02/15/06

Aspect Volunteer Marks 1 Year on Pure Water Project in Honduras

Owen and Amy Reese joined Pure Water for the World in February 2005 to help bring clean water to remote villages in Honduras. This month they marked their 1-year anniversary there. The Reeses, who have just begun work in the village of Trujillo, regularly share both the technical and the daily details of their project with us.We are proud of their personal sacrifice and share this information in support of their volunteer effort and the Pure Water mission.

The Technical Details

Plastic Filters. Right now, the filters we work with are made of concrete and weigh about 340 lbs, empty. This makes them a real pain to get to remote house in the hills (which are also places that need the filter most). Pure Water has designed a plastic version of the filter and we’ve got the first four to test out here in Danlí. Amy and I have been in charge of running a study to see if they perform as well as the concretes. We installed one of each, side by side, in homes in four different communities. For 2 months, we would visit them weekly to take samples and measure flow. It was a fun way to build a relationship with the families. The good news is that the plastic filter is removing coliform bacteria as well as (if not a little better than) the concrete one. The only problem is that it flows a little too fast and the water comes out more slightly more turbid. Right now, we’re playing around with the filters in the workshop to try and understand what’s going on. With any luck, we’ll be using plastic filters when our project starts up on the north coast, because I hear that many villages can only be reached by boat. The disadvantage of plastic filters is that they unfortunately mean fewer Honduran jobs because they are produced outside the country, at least for now.

Community Filter. We’re working to design a community-sized slow sand filter for a great little town called Los Arcos right near Danlí. Los Arcos is named after two arcs that remain from an old aqueduct that used to bring water to Danlí, which makes it a somewhat fitting place to work on a water project. It’s also a beautiful place to walk on the weekends. The community filter would use the same slow sand technology used by our household filters, but would operate continuously, treating up to 40 gpm. This technology has been used for centuries; the only tricks are is adapting it to Central American building techniques (such as tank walls constructed of brick instead of reinforced concrete) and designing it in Spanish.

Working on the community filter has also brought us our first public speaking opportunities down here. We had a meeting with the community this past weekend that went swimmingly. Amy and I gave about a 40 minute presentation, after which the community took a vote on whether or not they wanted the filter. They voted unanimously for the project! The vote is important because the community is committing to work together with us to build the filter. Part of Pure Water’s methodology is that we act as partners with the communities we serve—rather than donors. In other words, we charge the household filter users a portion of the value of the filters and we will ask that Los Arcos contribute up to 30 percent of the value of the community filter in the form of labor and local materials. This model brings pride, ownership, and a sense of responsibility for improving their own water quality.

The Daily Experiences

Field days are more fun, but more exhausting. We go into the field to talk to the communities about the project, deliver filters, install filters, collect water quality samples, give deparasiting medicine, and perform various studies. Recently, Amy has been in charge of a study looking at how filter use has changed the presence of parasites (such as ringworm, giardia, or amoebas) in school-aged kids. When the project started 3 years ago, they studied four communities and found that 80 percent of the children had parasites. Amy wanted to repeat the study in two communities to see if the rates had lowered with filter use. To do the study, she needed to get stool samples from about 50 kids in each community. This involves going to the schools and handing out sample containers along with a little talk on what parasites are, why we are doing the study, and how to collect a stool sample. She then goes back the next day to collect the samples. One time, I got involved in demonstrating how to collect the stool sample — which generally resulted in uproarious laughter from the kids. Apparently they’re not used to gringos pretending to poop on the school room floor. Results of the study were mixed:

In both communities, there no longer were worm infestations. Previously, over 10 percent of the population had worms.
In one community (El Espinito), the rate of parasite infestation dropped from 80 percent to 40 percent. Unfortunately in the other community (Guayacan) the rate stayed the same at 80 percent. This community is generally known as being pretty unsanitary, so the parasites could be coming from sources other than drinking water, or they may not be using the filters properly.
In general, the severity of parasite infestations seems to have decreased. For example, previously 48 percent of the children in Guayacan had giardia; now only 22 percent have it. The trade-off has been an increase in a couple of amoebas that don’t really cause harm, but are used as indicators of unsanitary conditions.

While Owen was resting after his umpteenth trip of helping to carry a 300-lb filter a quarter-mile and 200 vertical feet up a tiny dirt footpath, he stepped outside of the concrete block house to be pleasantly surprised by a cool mist in the otherwise hot and humid area. Owen was standing there with his face up and arms outstretched trying to figure out where the rain was coming from, when one of the day laborers remarked that the mist was the urine of cicadas perched in the trees nearby. Owen says that even after knowing what it was, it was still refreshing.