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.