Thursday, October 25, 2007

Hey Yall,
I posted a bunch of pictures (newly captioned) on snapfish. There were too many to post on the blog at one time. If you didn't get 3 emails from me with 3 different photo albums, let me know (sarusso82@gmail.com) and I will get that out to you. Today is the big day that we officially swear in and become volunteers...more to come shortly!

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Site Visit

Hey All!
Once again, my internet time is short and sweet right now, because my friends and I are going to catch a 5 pm movie before we head back to our training site. Also, once again I am without my photo card and I didn´t bring my camera to my site anyway for the site visit...but. However, I spent the last 6 days in the site where I will spend the next 2 years with the family that I will live with for the first 3 months. It is absolutely beautiful...even when it rains, the town is in the clouds so you are looking down on a cloud forest below. When it isn´t raining, you can see the ocean in the distace, although it is only about 45 minutes of traveling for me to get there. The house that the previous volunteer built is really nice and has a great view, but it is pretty far off the road. I think she liked to have some privacy. I want something more near the center of the town, so I am going to be building a new house during the first 3 months while I am staing with my host family. Im going to try and make it something with view, but the central part of town is a little lower elevation so Im not to sure.

My family consists of a mother and father in their late 20s, and 4 kids aged 12, 9,5, and 9months. They all have tons of personality (although my spanish is still a little too slow to understand some of their jokes) and the baby is sooooo cute (you will see lots of pictures soon). The family is relatively well off because they get some money monthly from a missionary. They still live in a bamboo house, but the food was really good. I ate chicken necks and feet for the first time and witnessed my first chicken pateo killing (chicken pateo is the chicken from the patio, not from the store...they scough at store bought chicken).

The day that I got there, a representative from a water committe from a neighboring town (about hour and a half hike) showed up with a written solicitud for help with an aqueduct in their town. I hiked out their on Saturday to take a look at their spings and the layout of the town. They were very poor (more so than my community) and had many other problems besides the lack of water (no latrines, no school, no health center). We had a meeting afterwards, and about 30 or 40 people showed up from a town of only about 100 people. I first had to explain what peace corps was (and wasn´t) and told them I would help. I´m not too sure how the aquaduct will work out because it is a pretty tough hike (all the cement, sand, stone will need to be hauled in on shoulders) and the houses are really spread out (making the cost really high relative to the amount of people you are reaching). If we don´t end up getting funding for an aquaduct I will still complete some sort of project there, but we shall see.

After that first request, I was also approached by two other near by communities. The previous volunteer wasn´t an engineer, and she didn't feel comfortable working on aquaducts (she build a ton of latrines), so I think I will be fairly busy working on water projects. In my town, their is an aqueduct and a tank, but many houses aren´t connected to it. Also, the source dries up in the summer. Their was a big politically funded project in the town to put in a big pump and tank at a spring below the town about six years ago. Looking at it, I figure it had to cost at least 10 grand. The pump has only actually worked twice. They want me to help with the pump, but I am very hesitant because a) Im not a pump mechanic (I can size them and help design what would be needed) and b) it was a completely unsustainable project so start, and I think money would better be spent finding another spring above the town even if it is really far away. We would only have to transport it to the existing spring boxes anyway, so I think it is possible.

That is all for now, I promise I will be updating more regularly once I am settled in my site. For those of you expecting a call, the phone card system has been down for over a week now, so I will call when it is up and running. Peace!

Love,

Steve