Journey's End

Dave didn't want to end this journey with a picture of the A-Team (see post below). Neither did I. I'd much rather end it with the picture above of Harrison and his daughter. There's something about the look of deep satisfaction on his face that captures for me the sense of fulfillment I felt on the successful completion of (our part of) this project.

Of course, since we're Oak Ridgers, we couldn't return from Belize without an incident of some sort. Let me recap:
- In 2005, we were almost routed to Honduras due to the lack of a fuel truck to refuel our plane;
- In 2007, Chuck and Dale...
- In 2008, there wasn't enough fuel in Belize, so each of our several flights had to stop somewhere (Cancun, Cozumel) to refuel;
- In February of this year our flight was canceled and we were rerouted from Atlanta to Charlotte where we rented a car and promptly ran into a snowstorm.

This time around we figured there was little chance of a snowstorm. Indeed, our flight from Belize to Miami proceeded without incident. Instead, the flight from Miami was delayed due to bad weather (including tornadoes) in Charlotte. When we finally boarded a half hour late, we were put on ground hold due to weather in Charlotte, then we needed an extra 800 lbs of fuel in case we had to divert to another airport, then we needed 4 volunteers to deplane to compensate for the extra fuel. Good thing there was only 3 of us! They trundled out the fuel truck, only to discover a broken fitting. They brought it back and swapped for another fuel truck and finally got us in the air only an hour and 45 minutes late.

We landed in Charlotte a little after 1 AM with a 5 hour drive ahead of us. Thankfully the shuttle was quick to pick us up and return us to the Best Western where we had left the van over a week earlier. Dave and I searched for classic rock stations to keep us awake as we drove through the fog and the drizzle and the mountains.

We rolled into Oak Ridge in time to greet a cloudy sunrise, tired and satisfied and wondering where the next step in this fascinating and unpredictable journey might lead.
- dan

I Love It When a Plan Comes Together!

1983 had George Peppard, Mr. T and the "A-Team". Every show had a complicated task, careful planning, a million things that could go wrong, lots of improvisation and ultimately success. Of course nothing ever went according to plan. At the end of every show George Peppard lit up a big cigar and said "I love it when a plan comes together" as the rest of team shook their heads and rolled their eyes (Mr. T growled and grunted a lot). If you've followed the Yalbac saga for the past two years you get the connection.


Yesterday we drank clean water, prayers of thanks we're raised, children sang, speeches were made and a few tears were shed. For me the biggest "Hallelujah" moment is captured in the pictures below. After the ceremony / service I was prepared to play tour guide and explain the water treatment system to the villagers and guests. I got myself a glass of punch and to my joy and surprise, Mirna had gathered Victor Tut and a group of villagers to explain the system.




A few minutes later she was joined by Harrison inside the building. They were speaking in Spanish but it appeared that they were sharing the explanation tasks equally.


We leave tomorrow. The system is now theirs. Whether they have clean water in the future is now up to them. With God's help I have no doubt they'll do it.


Let Clean Water Flow!

Dave

More about celebrating

Dan has described how the church had been prepared for the celebration, but I have a few additional comments. The first is in the line of a confession. I was surprised that so much had been done to clean up. I thought we were going to have to continue sweeping up our crafts trash, but the place was neat and ready for display. I was touched that Mirna thought so highly of the occasion that she had put a white altar cloth on the table that is their altar and changed the plain blue fabric backdrop to an embroidered white one.

I was gratified by the turnout of visitors. We weren't sure if any of the people who had said they would come would actually get there. Mr. Banner made the kind of warm and fuzzy remarks that you would expect from a politician, but he did seem engaged. Most of the San Ignacio Rotary folks had not been to Yalbac, so the project took on greater reality for them. I had thought we were rather peripheral to their attention, but we are going to dinner with them tonight; Sherree and Aki will be there only if their church board meeting finishes early.

It was a special privilege to serve the water to the folks. Victor was first in line, but I skipped over him to serve Mr. Banner first. Many people came back for seconds.

I will miss the Yalbac folks, especially Mirna, with whom I kidded around a lot, and Jerome, who for some reason attached himself to me after he finished the operator treatment. Mirna's pudding of bread was a treat, as was her cheese dip. And tamarind juice was a new one for us.

Relationships changed in several ways yesterday. San Ignacio Rotary had been skeptical that we could finish on schedule and are now much more on board. I was amused to see Ernest Banner, Dan, Dave, and Harrison clustered around the back of Aki's truck. I thought "Bubbas are Bubbas wherever you go." But it was in the spirit of co-Bubba-ness that they were doing fairly important political business, probably more effectively than if we had been in Banner's office trying to accomplish something before he had to go to another meeting.

In a few minutes we will be off touristing and maybe checking another well. I guess we aren't completely wasting our time if we get another data point on the same trip as climbing Mayan temples.

Peace,
Chuck

Celebrate!

I've heard countless times at Clean Water U that a celebration at the end of a water installation is essential. I've even taught the concept in my CWU 101 classes. I bought into the idea intellectually. Yesterday I experienced it.
We convened in Yalbac around 2:00 Belize time, which means we really started around 2:15. The church had been swept and decorated; the trench with the water line from the well had been filled in, the grass had been mowed around the church. Somebody was ready to party! Ernest Banner, Director of Rural Development for Belize showed up, as did his Cayo district deputy Orlando Jimenez. A handful of Rotary folks from San Ignacio joined us, along with a good turnout from the community itsef.
The dedication ceremony itself was about as I expected, with invocation, introductions, thanks, etc. The kids singing water songs was endearing. Anne did a great job as "emcee" and got pretty choked up talking about the meaning and value of clean water. We ended with a communion-like sharing of the water with all takers. First in line was Victor Tut, owner and operator of the newly opened Emerald Resort Eco-Lodge where we spent one night on our last trip. He's very interested in 'copying' the design for a treatment system at the lodge.
The feeling of celebration really kicked in after the ceremony. Mirna Castillo, the one-woman whirlwind, was giving tours of the water building and explaining how the system worked in Spanish; then she was supervising her kids serving fruits and juices and 'pudding of bread'. Harrison McColloc, the council chair was expansive in his plans for the future: "When you come back we will have the building painted and flowers planted and the grounds graded; it will be beautiful!"
As the celebration wound down and people drifted away, there were heartfelt goodbyes, and hugs and pictures all around. We have definitely made new friends in Yalbac.
God is good!
- dan

Nearing the Big Day

A varied day today. After breakfast at Pop's, where the locals go and the tourists don't, we roamed about the market to buy fruit for tomorrow's celebration. There were many fewer pineapples than I had expected. Other times we have seen them by the hundreds. We bought a few pineapples, at $1.25 US each, and a couple of watermelons. The local watermelons have
small golden-brown rather than large dark brown seeds.

Anne and I didn't start work at Yalbac until 1 PM, when the future operators arrived for training, accompanied by a gaggle of children. By then Dave, Aki, and Dan had the system assembled and ready to go.

When the kids came, we sang the "Use This Water" song a few times, made paper chains, and made paint handprints on a white cloth. To a large extent, we were doing child care for the operator class. I was getting used to the cadences of Spanish (which most of the kids speak in preference to English) when I was blindsided by a burst of Creole. It was a bit disorienting, although I didn't understand the Spanish either. It just sounded strange, whereas Spanish didn't.
Eventually we sent the kids home and cleaned up for tomorrow's celebration. It was a bitter-sweet moment when I realized that in 24 hours my task in Yalbac would be essentially finished. We have worked for two years to get to this point, and sometimes it seemed that we wouldn't get there. Thanks to all of you for your support along the way.

I don't have a clear picture of what will happen tomorrow. We may have a couple of government people, several San Ignacio Rotary folks, Victor Tut (a world-class character and resort operator), us, and an unknown number of Yalbacistas. Mirna said she would make "pudding of bread", and I told her that if there were too many people for me to get some, I would beat them up. She laughed and promised to save me some.

Tonight we had Italian food again, Ray's treat. He had left the restaurant owner some lira which were worthless to him but could be exchanged by an Italian who had had a bank account in Italy before Euros replaced lira. The food was delicious, apparently from some region of Italy other than the origin of other Italian food I have had.

Essentially it seems that the pressure is almost off. The job at Yalbac has almost been accomplished. But we have plenty of other opportunities in other villages, so the project will go on.

Peace,
Chuck

Good Morning

It's a beautiful morning. Dave and I are sitting on the patio as the sun brightens a blue cloudless sky. I'm reading email & blogging, and Dave's listening to Morning Edition on his computer. In about a half hour Sheree and Aki will be picking us up for breakfast at Pop's. After that, Aki and Dave head back to Yalbac to finish up the water system. The rest of us will be participating in the San Ignacio Saturday morning market scene -- largest in Belize!
We'll meet up later in Yalbac to do a little more health education and the operator training.
Prayers requested for productive (and short?) day of final activities today.
- dan

Black Water

We took the first left off Hummingbird Highway just past the river as the soldiers at the Police Station had told us. A few blocks into the village we turned right and found ourselves in the courtyard of the St. Margaret’s School. It was late in the day and we were going to try for one more sample. The school buildings were deserted, but we knew St. Margaret’s had a water distribution system, so we walked around the buildings looking for a spigot. A little boy, maybe 6 years old crossed our path, looking at us with curiosity. We asked where we could find some water. He pulled us between two buildings and pointed across the courtyard to a row of pit toilets with a Rotoplas tank mounted on stilts next door. As we started to tell him that wasn’t exactly what we were looking for, I noticed a spigot in the ground next to the tank. Closer examination showed that the tank wasn’t collecting rain water, but probably served as a backup supply for when the distribution system wasn’t distributing. Which must be pretty often to justify the cost of a tank.
We pulled out our test supplies and began sampling the water. Within minutes we were surrounded by about a half dozen beautiful Belizean kids and bombarded with questions: Are you looking for that flyin’ flu – no swine flu? Why are you testing our water? What are you looking for? We ran thru the battery of chemical tests and each time the kids wanted to know what they meant and whether their water was good. They read the TDS meter: it’s 620! No it isn’t. That’s upside down. It’s 029. Yes, and that’s very good. What color is this closest to? Yes, the light blue means hardness is less than 100; your water is very soft. The orange means the pH is around 7; right where it should be. Your water looks very good. Do you drink this water? Oh yes; either this or from the river.
What have we not tested for yet? Ummm…germs? That’s right, but the germ test will take two days for us to learn the answer. Will you come back? No, but we’ll try to let your village know what we learn.

I checked our samples this afternoon. They all looked fine. Except St. Margaret’s, which was as black as coal. Definitely germs in that water. And the kids were drinking it. Could be that the tank is dirty and needs to be cleaned. Or it could be open to airborne contamination. Or given the other measurements, this is probably surface water from the Pine Ridge Mountains and already contaminated in the pipes. We need to know more, but this is definitely a candidate for a water system. And given that it’s in the beautiful Pine Ridge area about a dozen miles south of Jaguar Creek, it would be hard duty to volunteer for this one…
- dan

Happy Labor Day

Happy Labor Day from Belize (a government holiday) This has definitely been a day of labor for our team working as they build the puzzle that is the system, as well as working with the children and mother's here in Yalbac. The best news of the day is--we now have water in one tank and the water system is almost finished!

Chuck and I have been building a relationship with the community which has been fun and rewarding. The small village of Yalbac has 17 families, a church, a two room school house with 12 students 1 teacher and the principal. Family Grouping is at it's core. Everyone is a cousin or sibling most come from large families. The children care for each other and treat each other with warmth and affection. The older children have been quite helpful, not only with their siblings, but also helping me with projects. It is fun to once again be back in the classroom watching the younger children following directions and learning from the older children as they color, cut and paste. One of the older boys helped by reading one our new books (from the Del. Valley Reading Council) to the whole group in Spanish. The crafts and projects have varied from creating play dough germs, coloring a creation picture, learning new songs-even singing in rounds. Yesterday we spent two hours together and today four hours plus. We have been enjoying the time together.

All the individuals we have met have been very generous and welcoming. It has been an honor to work with the Mother's developing "the each one, teach one" concept as they learn about the system and the responsibilities they will have to keep it running. They have dreamed of the day that their village would have clean pure water.

All of God's children deserve clean water.
Anne Hansen

And the Water Flowed!

Okay, technically not clean water yet, but we're really, really close! As Chuck noted, my impression of yesterday was that we made incremental progress. We got a lot done. We put the new pump in the well, got a lot of the board put together and had exciting interactions with the students. But we still had a few potential show-stoppers ahead of us. The biggest of which was that we still hadn't gotten a drop of water out of the hole in the ground. Many of the parts that we picked up for the well, eg. electrical connectors and big PVC pipe, turned out to be incorrect. Despite my earlier comment about the Belizean Home Depot, in practice when we discover that we need a different part out on the job site it's a two hour proposition to get a replacement.

Things seemed to come together much better on Friday morning. Dan and Aki began figuring out the electrical part and developed a good plan for the well. While they made a dash to the hardware and electric stores I spent the morning putting together lots of PVC. By lunchtime I had accomplished a lot but was beginning to stagger a bit from PVC cement fumes. The picture shows my handiwork on the board as Dan and Aki put the finishing touches to the electrical.

Outside the well connections were also coming together. As the final pipe was laid and glued, I scrambled back on the roof to make sure that all of the connections on the raw (dirty) water side were in place so that we wouldn't dump water all over the floor or ground when (if?) the pump worked.

At 4 pm we still weren't quite there. We were running out of necessary parts (a PVC elbow is cheap and simple but hard to work around if you don't have one). Complicating things is a country-wide shortage of the size pipe that we need. We're substituting the next larger size where possible but in some places we need a specific size. We're down to counting the inches we need to complete the job. At 5 pm we got today's payoff. Dan threw the switch, the pump started to churn and several minutes later raw water started to pour into the cistern!

We need to complete the final pieces before "operator training" at 1 pm tomorrow. By then, by God's grace, Let the Clean Water Flow!

Peace,

Dave

More Tomorrow…

If you see the water tower for Cotton Tree, you’ve already passed the road to More Tomorrow. That’s what happened to us as we looked for this village with the quintessentially Belizean name. We took a chance on the next turn a few miles down, because Mr Jiminez, the Director of Rural Development for eastern Cayo District had assured us that the two roads looped together and formed a “U” at More Tomorrow. The road was a relatively new and un-potholed gravel road with a string of electric poles peeking out of the jungle on the left and newly cleared land on the right, probably soon to be planted in orange trees.
We reached a “Y” in the road and were concerned about which jungle path to take until we saw a small hand painted sign saying “More Tomorrow” with an arrow to the left. After another mile or so, we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a weatherbeaten village of several dozen dilapidated houses and a bright blue school with chickens in the courtyard. We located the hand pump at one end of the school yard and set up to do our water testing.
Within minutes a large black man (dark dark, as they say in Belize) rode up on an old bicycle. He was probably in his mid 30’s and introduced himself as Mike Mynette, the council chairman. He was quite interested in what we were doing, and why. He helped Sheree fill out a Water Issues Survey form while I completed the water testing, and then led us down to the Belize River for another quick test.
The well water at the school at More Tomorrow is crystal clear. There’s no iron in it because, as we found out, the government had just recently replaced all the steel piping and the wellhead. There will also likely not be any biological contamination because it was also “shocked” with chlorine a week ago. This is because the council hounds the government to shock the well every few months. If they don’t, their kids start getting sick.
The well water is also very hard (> 500 ppm CaCo3) with high dissolved solids (>500 ppm). We asked if it tasted bad. Mike said it didn’t matter. It was the only choice they had, except cistern (rain) water, although some villagers still preferred river water.
We left More Tomorrow, a village of about 40 families (~165 people and growing!), mentally adding them to the list of candidates for a future LWW system. The hard water will be difficult to treat, but at least they now have electricity. The people, represented by Mike, are eager and aggressive to improve their lot. They’ll make good Living Waters partners.
One the other hand, their very real water problems are being addressed with regular chlorine treatments to the well. The government may not like doing that, but it's being controlled. Should we put a system here rather than somewhere else where the problems might otherwise remain unaddressed? There are no clear-cut choices, just a series of prayerful best guesses.
- dan

Different directions

Dave says it’s my turn today, since I haven’t been keeping up. We had breakfast with the Rotary club this morning. They are involved in a huge number of projects. One of the hot ones coming up is a canoe race. I’m not sure how long, but first prize is $1000 BZ and there’s a big party at the finish. We met a young woman from Telluride CO who is studying sustainable development here at Galen University for credit at U of Vermont. That sounds like a good thing to do during a Vermont winter if you can arrange it.

Dan and Sheree took off on a site visit trip look for other potential sites. The Director of Rural Development, whom we had met last February, had suggested a few places to look at, and they went to check on them. It was a pretty long day; they didn’t get back until around 7:30. I’ll leave the findings to Dan.

Anne Hansen got a ride with the Rotary president to a village where Swarthmore Rotary is sponsoring a preschool. He owns a huge amount of land with timber and cattle and builds super-expensive houses and owns a couple of hotels. I think she got an eyeful of how the other small fraction lives. She caught up with us at Yalbac in time for lunch.

Dave and Aki and I went to Yalbac to work on the treatment system. On the way, we stopped in Spanish Lookout for some PVC for the well. I ran into Mike from In His Will Ministries, where Dale and I stayed on our survey trip in 2007. It’s interesting to run into people at different places from where they fit in your picture of the country.


Dave says progress on the treatment system was incremental. I thought it was very exciting. We got the new well pump into the well, with wire for power into the treatment building but no plumbing beyond the wellhead. Dave and Aki are much more patient than I am: I would have hot-wired the pump to the generator to see a geyser from the well.


Anne and I had a teaching session with the kids. We kind of commandeered them for the afternoon. The teacher went home and let us do our thing. We talked about germs and illness and handwashing and when to use the clean water they would get from their treatment system. They were pretty excited about the songs and games, and they didn’t want to go when we declared the session finished. We had to shoo them out with the promise that they could come back tomorrow afternoon.

My wildlife report isn’t very exciting because we haven’t been in the right places. Yesterday I saw clay-colored robins at the resort and great kiskadees and green parrots at Yalbac. A gecko almost fell on Anne at the resort. This morning at the hotel where Rotary meets we saw blue-gray tanagers, a female shrike-tanager, a hummingbird that the local record suggests was rufous-tailed, and a basilisk lizard, which has the interesting behaviors of running on its hind legs and running on water. The flowers are beautiful, especially several varieties of bouganvillea.

Tomorrow we will have teaching sessions with some of the women in the morning and the kids again in the afternoon. I’m really looking forward to that and to seeing water from the well.

Peace to all,
Chuck

Joe Petrof

He was sitting on a barstool at the counter when we walked in; a large heavyset man with a silver flattop and an interesting carved cane. I didn’t pay him much attention as the Mennonite sales clerk asked how he could help us in heavily accented English. As Aki and I began asking questions about how to plumb a well with an electric pump, the clerk questioned another clerk in Low German. The second clerk looked at us and said “You should ask Joe about that. He does wells all the time.” Joe had gotten up to leave, but turned when he heard his name. We outlined what we were trying to do. He gave us a classic you-guys-really-don’t-know-what-you’re-doing look and said he would tell us how he would do it.
After a lengthy and detailed crash course in how to plumb a well, he finished by saying “You don’t have to listen to me, but that’s how I would do it.” We assured him that his plan sounded a lot better than ours, and he said “OK then. Let’s go shopping.” He helped us pick out everything we needed, becoming more jocular and engaged in the project the more we talked.
We discovered that he was an American ex-pat who came to Belize 12 years ago and never went back. He’d screwed up his knees and hips playing football for the University of North Carolina and found Belizean weather much more friendly to his joints. He had a degree in mechanical engineering from Penn State, and owned a well drilling business in Santa Elena, not far from Aki’s house.
As we were checking out, he asked again if we thought we could handle it. I asked him with a grin what he was doing the next couple days. He said “What time will you be in Yalbac tomorrow? I’ll meet you there after I get my crews started.”
People in Belize are like that.
- dan

We Accomplished What We Needed to Accomplish

We made it out to the first day on the site with some trepidation. The potential show-stopper was removing the old hand pump from Yalbac's well. The government said they would come and do it last Friday, and then on Monday or Tuesday. Over dinner on Tuesday night our team started discussing what Plan B, C or D might be if the government didn't show. At around 10:30 on Wednesday morning a pickup with four guys arrived to dismantle the pump. As with repairing your car the job was essentially pretty simple but without a few key pieces of know-how and one or two critical tools it would have have been nearly impossible for us to tackle ourselves.

The picture shows the workers extracting steel pipe fifteen feet at a time, disconnecting a section and then extracting another fifteen feet. The pipe went down ninety feet. The top of the water in the well is at sixty five feet and the bottom of the well is at 102 feet. Tomorrow will will install a submersible electric pump at the end of ninety feet of PVC.

Dan and Aki made a mid afternoon trip to Home Depot (or the Belizean equivalent) to pick up parts for installing the new pump. While there they met a local who ran a well drilling business who gave them tips on everything they needed to know for installing the new pump. He even promised to drop by and inspect our handiwork to make sure we have it set up right.

While this was going on, I was laying out the components for the water treatment board. I then started installing the plumbing for the external water tanks as shown in the next picture. Anne and Chuck made their initial contacts with the nearby school and have setup a teaching session for Thursday afternoon. Friday is a national holiday (Labor Day / May Day) so this will be their only chance while school is in session.

Harrison, the Yalbac village council Chairman, dropped by several times during the day to review our progress and lend a hand. Several locals helped out during the day and thankfully dug the ditch from the well to the water building. At the end of the day Harrison treated us to fresh coconut sliced open with a machete under a coconut tree next to the water building.

We could have accomplished more but we certainly could have accomplished much less.

To God be the glory,

Dave

First Day on the Job

My room at the Midas Resort.

A room like Dave's at the Midas Resort



We head back up to Yalbac village from our digs at the Midas Resort in San Ignacio this morning. At dinner last night with Sheree and Aki, our Rotary hosts, we formulated a fuzzy plan of attack. The two biggest unknowns at my end of the dinner table were whether and when the Department of Rural Development will show up to pull the hand pump from the well head so we can install the electric pump, and how many (if any) villagers will appear to pitch in with the installation.
Anne and Chuck were conspiring with Sheree at the other end of the table about the educational component and a variety of Rotary issues. There's an undercurrent in many of the conversations regarding "what next". Assuming this project completes as we pray it will, we're beginning to peek shyly toward the future to see what can be done in the next phase.
The weather conditions are shaping up to be more typically tropical this time around. Temperatures are 5- 10 degrees warmer than last February, but not much different from those in Oak Ridge when we left. The big difference is the humidity. We were greeted with a brief downpour at the airport shortly after we arrived, and rain announced itself on the tin roofs of the breakfast patio and in my room both last night and this morning. We're not in the rainy season yet, but it's definitely much wetter than two months ago.

Prayers today requested for flexibility and ingenuity as we evaluate the "lay of the land" and identify the challenges ahead and the directions we'll need to move in to address them.

- dan

We made it (again)!

Not much to say. Dan filled you in up to this morning. Our flights and connections were pretty uneventful. Chuck got busted at Charlotte's security for the foil bag around his Fig Newtons. We cleared Belize customs without incident and we were met by a thunder storm and hot and humid weather (Not much different from Oak Ridge at the moment I guess). We were also met immediately by the hotel shuttle so that went smoothly as well. We'll meet Sheree and Aki for dinner soon and plan tomorrow's schedule.

Please write! (Think I've made that point enough?)

Peace,
Dave

Back To Yalbac

We're on our way, once again. It's becoming routine -- maybe a bit too much so.
It's early here in the Best Western lobby in Charlotte. I slept pretty lightly last night, my mind racing with all the things I might have forgotten and all the things that could go wrong on this trip. That's probably because we spent a half hour last night looking for our hotel.
We left Oak Ridge on time, after spending 15 minutes redistributing the weight in our 6 large checked bags. They're all now within 10% of the allowed 50 lb limit.
We made it to Charlotte in under 5 hours, including a stop for dinner.
Then we realized that no one knew specifically where the motel was. After asking and driving and phoning, we finally found our home away from home for last night and settled in.
We leave at 7 this morning on a shuttle to the airport; our van stays here for the week. We meet up with Anne Hansen from Swarthmore in Dallas, and then on to Belize City mid afternoon and a shuttle to San Ignacio and Sheree and Aki Fukai, our local Rotary contacts.
The picture above shows Aki in front of our poured concrete water building. I think he's describing the fish that got away. He spent yesterday mounting water tanks on top of the building; We'll spend tomorrow beginning the job mounting water treatment hardware inside the building.
Prayers requested for traveling mercies today and for humility and flexibility the rest of the week. We're honored to be representing you in doing God's work in Belize.
- dan