Week #38 – 10,000 Filters

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On Tuesday, we presented our project results to the La Ceiba Rotary club.  They were so impressed with our girls, they asked them to present at the Rotary District's Incoming Board Members' Conference.

In short, everything that has been going on for the last month has ended well. At our local Rotary meeting, Enelida and Keyla did a PowerPoint of what Pure Water has accomplished so far in La Ceiba.  The Rotarians were very pleased and asked if our girls would be interested in doing the same presentation ( Download Here) to all the clubs in Honduras at the District conference.  They thought it was important to emphasize what Pure Water and Rotary have been accomplishing by working together and what we could continue to do in the future.  This was a great honor for us not only because it showed that our local club supported us but also because Pure Water was the only NGO invited to present at this conference. 

What we had to say was impressive. With Rotary and Pure Water working together, we have installed over 10,000 filters between six projects in Honduras.  This is over 50,000 people with clean drinking water since 2003.  We have another five project sites coming online with grants this next year in Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.  Plus there is the work that Mike Swirp is doing in Guatemala and our other project in Haiti.  We didn't even touch on the additional benefits of skills and knowledge transfer, job creation, and the grant money injected into the local economies.  All told, I think we have made a big difference in this country and we are only now just gearing up.

The rest of the week we spent moving our filter molds into the new workshop. Willie, the owner, is a retired construction manager that is now raising Tilapia and making cinder blocks.  He lives in one of the communities where we were installing filters and was so impressed with the technology that he practically leapt out of his seat when I first mentioned moving our workshop.  Let's just say at 55, he has more energy than I can possibly keep up with.  So with our new partner, we delivered a contract for him to review and dropped off the molds to get production tests started.  Next week I will spend out there going over the process of full production but I think he will do just fine.

We also went back to El Recreo to drop off the water bottles and to visit Digna.  She was sleeping when we came but her mom said she was doing well.  She also said that none of her 11 kids have had a water sickness since installing the filter and Digna has added some weight back on.  The mom was actually so thankful for the filter, she made her full payment.  Quite a vote of confidence considering how poor she is.  Next week we will return with the Rotarians to conduct stool samples and give out deparasiting meds to everyone who has paid for their filter.  I think this was also a big reason why she wanted to finish paying off her filter.

All in all, a week a great relief and finally some normality. I can't wait to get filters going again next week

Here is Enelida presenting to all 25 Honduran clubs 

Two of the many brothers and sisters of Digna

Bath time for the boys

Delivering the filter molds to Willie's warehouse

Robert Kent Jr- robkentjr@gmail.com
Wat/San/Health Consultant
www.PureWaterForTheWorld.blogspot.com
www.RobJKentJr.blogspot.com
Cell: +504 9871-5318
Work/Home: +1 (631) 458-1119

Week #37 – A corner turned?

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This week had us on the edge of our seats. We thought we were that close to having everything we had worked for being wiped clean.

 

Let me start by saying how much I hate politics and how it can drive good people to make stupid decisions. Moving the filter workshop opened up an opportunity for some people to raise a fuss about the project.  This, unfortunately, was directed at our site manager and health promoter, Enelida and Keyla respectively.  At 'issue' was their ability to manage the project and how poorly they had done, for example, letting the workshop fail.  I don't agree with this at all and thankfully many other people didn't either.  I think what happened here is that these two girls speak their minds and in a macho culture they stepped on some toes so they became an easy target to implement a bigger plan.

 

This larger objective goes back abouttwo years when the La Ceiba project was first put to paper.  A contract was drawn up allowing MAMUCA to make, install and follow-up everything to do with the filters, the local Rotary Club would pay them for each filter completed and Pure Water would provide MAMUCA with the technical support it lacked.  By the time the grant money finally arrived in October 2006 all the players involved had changed except MAMUCA, so they were still expecting the work and money.  When they were told this would not happen a lot of people weren't happy, especially so after we left the filter workshop MAMUCA is still using.  This gave some MAMUCA loyalists the perfect opportunity to try and reclaim what had been lost.

 

Hence, the big meeting this week. All sides were called in and taken to account for what had happened.  Rasa and I opted to stay as uninvolved as possible because this decision is for the La Ceiba club to make.  They pay Enelida and Keyla out of the grant and it is their Rotary project.  Besides, to build sustainability after we leave all decisions need to take place between the people who will stay here and continue the work.  As hard as it was to keep quite on this matter, it is ultimately not my project (the mantra of Peace Corps) and the La Ceiba Rotary club has to live with the results.  So with four hours of talk, each person was able to give their side of the story as to why we changed workshops and why they are unhappy with our girls. 

 

The result of the meeting took a week to work itself out. This hanging shadow of the girls being fired was extremely damaging to our team moral and for the rest of the week, they were difficult and quarrelsome with Rasa and I.  Lashing out at the ones closest to you I suppose.  Rasa and I were sick with the thought we might have to go through the whole process of finding and hiring two new people again.  Not to mention the possibility of having to work with an ex-employee of Pure Water who might be hired back on by MAMUCA.  So not relishing the thought of this, I tried all the Machiavellian options I could think of to turn the situation in our favor.  I was tired of being outmaneuvered and smiled at by the same people.

 

Stay tuned to see how it all turns out. I'll give you a hint: this whole episode ended not at all how I planned but much better than I could have imagined.

 

It was Keyla's birthday so we brought her to Applebee's

 

We made another trip to San Pedro Sula to meet Tom Kennedy and his family

 

Delivering the water bottles, which are much better than buckets

 

This is Willie and he isthinking how to turn these buckets into plastic filters 

 

Our new filter workshopand Tilapia farm

 

Robert J Kent Jr- robjkentjr@gmail.com
Wat/San/Health Consultant
www.PureWaterForTheWorld.blogspot.com
www.RobJKentJr.blogspot.com
Cell: +504 9871-5318
Work/Home: +1 (631) 458-1119

Week #36 – Back to the grind

As expected, nothing happened with our project while we were gone. Mostly due to the fallout of our decision to move the filter workshop.

The week after we pulled our molds from the workshop there were plenty of second thoughts. Ahem, or maybe bruised egos might be a better way of putting it. Either way, everything was put on hold until we returned from vacation and were able to explain our decision again. So basically, we re-explained all the reasons why we decided to move (poor quality, late delivery, no personal interest in the project) to the same people as before. Today, Rasa and our site manager had another meeting with MAMUCA to do the same thing but as usual no one showed up. So maybe with a stroke of luck everyone will be happy this time and we can finally move into our new workshop and start making filters again.

What happened? Well, in short everyone who needed to know about the decision to move wasn’t told. Our fault? Hard to say. We always try our best to keep everyone informed and accommodated but we are not perfect and can’t be in three places at once, only two. In our first meeting, everyone was invited but of course the people who didn’t show up were the ones who raised the biggest problems. This resulted in us losing three weeks now and then being accused of falling behind schedule. We can’t win. But with a flurry of diplomatic efforts, a show of strength (thanks to Maria our country director) and some down right brownnosing we made everyone happy once again.

Where does this leave us now? We are waiting for a contract to be drawn up for the new workshop. We are all ready and just itching to start producing filters again. The best thing about this has been the time to catch up on all the little things we have been putting off. We were able to make it back to our first community and deliver the plastic water bottles. We also got to check up on the filters we installed to see if they were being used. Out of 68 delivered, 3 have not yet been installed due to lack of payment, 4 made the payment this week and will be installed tomorrow, 1 person didn’t understand how to use it so we retrained them, 1 person wasn’t using it but lied that they were, 58 were being used correctly, and only 1 person didn’t want theirs anymore.

Why didn’t this one person want his filter? I don’t know exactly but I suspect his neighbor of influencing him. When we first installed the filters this particular neighbor didn’t want her filter because she said the sand was dirty and the filter was just a scam. She raised quite a ruckus and we needed the community leader to tell her not to spread lies. It’s a shame because the person who doesn’t want it is very poor with six kids. But what can we do? Keep it in his house hoping he might use it or take it out and give it to someone who wants it? We are going to move it to a house who wants it. There were also seven more houses who asked for filters. I think this community is a success.

I still have one more post to make from our vacation. Maybe this weekend, if we don’t work…

Robert J Kent Jr- robjkentjr@gmail.com
Wat/San/Health Consultant
www.PureWaterForTheWorld.blogspot.com
www.RobJKentJr.blogspot.com
Cell: +504 9871-5318
Work/Home: +1 (631) 458-1119

Granada, Nicaragua

We made it to historic city of Granada only to find every single hostel fully booked for Semana Santa. Luckily, Kevin had a Peace Corps friend there who helped us find a place.

We got into town about 9pm at night and had three places we wanted to stay at. But because it was Easter week all our initial choices were full. Not having a lot of money to spend we didn’t really have a choice and ended up staying in the refugee lodge. At least it was a bed even it did feel like I was sleeping on a single 2×4. Ah, the joys of traveling. No matter, the next day Kevin and Ray checked out to leave for Managua and we changed hotels to one on the main street ( 11° 55′ 47.2″N, 85° 57′ 6.0″W). We had planned to leave that day with Kevin but couldn’t get confirmation for a bus. So we decided to stay an extra day to eat waffles and go house hunting with Kevin’s friend Sam.

Granada is in the process of trying to get World Heritage status so it is investing heavily into fixing up the city. In the last three years, this has sent house prices on an upward trajectory. And compared to all the other cities we have seen, Rasa and I really enjoyed Granada and think it is by far the grandest of them all. It was nice of Sam to take us into the best houses on the city and show us all the local hotspots. He is a returned Peace Corps volunteer that decided to stay in Granada after his service and open a surf camp. In the mean time he is selling property with Coldwell Banker until he can make enough money to get his dream started. If we only had money…

After our day of house hunting and unsuccessful trans-national bus tickets we had no choice but to get home using local buses. The next morning (Good Friday) we set out at 5 am on the first minibus out of town. In Managua, our driver tried to run over a traffic cop to beat an oncoming parade to the intersection. We ended up having to take a taxi the rest of the way because it looked like our driver was going to be spending Easter in jail. The bus terminal was deserted and there was only one more bus to the border town with Honduras. Fortunately, we made it there three hours before the bus left and were able to get seats because if people could have hung out the windows to get on they would have.

The bus dropped us off on the main street of Ocotal and told us to wait for another bus. By now it was 3 pm and the border closed at 4. We waited until 3:30 and then decided that we would get a hotel because there was no more transport today. Then a taxi found us and said there was plenty of transport on the Honduran side, he had just got back from there. Reluctantly, we decided to go. We ended up sneaking across because there was no more money to pay the exit tax. Once in Honduras, there was nothing! Not a single car, person or even a fricken bicycle to get us to El Pariso. So we started to walk the 12km to town and food. After about an hour a bus of church goers came by and decided to pick us up!

From El Pariso, it was old hat to get home. We finally made it back to La Ceiba at 10 pm Saturday night.

The recently renovated promenade, at night the street is full of restaurants

Just another building in the historic district

Want to buy a house? This palace sold for $350,000.

Or this 6,000 ft² hacienda with sugarcane lined ceilings and 3 ft adobe walls for $180,000?

Or this potential rental property with a view of the volcano for only $100,000?

Every house must have at least 8 rocking chairs to sit outside at night and people watch

Rasa hitchhiking home because there were no more buses at the border

Robert J Kent Jr- robjkentjr@gmail.com
Wat/San/Health Consultant
www.PureWaterForTheWorld.blogspot.com
www.RobJKentJr.blogspot.com
Cell: +504 9871-5318
Work/Home: +1 (631) 458-1119