8 glasses of water a day

Disclaimer: chicken killing pictures towards the end of this post. Warning to all my veg-head friends or and the squeamish.

I am feeling more and more integrated in Santa Marta. The first few weeks I felt like a broken record, but now I am feeling human again. I am invited to the farms frequently, I know almost every adults name (there are too many kids) and spend the afternoons discussing politics, culture, love, and life. This is a great break from the constant Peace Corps explanation I was doing. I can be myself and joke around without having the guilt to talk about work; meanwhile I am building great relationships here in my community and everyday feel a little more at home.

 

At the end of May we had a regional meeting. Every volunteer in the province plus the office staff gather for announcements and updates. These meetings happen every 4 months and is a nice time to check in with other volunteers. This was my first regional meeting, so I was able to meet other volunteers who have already been here for a year plus. Since we live in one of coolest provinces in Panama, we have our after party on Bocas Island! To get to Isla Colon (the biggest and most popular island) is about an hour boat ride from the mainland. Upon arrival, I was shocked to hear everyone speaking English and see taco trucks, ice cream, and beer. Upon arrival tourists are greeted with a downtown strip with restaurants and shops on the water. However if you want to go to the beach you need to travel to the other side of the island, which is a 30 minute windy-road bus ride. Nonetheless the beach was absolutely beautiful and the water was crystal clear. It was a great getaway from jungle life.

 

I have received many questions about my water filter so I want to update readers. I have received my filter and have been sick-free ever since. Thankfully the medical office sent it to my nearest post office.

 

Speaking of water, in an earlier post I explained the water situation in Santa Marta and its faulty aqueduct. Which, I have now learned isn’t even an aqueduct. It is called a “toma”. In short, it is a tube that is stuck in the side of a hill that collects the water from the watershed inside the hill. Then there are a line of tubes that travel all the way to the community.  This is different from an aqueduct because an aqueduct includes a tank to store water and also includes a filtration system.

Example of a toma

 

 At the regional meeting I met other volunteers who offered to help me out with this problem. There is a married couple that live not too far from me and work in the sector Environmental Health.  They have training specific with aqueducts (not to mention the husband is an engineer). They offered to come and check out the toma and give me ideas on what I can do to help the community.

Before they came, I had been helping a few community members look for other watersheds. One day we hiked up into the jungle for 3 hours! They think that the reason why the water goes out is because the current toma is drying up. They want to look for a new place to start a new aqueduct. This in itself poses many problems. First, Panama uses a lot of aqueducts and wells to capture rain and water from the ground. Go Panama! They take advantage of the abundant water from being in the tropics. BUT the government doesn’t have a water district for every city like there is in the states. MINSA (ministerio de salud de la Republica de Panama) is the national health and water agency. But from what I have seen, a community needs to present a proposal before MINSA in hopes to get funding to build an aqueduct. If the proposal is approved, an engineer will come to the community and look for potential watersheds to capture water and then MINSA will fund the project. But for a community to bring a proposal to MINSA, it is best to be written by the water community, which depending on the community, may or may not be organized enough to have a committee. Also, many engineers from MINSA that come to look for water sources come during the rainy season. The catch is that during the summer these sources dry up, which is what happened in Santa Marta. The engineer looked for a place during the rainy season and thought it was permanent. After it dried up in the summer the community worked with the existing tubes to makeshift their own toma sans the help of MINSA. Santa Marta also had a water committee but there was an incident in the past and the president left with all the funds they had collected from the community. Another problem is that MINSA offices are not abundant, maybe one per province and the closest MINSA office for my province is about a 2 hour bus ride. Even if my community had a water committee, the poverty level is high enough that it would be difficult for members to pay for a bus there and back.

And now that I have arrived, there are high expectations that I or Peace Corps will be paying for the materials for a new aqueduct. Unfortunately, Peace Corps does not give funding for projects and if volunteers need money for projects, options are (in order from most desirable to least): work with national agencies and government officials, ask friends and family, pay for it yourself.

 After the couple visited me, they gave me great advice on what I needed to do to help the community form a committee. They gave me resources that includes workshops and seminars that can help the committee organize itself. It includes: communication strengthening, budgeting, enforcement of rules, writing a contract, writing a formal letter, and MINSA committee laws.

In regards to the actual toma, my engineer friend said he was impressed with the makeshift toma my community had made and doesn’t recommend looking for another source of water. The water source is large enough and he recommends using a few more tubes to stick into the hillside. Then connect these tubes to the principal tube that travels to the community. The idea is to collect more water from various tubes and various places in the ground and connect them all with a bigger principal tube to allow more water to travel to the community. I enjoy this better then looking in the jungle for other water sources. However the decision would have to be made by the water committee.

 

I also had my first meeting with the community. I explained what Peace Corps was and what my sector works in. While i have been explaining this to people as I have been meeting them, I really wanted to reinforce it. I have also been warned by other volunteers that throughout time people forget. After my explanation I did a community activity. In training we learned about Participatory Analysis for Community Action (PACA) tools. These tools include group activities such as map making, seasonal and daily calendar making, and needs assessment analysis. These are also great ways to get the community to communicate and work together. 

I decided to do the map activity first. Participants made maps in groups of men, woman, and children. They could draw whatever they wanted: houses, farms, school, other surrounding cities, ect. At first, the women were particularly hesitant. “but Meti, I can’t draw. But Meti, I don’t understand." I reassured them that this was not a drawing contest but a chance to express themselves, communicate, recognize the resources that they have in the community, and have fun! Within no time there was a group of woman laughing around their map. The participants then categorized what they liked and didn’t like in the community and ranked resources from most important to least important. There were about 40 participants and they all seemed to enjoy the activity.

 

Kids making map

 

Women group

Here in Santa Marta Fathers’ Day is celebrated as a community. There was food for all, presents, speeches, and decorations. It was really beautiful to see a whole community come together to celebrate. I did become emotional because I realized how much I missed my father (love you Dad) but also realized that I have many father-like figures here in the community.

Crowned "Father of the Year"

Feasting at the celebration

 

In other fun news, the ex-vegetarian killed a chicken for the first time! It was actually a little sad and I don’t think I’d ever do it again but it was quite the experience.

Plucking the feathers

 

 

Learning anatomy in Spanish