The community where we attended training is located in a part of the Comarca (which is a semi-autonomous region inhabited and governed by the Ngöbe people) on the other side of the continental divide. High up in the mountains – bigger mountains than the ones I live in – the view is spectacular:
But on the other side of the Cordillera (the continental divide) is so much drier this time of year., known as summer, here. In the Bocas del Toro province, everything is still lush and green and muddy, because we still get rain, even if there are a few more dry days than there are the rest of the year. In Las Trancas, the community that hosted our training, things are so dry that there is dust everywhere, and there are constant concerns about having sufficient water.
We had a wonderful time at training – Jess, the volunteer who hosted us, did an impressive job planning all of the work for us to do to both learn and help with her aqueduct construction. But I did think a lot about how the different climates between Las Trancas and Quebrada Pastor affected so much of life. My community has far less trouble getting sufficient water, and can easily grow food all year round, which makes life much easier. Of course, all of the water can have a negative impact, too – easier for water-borne pathogens to spread, and for mold and fungus to grow (on my clothes, between my toes, on my face).
The difference in infrastructure is striking, too – Quebrada Pastor is rather unique for an Environmental Health Volunteer's site, since it is located right on the highway. This gives my community (and me) easy and cheap access to travel – Almirante, the nearest town, is a 20-minute, $1 bus ride away, which enables my community to sell their cacao to the cooperative easily, and buy produce and other things from outside the community. It means that my host family can sell their chocolate balls and lemons and oranges and pifa at a higher price in Bocas del Toro the city located on the Bocas islands, which there is a booming tourism industry. And it means that Willy (my “host dad”) has a Facebook account and does business via email (fairly easy internet access is an advantage for me too!) – something very unusual for Peace Corps communities. To get to Las Trancas, Jess' community, one has to ride in the covered back of a pickup truck for a couple hours on a dirt road constructed mostly by hand – which might be better referred to as a roller coaster than a road.
I realize that my community has some incredible advantages – and after having been here for 6 months, long enough to call Quebrada Pastor my home, I have become very fond of the place. Like all other communities, it has its own challenges – the size and disperse distribution of the population, the divisions among the families, the diversity of the problems and interests of the various neighborhoods, the difficulty in uniting the community, the rampant water-borne diseases – but I have learned to deal with these challenges, to make them my own, and so I can truthfully tell my fellow community members that “Prefiero aquí.”
Photos from training:
Team Pumpkin Pirates show off our work on the aqueduct intake structure...
...And the ferrocement union tank.
Mary Catherine and I pose with our wonderful host dad for the week – father, teacher, store-owner, aqueduct president, and very thoughtful host.
Team Pumpkin Pirates practices doing a water storage talk for some interested community members…
...And Dylan and I demonstrate how to make a “Plubo” (Pluma + Cubo – or Tap + Bucket) – a tap sticking out of a bucket so that you don't ever touch the water with your hands, thereby reducing contamination.
No comments:
Post a Comment