July 2010

It´s been a while since I´ve written something, so here´s a quick update.

We chopped down a tree and are making a boat. We live in the mountains, so none of us have ever made a boat before. We have a small lake about 4-5 feet deep to use it in.

This is what I´ve been doing for the past 6 months....Latrines! Here, Evanhelisto and some helpers are throwing a base that they´ll move over a hole.

A Hole!

People in Baglá, getting ready to throw a base.

The whole process of managing a latrine project was a great experience. I feel that there are few things so technically simple that could be so complicated to organize. People had to be trained, materials brought in and delivered, meetings scheduled, and work done. All this was done with no cell phones or easy means of communication, the Panamanian sense of time (does a sense of time even exist?) and the fact that everyone lives almost as far away from each other as possible. We had no cement mixers (outside of shovels), used as much local materials as possible and did it all with a smile.

Everyone worked hard to get their latrine done. No American works that hard to just have a hole to defecate in. Imagine that you had to make a 8 foot deep hole (see above), carry a 100 lb bag of cement and 9 buckets of sand and rock up a steep hill for 1 hour, just to have the materials to build a base.

We´re finishing up the last of the work right now and doing some lessons on disease prevention to finish up the project.

Thanks to those who donated to the project. I appreciate your help.

A little less than 4 months until I return to the motherland.


Jatwoida,

Chöti