Cristo Rey

Chuck and I drove out to Cristo Rey from San Ignacio just as it was getting dark on Thursday. It's not far; maybe 20 minutes. It felt much farther on a rough road in the dark. Especially since the news I knew we were about to deliver wasn't good.
Chuck, Peggy, Lynn Kszos and her daughter, and I visited Cristo Rey last spring. We learned that their well water was very hard, harder than Yalbac, with high dissolved solids. We also learned that both the well water and the river water are biologically contaminated. However, we had also learned that Cristo Rey had a government sponsored water delivery system with a tank and a chlorinator, but that they weren't using the chlorinator at present. I had decided in advance that we had to tell them we wouldn't treat the well water.
We met with Giovanni Montalvan the mayor, and Alfredo Guerra the chairman of the water board, and a few others. We told them what we had learned and that we wouldn't treat the well water. They confirmed that the pump had broken on the chlorinator but that they didn't like the taste anyway and were concerned about what the chlorine did to the concrete when it spilled, so they had never fixed it.
We then offered them a carrot and a stick. We suggested that we could put in a system to treat their river water to give them the same quality water as in San Ignacio or Santa Elena if they could locate or build an appropriate building. I handed them a blank Water Issues Survey and said we could meet again on our next trip and discuss things further. I also suggested that they could check out Yalbac to see if something like this would be appropriate for them.
As we were leaving Giovanni said that they were opening an internet cafe in the next couple weeks and he would have an email address. I smiled and said we'd keep in touch. On the way back through the hills to Santa Elena, Chuck's cell phone rang. Dale was calling. The contrast between our communication expectations and those in Belize was striking.
Dan