time trying to get water.
At the urging of a Rotary Club from Minnesota that visited Buena Vista for a medical brigade last year, Agua Pura installed filters in the community. In early December the Agua Pura team went to Buena Vista for the week to do monitoring of the filters and train Community Agents from El Carmen and Buena Vista.

Mauricio teaching about the three steps of water treatment

Nineth teaching filter installation

Proud graduates

It was wonderful to find that the health of the community has improved greatly since they started using water but they still have a serious lack of water. Luckily the same Minnesota Rotary Club that visited last year is hoping to fund the installation of a water system in the community to provide everyone with running water. Therefore Katie Strass, a Peace Corps Volunteer who works as a Water & Sanitation engineer, also went to Buena Vista for the week to collect data for the water system. Meanwhile, Allison, the Peace Corps Volunteer that works with Agua Pura, went door-to-door conducting a needs assessment for the application to Rotary International for the funding for the water system. Everyone in the community was happy to see us and thanked us for visiting.

Family Profile Buena Vista, Atima

Besy & Doni

Besy and her 3 year old son Doni were instrumental in our work there. They both accompanied Allison from house to house for the needs assessment. While the Agua Pura team usually wears sturdy hiking boots or tennis shoes when we go out into the field (and still manage to fall in the mud).Besy wore flip flops and Doni wore dress shoes. He was amazing! He didn’t complain once and walked the whole way without asking to be carried, meanwhile the Agua Pura team was absolutely exhausted hiking up and down mountains all day.

Besy is a very strong woman who works hard and understands the importance of serving her community. She even withstands the challenges and criticism that sometimes comes along pushing the boundaries. For example, she had to ask her husband for permission to attend the Community Agents training. He was reluctant at first but then conceded. Also, she has to brush off the comments that some community members make about her for leaving the community to work on projects. They suspect her to be a “bad woman” if she is leaving and sleeping somewhere else for a night or two. Through all of this is was wonderful to hear that she has confidence that she knows she is doing what is right and doesn’t care what others say about her. She is thankful to have a filter and is excited to see a water system come to Buena Vista. Here she recounts her daily routine during the dry season: “I wake up at 4 am to bring water because early in the morning there is water, in the day there is no water. We have to wake up early to bring water for the entire day. The women and children go in groups of 5 or 6. I can’t carry water in buckets because I wasn’t born here, the women that we born here can, I carry water in smaller containers. I go 3 or 4 times in the morning so I don’t have to go when there is sun. From 4-6 am I bring water. I only bring water for the kitchen. To bath and wash clothes I have to leave again.”

We didn’t see much of her husband or older son because they were out working. Humberto, her husband was with Katie, doing the study for the system and her 8 year old son was working in the field all day.