Proyecto Piloto en Papaturro

After much planning, re-planning, scheduling and rescheduling, we got out to Papaturro two days this week and worked on the “education” arm of the three-pronged pilot strategy to improve the health of the campesinos. In addition, I spent Tuesday and Thursday exploring other communities to see how their filters are working. All told, it was a busy and productive week—a great start to a busy and hopefully productive month.

We arrived in two vehicles, which is a miracle in and of itself, since transport has proven time and time again to be the most difficult part of this entire project. There were seven of us coming from San Juan and three Brigadistas from Papaturro, forming four teams of two to visit each house while Fidel and our driver-converted-temporarily-to-Filter-Technician Marvin visited a few select families which either needed their filters to be installed or maintenanced. I was nervous about whether we would be able to pull visiting 23 families in one day, talking with each of them about their hygiene, their filters, the cleanliness of their homes, and recommendation of how to make them all better. But, we came, we saw, we conquered!

A quick anecdote: When I was putting together the materials that we would use (pictures, a teaching guide for each team, and recommendations to leave with the family), I was trying to balance the ‘dibujos’ with the ‘texto’—the pictures with the text. However, I realized that my efforts to assemble both were not in vain, for at one of the houses we went to (and I know was the case at others which other teams visited), the nice old lady was just learning to read. Having the images (which we got from CAWST, again, you can’t saw that Canada doesn’t do it’s part!) was in fact vital and the combination of image and text gave her a change to practice to boot!

Afterwards, we shared in the black gold of Atlanta, that refreshingly unhealthy drink that in the states is the enemy to school children everywhere but here is a consolation form the heat...Coca-Cola.