Engineers Without Borders

Happy Sunday,

I hope you are all doing well and everyone gearing up for another school year (students, teachers, parents, etc.), are soaking up your last weeks of summer relaxation without too much anxiety for the coming year. That is pretty much the situation with me down here in Honduras. We will be starting school the beginning of September, but preparations for the year are already upon us.

However, before getting into that, I recently had one last summer adventure. On Thursday, August 5th, a group of Engineers Without Borders from the University of Akron, Ohio came down to improve the water system and quality in the town of Guarizama. Guarizama is a town about 30 minutes outside of San Francisco de la Paz. I was asked to accompany this group for the 5 days there were here to translate.

So that Thursday all 10 of them arrived at the Tegucigalpa airport. We traveled up to Juticalpa where, to my surprise, we picked up two more people, Mark and Eyal. They were peace corps volunteers who specialize in water projects and would also be translating. After picking them we continued our way up to San Francisco de la Paz and the Hogar del Nino, the farm where I worked earlier this summer. We would be sleeping in the dorms of the Hogar and traveling up to Guarizama to work in the day.

Here is the Hogar in San Francisco at atardecer (sunset).

On Friday morning we traveled to Guarizama where we had a meeting with the alcalde (mayor) to discuss the needs of Guarizama. This is the group above with Mark and Eyal (peace corps) in the front with the white and black shirts.

After the meeting the mayor wanted to show us the water system and so we piled into trucks.

The mayor even had a police escort with us so the people of Guarizama would know that we were not just strangers wandering through their town.

Here is some of Guarizama. You can see that besides the water system, the roads also need work.

We ran into some traffic

and the soon to be bacon.

Here is a typical house.

After getting to the edge of town we hiked up a hill to the water tank which supplies Guarizama.





Here are some of the engineers having a look around.

That is the mayor in the white shirt, Roman Ruiz Diaz. He was really helpful and enthusiastic about working us, unlike some other city officials, according to the peace corps guys. In the back are some of the engineers taking water samples from the tank.

The valley which Guarizama lies in.

After the water tank, we went back down the hill to look at some of the filtration stations in Guarizama which the water passes through after coming down from the tank. Here is Hector, our groups' Honduran promotor.

Here is Elizabeth, Brett and Eric having a look around.

One part of the filtration system. We took water samples here too.

After that we returned to the Hogar for the day. Above is John (a water specialist from Colorado), Michael and Eric running tests on the water quality of the samples we collected.

Interesting stuff.

While they were at it, they decided to test the water quality of the jugged water we were drinking at the Hogar. Here is Dr. Richard Pine giving us the ok to drink the water after the test results came back clean. Richard was not actually part of the engineers without borders. He has been coming down to do projects in Honduras for about the last ten years. Since he is from Ohio he teamed up with the people from Akron and acted as the Honduran guide.

The next morning we got up...

had some breakfast....



and headed into the backcountry of Guarizama in search of the presa (dam), which is where the water that fills the tanks above Guarizama comes from. It was quite a trek. Driving on rocky, dirt roads followed by local farmers and dogs...

crossing rivers...

and at one point nearly toppling down a small mountain where the road had starting to fall away!

However, we finally reached the end of the road gracias a Dios (thank God), which is where we began hiking. I didn't take any pictures of the hike, but that was interesting as well. While I waited for Michael, one of the engineers, to park the truck, Hector, our promoter, left on the hike without us. Without a well marked trail Michael and I had to follow footprints and guess which way the group had gone to the dam.

Luckily after a 1/2 mile of hiking, a sweaty shirt, shoes full of mud and a slight sunburn, we did find them at the dam.

We took a look at where where the water first enters the pipes.

and took some more water samples.

After that we headed back down to lower ground to a river that the mayor wanted us to look at. Apparently this pipe has often been swept away when the water in the river gets high, leaving the part of town it serves without water.

The engineers assessed the situation...

and talked with locals to think of a solution. It was good thing the peace corps guys were there because although my spanish is improving, it was hard to understand some of the locals who don't always speak clearly, especially when they were talking about water jargon I am unfamiliar with.

That was all on Saturday.



Sunday was an interesting day as well. Not only because some of the engineers went to explore more of the water system, but also because several of us split up into groups to go house-to-house inquiring about the health of the residents. The group hoped to see if there are connections between the water supply and the health of Guarizama. We met a variety of people: families with some money who were able to buy purified water, poorer families who drank straight from the tap, smart poor families who boiled their tap water before drinking it and even a drunk guy who drinks beer instead of water (we didn't know he was drunk until after we started interviewing him).

We also met a lady who had wounds on her leg that were becoming black and green because she simply didn't have or know how to use peroxide and bandages. Dr. Pine fixed her up.

After a good day's work we decided to treat ourselves by going down to El Gordo's steakhouse in Juticalpa for dinner.

yummy.








Olancho doesn't exactly cater to vegetarians.

Monday was really great because Dr. Pine wanted to go and visit the under-construction hospital in the town of Catacamas, while the rest of the group continued working on water stuff.

Here is Dr. Pine and his son, Jesse, standing with our guide, Anna Rosales, at the ambulance entry.
Anna Rosales showing the future pediatrics area. You can see there is still much work to be done, but we could already tell this hospital is going to be very advanced and large for Honduran standards.

All the equipment was donated from the States.


Here is Elizabeth, a biomedical engineering student, checking out some of the machines that crowd the hallways.

They've got some pretty advanced stuff.

One thing that Dr. Pine said was that they are going to need people to train some of the Honduran medical personel how to use the equipment (so if anyone is medically trained keep reading because there might be an opportunity for you).

Here is where the babies are kept warm shortly after their mothers, and here is a cool spanish phrase, dan la luz (give the light).

Continuing on, this is the place where all the medical equipment is sanitized before being reused...

and this is the view from the sanitation room.

Getting back to the what I was saying about medical people traning Hondurans to use the machines ... this is the medical brigade's quarters. I learned that a medical brigade is a group of doctors, nurses, medical techs, etc. that come to places like Honduras for a week or so to administer medical care.


Here is the lounge area complete with couches, TV and Scrabble.

the courtyard

sleeping area

kitchen and dining hall

Just before leaving, we saw the chapel...

and the statue of Hermana Pedro (Brother Peter), who the hospital is named after.

It was very exciting to receive a tour of a place where the battle for the beginning and end of life will be an everyday occurrence.

On a lighter note, after the hospital myself and Elizabeth hiked the "1000 steps to the cross" in Catacamas. We counted and found that there were actually only 564, although, as Elizabeth pointed out, that if you go up and back you will have completed your 1000 steps.

The last and final day we again had a meeting with the mayor to discuss what we had found and what our recommendations were for the future of Guarizama's water system. This time the engineers' visit was an assessment of the problems and possible solutions of the water system. In future trips they plan on doing actual construction.

Here I am translating some of the group's recomendations to the mayor.

The local plumber giving his imput.


And finally Melissa, the Engineers Without Borders group leader, with the Mayor Ruiz.

Here we all are in front of the mayor's office.

Over all the engineers work was super successful. They have gone back to Ohio with water designs to be made and funds to raise, while the people of Guarizama were filled with hope about the future of their town. The peace corps guys saw so much potential in Guarizama, where there currently peace corps does not operate, that they were going to recommend to their superiors that peace corps begin putting volunteers there.

It was great being a witness to all of this and meeting so many great people. As for me, I mentioned that school will be starting soon, so I will spend the rest of my school vacaction in Juticalpa awating the new group of volunteer teachers to arrive on August 19th. More on that later though. Hope life finds you well.

Hasta proximo vez (until next time).