Date: 30Sep02 3:50pm
Queridos amigos,
More news from down under. Wow this was
undoubtably one of the best weeks in my peace
corps life. After many months of worring and
more worring about a project that me and my
friend Justin designed and supervised the water
miraculously arrived at the tank. You see the
systems are gravity flow and so if our
topographic study would have been off by only a
few meters of elevation in a line 6.5 Km long the
water would have never gotton to the tank. I was
so releived that It was practically all I thought
about for the whole day, and dreamt about at
night. And the town was so damn happy. Wow they
really think justin and I are the greatest now.
And the reality of the situation is that they did
99% of the work. Here the projects are all
constructed by hand and the people in the town do
their own system. This requires digging a 9 Km
long trench 70 cm deep. And man is this tough
Justin and i have helped them dig and let me tell
you its no piece of cake. THen theyve got to
carry tons of tubes and sand and stuff all over
the place to build tank and a damn to catch the
water. To top it off it turns out that almost
twice as much water as we wanted flows to the
tank. But as far as we are concerned its as good
as perfect.
THen the next day we went with almost all the
women of the community to plant trees in the
watershead. And wow! It was such a blast the
women loved it and I gave what I thought was a
good motivational speach to get every one to come
the week before, and it was great to see so many
come (50 or so came). but thats not all. My
wandering nature led me to suggest to a the group
of men who are in charge of protecting the water
shed that we wander farther and farther into the
forest to see what we find. And oh man there we
found some of the most beuatiful scenery I have
seen outside of a national park, and even more
importantly we taught these men where their water
comes from and they loved the adventure, they had
never been there before either. It turns out we
also found some cows and a corn field in the
watershead and we are talking to the mayor to see
if they can buy the land and make it a reserve.
Hes all for it and we talked of making a map of
thé water shed to keep permanantly in the mayors
office and in the community so that all the town
will know where their water comes from. Oh I
should explain that it is so important to have a
good watershed because they dont treat the water
before drinking it which makes chemicals from
agriculture runnoff and cow shit very critical to
avoid.
And the kicker to the week was that my friend
Mauricio and I and another friend Pattis fiance
and I went out to a pool hall and played pool all
day and we wound up talking and talking forever
about machismo, getting married, THe USA,
Honduras, etc and my spanish was really kicking
onto high gear. My friend mauricio told me today
that I "Soltaste la lengua anoche", which means I
let my toungue go last night. and I really did.
It was such a blast, then we went to get some
food at the mayors house cause hes the only place
to get food late at night and i was joking with
the mayor and wow i wish you could know just how
fun it all was and then as we got back home in a
pouring rainstorm the fiance of patti decided to
announbce to Patis dad that he was going to ask
her to marry him and there I was sitting there
wondering if I should get up and let them talk
alone, I mean this was a big announcement and
there I was quite drunk and jolly not prepared
for such a conversation., Now I know why we went
out in the first place, he needed to get the
gumption up!
Love you all,
Chris