Hello
I´ll elaborate more later maybe but I just got back in Cuzco. The bus trip that took 3:15 on the way out took almost double coming back just now! Its a shitty road pretty much constantly switch backing up or down, and we had a ton of rain which made the rocks fly all over the road, also the police decided to give to bus drivers a hard time so that killed an hour, then more bus problems, then we ran out of gas 500´below a 13,000´pass before Cuzco. Phew!! I got off and practically started running back to the central part of town in frustration! The trip went well overall. It was a real eye opener.I have no idea how the EWB (Engineers without Borders) folks found this village, its a little spot on the side of the hill with 250 people growing corn and fattening up pigs and sheep. Hard living conditions, mud and crap everywhere.
I arrived yesterday after a relly early bus, and wasmet by Maria, who has the community phone at her shack. (fed off a satelite dish and solar panels).I met with the maintanace crew of the water system, it basically consists of a long underground aqueduct from another ravine, then leading into the new Sand filter, then into a concrete building which is the storage tank. Overall the Language barrier was really hard, Spanish is their second language and only the young people in town speak it other wise its Qwechwa, which is a world apart. I felt like I just had a much harder time communicating with them than any other spanish speaking people.
I got the key to the school grounds and camped in the yard, which thankfully was really the only clean grass in the whole village!, or simply just grass! It poured rain all afternoon, all night and until about 11 this morning. I took my water samples with Daniel, one of the most trained water guys. It was good and just as I wanted, it gave me the context of what getting involved in these projects are all about. Anyway, time to cook some dinner.
More tomorrow
Love, Eric
No comments:
Post a Comment