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.