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