A house

My house is done. It´s a great feeling to be eating and sleeping under my own roof/leaves. I´m still working on setting up my water, shower, and latrine, but the the house itself is complete, with the help of the community. The house has a penca (palm thatched) roof, quincha (mud-stray mix over a wooden frame) walls, and a dirt floor. I built the door and windows myself (out of lumber from the provincial capital), as well as a shelf, all of which are hideous but functional. There´s about a foot of space between the roof and the walls, so the strong winds make it very drafty inside. It´s cool during the day and chilly at night - I couldn´t ask for anything more.

Crossroads

I find this to be amazing: in the community where i live there are no
paved roads, currently no running water, no electricity, yet the
technology exists and is available here for me to post this entry from
my cell phone for a penny.

A journal entry from Friday 28 December 2007

Something's running around in my room. I check my clock and it's midnight. A plastic bag crackles on the floor, then another on the shelf. I shine my flashlight around, generating more quick sounds of movement and then silence. It's probably a rat. Yesterday Dr. Lourdes sent out an email about a Hanta Virus death in the Province of Veraguas. I live in Coclé. Coclé borders Veraguas. My throat is dry. I turn off my light and get comfortable in bed. What are the symptoms of Hanta Virus? I can't remember exactly what they said. . . I think vomiting was one. My stomach doesn't feel right. . . . And it has something to do with dry areas, right? Something seems to fall off the wall not a foot frommy head, followed by a squeak and quick movement. I get the flashlight again and find a rat tail. No that's an umbrella cord. Why can't I sleep? I don't have to go to the bathroom, there really isn't much noise . . . my stomach is a little queasy and my throat a bit dry. . . am I dying of Hanta Virus? If I vomit then definitely yes. . . Hanta onsets quickly, if I remember medical training correctly . . . something about 15 minutes? Should I call the office now? "I think I'm dying of Hanta Virus," I could say . . . But then what? It's a three hour hike to the hospital. Maybe they could chopper me out more quickly. Where would it land, though. . . . maybe the open land near the school, but that's not very flat. . . probably the pasture and corn field next door. That would be a great story for the locals, "We had a helicopter land on our property to rescue the gringo dieing of the plague." Forget it. I'm going to sleep. I put in my ear plugs so I can't hear whatever it is infecting my room with whatever deadly disease there may be. I hope I don't die of Hanta Virus.

Progress

The house is still in progress, unfortunately. We're making progress, though. We had a great time making the walls - creating a huge pool of mud, adding straw, stomping on it, and then laying it over the walls - a few more iterations of this are still needed. Hopefully this week it will be done, I say for the seventh time.

A nearby community has no water system and is strongly motivated to work for one. To meet their water needs, the locals carry water form water holes. The government office in charge of rural water systems has been unwilling to work much with this community because the identified source provided insufficient flow for the entire community. That is how it has stood for years. On Monday, I went with the community, around 20 men volunteered their time to participate, and we located and measured the flow from all of the sources of which the locals knew. We found more than enough water, and this is the dry season. It was an amazing experience, trekking through thick forest at times, roughly 700 meters up, while working to provide access to safe drinking water for about 200 people.

Meanwhile, I'm helping the local health worker with a vaccination campaign against mumps, and learning that it is quite a logistical challenge to deal with vaccinations in rural areas with no electricity, considering that they need to be refrigerated. Solar panels were recently brought, on loan, to run a refrigerator in the local health center, but that's where it stands - brought. Unfortunately the not-to-be-named did no install it nor advise anyone on its installation. I imagine they will be returning presently to install it.

Pictures: My house (under construction), my hen and chicks, my friends with my motete, my friends.

Distractions

We've been making steady progress with my house - the main framework is in place, and the roof is almost covered. We ran out of the palm leaves the day we were covering the roof, and collecting more is an exhausting task that the group just wasn't up to. So add another week onto the time of construction.

I can ride a calm horse now, and enjoy that. I tried without a saddle but that just doesn't work for me.

I've finished (roughly) a comprehensive community analysis of where I live, identifying the resources the community has, the resources that are being abused, potential threats, and opportunities. One of the critiques of Peace Corps as a development agency is that not enough assessment and evaluation is done for both determining what work to do and then determining if that work had any effect; for this reason, I'm making sure I collect enough data to show the current status of the community and then repeat the data collection post-projects. I'm not alone on this; I'm collaborating with another volunteer and we're hoping to help see this sort of assessment and evaluation become standard practice.

Wandering around

I´m quickly finding that there is a lot of interest in acquiring and improving water systems with the communities with water problems, however interest in working for the water is at times lacking. So, helping communities become more organized, I am beggining to see, will be a significant part of my work.

I´m working with the local health worker to initiate a project to travel to each community within the corregimiento (i.e. county) to provide standard vaccinations - I want to get to each community to learn about their drinking water situations, so this extra project will fit in well. Some of these communities are in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Keeping the vaccinations on ice while trekking out to the towns in nearly 100 degrees of motivation-draining heat will be a feat in itself - I´m hoping for cloudy days. I imagine many have not been visited by health workers with vaccinations for quite some time, so I think there is a lot of need. The first part of our efforts will be to determine if there is that need, visiting each community. I´m thinking about learning to ride horse for the distances.

Making slow progress on my house - chopped down my first tree, with mixed feelings, to be sure. We have roughly half of the wood (branches, not lumber) we need for the frame, permission to use the palm branches from a nearby pasture for the roof, and all of the mud we could ask for to make the walls.

Holidays

I´m learning more about my community and the neighboring communities - my ´work´ has mainly consisted of this. There is a national legal framework that requires a local Water Committee for rural water systems, for maintanence and fee collection. But in my community there is not much willingness to do the work. My job is to work with the Water Committee to enhance the water system, but my job is quite difficult when there is no Committee. So this is essentially my first task, generating interest and motivation to improve the community´s water.

Christmas here was celebrated more by family togetherness, and gifts are all but nonexistent. However, during the night some men tend to drink far too much, either ´chicha fuerte´ (a homemade corn alcohol) or the cheapest bottled liquor, an unfortunate practice in such a beautiful community. On C. Eve, my host family has the tradition of staying up until midnight and then having a special meal, which is the only celebratory expense for their holidays. They enjoy Christmas and are grateful for what they have.