Noticias de Jalapa

Pasmata Water Project Progress Report - 12/10

2011-12-10T20:36:00.003-06:00

This will serve as our last in country progress report. Jessie and I are a few hours away from crossing over the Nicaraguan/Costa Rican boarder, and I am thankful for this time to reflect on how we left things in the field. So here goes.

The ideal situation would have been a 1 month overlap of a new and qualified FCP rep (I think had we started searching for one in August like I had suggested in my first report this could have been accomplished). However, based on some fortunate circumstances, we may be in a decently good place given the help of two eager Peace Corp members (Lindsey and Trey) who are currently holding down the fort while we find someone to represent FCP.

Accomplished since the last post:

Community Meeting: A whole community assembly took place on December 4^th. I made a 10ft Google map printout composted of 33, 11x17” screen shots assembled like a puzzle. It took 2 days, but I feel it was worth it since it allowed folks to see where their house was in respect to the planned project, and to see that this project is for real! Karla and I also made about 6 other informational posters. The meeting again took place at the Pasmata primary school. This meeting was very important because it had been indicated to the community in the meeting the month before as the due date of all 140 household donations of 200 cordobas along with an agreement to pay 30 cordobas/month along with using water meters to quantify water use for evidence in disputes over unreasonable usage. We have decided that unless at least 90% of the community pays the initial payment, and agrees to the tariff and meters, we will not do this project. A project that is not supported by the community would be a complete waste of time and donor money, so we cannot sway from this.

90% of the community means roughly 125 people on board with the project. Only 54 people came to the meeting this time, down 75 from the previous meeting where we laid the non-negotiable’s of cost and metering. From this meeting we increased community initial 200 cordoba payment from 20 households to 44, and I would imagine over the last week, we might expect a few more. In the meeting I presented each non-negotiable, and then had it explained a second time by one of the water board members to ensure everyone understood what was being said. There was a great deal of grumbling concerning the monthly tariff and metering. After about 15 minutes of complaining about the 30 cordobas, I made it known that due to a survey done on 600 of the people living in Pasmata (about 90% of the population), that I knew that the majority of folks were paying significantly more (sometimes triple to quadruple) just for their cell phone service alone--not considering cigarettes and candy. I then outlined that the use of meters and the payment of 30 cordobas monthly was not something to be discussed, and if we didn’t get agreement from all community members for these costs, that we would find another community. Where we stand now is waiting to see if and when we can expect to have the desired 90% of folks.

The Google map now has nearly every household leaders name associated with each house waypoint. The goal will be to write down the names of folks who have paid and who are on board with the way this project is being managed, and then mark them on the map to see if the disagreement is spatially related, and to predict how a disagreement could affect the way water is provided to different areas. Lindsey and Trey from Peace Corps have agreed to help get better figures on who has paid, and go house to house to ask again for the initial 200 cords and to see who is willing to pay the monthly fee.

Assembling the troops: We still only have 81 people assigned to work squads. We were hoping to have 140, but 81 would work if we had 8, 10 person squads. Trey, Lindsey and I will continue to be in communication to see how these squads are changing and of how any meetings go.

Designs: I have designed the system components completely, all except the dam; however we do know the exact dimensions and location of this dam, what’s lacking now is just sitting down and figuring out how this will look exactly based on typical details. I visited the source one last time with the foreman we’re hoping to contract, Jaime, and he made some insightful suggestions on how this design should look, furthering my belief that he’s got what it takes to run this project from the technical and construction side of things.

The system hydraulics have also been completely calculated both for the conduction and distribution/domestic lines. I am still waiting to hear back from a few fellow engineers on how these calculations look, and to decide exactly what pipe size we can afford where hydraulics meet economic feasibility. At this point it looks like utilizing between 2-3” piping for the conduction and distribution lines, and the typical ½” PVC tubing for domestic lines. I’m excited to present this hydraulic data at the FCP holiday party, it will be easier to explain in person and with a few more figures.

Permissions: I have in my possession, a copy of the formal contract written by the alcaldia’s lawyer outlining the official donation of the Finca de Pasmat’s land to take 35gal/min of water and run 1.5km of conduction line until the distribution tank. What we are still lacking is written permission from land owners: Dona Camila, Dona Maria, and Dona Ofelia. All three of these women have given oral approval; however, we are still waiting on the alcaldia’s lawyer to write up the official contract to pass the tube. We are planning on putting the tank on Dona Maria’s land, in a location outlined on the Google map kmz file. She has donated a 25mx25m plot, which saved us about $500.

Getting these written permissions will be quite easy once this is written up by the alcaldia, however, based on their past performance, this could take another month. We have our Peace Corps friends putting pressure on the alcaldia’s office, and will distribute these permissions in person when we have the contracts written.

Updated Project Budget: I had a meeting with the owner of a ferreteria (hardware store) named “Agro Ferreteria”, which supplies the majority of the water system components to projects by the alcaldia. This ferreteria was recommended by Reyna, and she got me in contact with the owner, his name is Juan Jose, and he appears to be awesome. I presented him a list of the components that we need, and he is currently filling in the form with exact prices. He is also placing recommendations he sees for how we might both make the system money while potentially saving some money. Obviously I’m skeptical on the money saving part of this since if he saves us money, he loses money. But the thought was nice, and I trust him. I will present an update of the project budget when he returns the list to me.

Rotary Involvement: This has been somewhat trying. After passing the matching grants form back and forth between Boulder Rotaries and the Rotary in Somoto, we started to realize that there was a great deal of information lacking to complete the form, and that it was going to take more work that we had originally thought. The form has been in the hands of the Boulder Rotaries for about a month now, and it’s just about done, however, when a request for written confirmation by Somoto was sent to Ivonne, the President, she returned my email(s) with a “I will get to this in January” response. I have yet to draft up a retort, explaining to her that WE (Boulder Rotary) will be in charge of sending the form work off to Rotary International once we have everything complete, and that all we’re needing from them is their commitment signified by approving to supervise the project and pay $100.

Until we have this confirmation, we can’t send the form. I see obtaining Rotary money as taking some serious time, and becoming one of the limiting elements holding back the project, since without Rotary money, we’re missing a $14k chunk of our budget.

Visiting Old FCP Projects: I only had the chance to visit one other FCP site, Chusli, since the last board meeting on the 21^st of November. It was educational to see how Brandon did this project, and I must say that it’s very impressive that it’s still working. However, Chusli is finding that in the summer the source isn’t enough to provide water to the increasing population, and is therefore soliciting funds from organizations to build a new source further up the mountain, and pipe that water to the existing distribution tank.

Pending Project Tasks:

Defining my future involvement with this project: I agree to do the pending project tasks shown below in order to ensure the success of this project. I will also give a few presentations to bring awareness of the projects status to interested parties, and present a technical debriefing report to be posted on the FCP Dropbox account. However, after these subsequent tasks, I will be dropping out for a while to pursue work as a water engineer, and develop necessary credentials to be effective in the development field within organizations that do water sanitation and hygiene work.

The only involvement I would like to have with FCP will be to remain as the contact between Karla and FCP. After losing Francoise we need someone to be in the same close contact with Karla, since Karla has expressed her fears of losing her connection with FCP since the resignation of Francoise. If I could remain as this contact for FCP, I would love the opportunity.

GETTING A REP: Until we get a new FCP rep, we are depending on our Peace Corps volunteer friends to do the majority of the work in organizing squads, meetings, gathering money, and motivating the people of Pasmata. They have their own assignments and will not likely be giving this project the time it needs to move forward a great deal—but it is my hope that they will allow for the project to not take any steps backwards. That being said, we HAVE to keep the number one priority as obtaining a new rep and getting them to Jalapa as soon as possible, hopefully before February.

Updating our project timeline: With the designs nearly completed, the things that are mainly holding the project back unfortunately are arranging project funds, and obtaining evidence of full community participation. In the next week I will be meeting with Travis to create an updated project timeline based on foreseen progress with our Rotary grant, and with the agreement of the people of Pasmata. The initial idea was to have the project start in February, but based on the fact that we still have so many things up in the air that are out of our control, we may have to push this date back. Things to be cognizant of are that the foreman Jaime is only available Feb, March, April and June, so we’ll likely have to find a different foreman if our project is delayed too long.

Designs: I am meeting with my father who is doing the CAD drawings over the Christmas holidays. We will be putting together the finishing touches on all system components and sending them to Jaime via email for tweaking. By January these drawings should he ready to print by Karla on 11x17 paper and given to Jaime, his masons and work crew. The way in which we want to print of the main pipeline map still remains to be seen, since Google Earth does not allow one to print off high resolution shots of large areas. Apparently Google Earth Pro does, but this costs money; however Travis tells me that we could potentially get this program for free using our non-profit status.

Work Order: Once I get the entire work order looked over by Juan Jose the owner of Agro Ferreteria, I will send it out to you guys. This will also update our budget and give us a more exact figure on exactly how much this project will cost. Hopefully my 10% buffer on the current budget prediction was conservative.

Ordering Up Materials: After the work order and designs are acceptably complete, after all money is secured, permissions in our hands, and at least 90% community paid and signed up to work, we can order the materials from Agro Ferreteria from the United States, which saves us having to transfer large amounts of money to one of the water board members. We have outlined that all materials will be sent to the house of Dona Esmeralda because she has a large amount of storage space and already stores pipes and expensive farming equipment on her property due to the work of her husband. This will be the last thing we do before starting construction.

Community Meetings: We will have to continue having community wide meetings to slowly bring in the necessary 90% contribution and to raise community awareness. Lindsey and Trey will visit households and ask for initial household contribution, and let them know that the due date for community participation will be Jan 15^th. This date is changeable, hence the reason we need to think more critically about the project timeline given the current project constraints.

Handling Community Money: This is big. We’ll have Trey and Lindsey go with Julia, Don Francisco and Dona Esmeralda to the bank to open an account that will be used to keep funds contributed by the community. Having 3 people on the account will allow for checks and balances. Again the goal of this account will be to 1.) Pay a maintenance worker to take care of the system, 2.) pay for replacement materials when things inevitably leak and break, 3.) have a nest egg for if another natural disaster comes along, or the system needs to be replaced in the far off future.

Permissions: Lindsey and Trey will continue to help us to get the contract completed by the alcaldia’s lawyer Mario, and have this contract distributed and signed by each of the 3 land owners where the line will pass.

Rotary Involvement: I will continue to work with Ivonne to get Somoto Rotary to be more attentive to our time constraints and inform her about what’s truly needed from them. Hopefully this part of the process will go quickly and all we’ll have to wait for is processing of the application by Rotary International.

Assembling the Troops: I am going to stay in contact with Jaime via email, presenting him with project designs to get his recommendations for designs constructed in the field, utilizing his real world experience with water projects . Lindsey and Trey will begin meeting with Karla and arranging squad meetings to talk over exact project tasks, while meeting with Jaime for his recommendations.

Past FCP Systems: I will be presenting on the status of old FCP projects and using lessons learned from the projects I visited in Champigey, Nueva Esperanza and Chusli, as a basis for the things I recommend for the new project in Pasmata, along with future FCP water projects in Jalapa.

Database: I am working to make sure a project database on the internet is set up in Drop Box. I will be populating existing folders with all of the information I utilized and developed over the past 4 months. If anyone will want access to these files, they will have to download Dropbox from www.dropbox.com.

See everyone on the 18th of December for the Holiday Party!

Jeff and Jessie

Pasmata Water Project – Progress report for 11/19/2011

2011-11-20T08:57:00.001-06:00

The last month has had it’s ups and downs. With the election smack dab in the middle of it, Jessie and I were unable to work for around 8 days since we were advised to leave the country (we actually had to leave the country anyway to make sure we weren’t in Nicaragua with a tourist visa over 90 days). However, some great things were accomplished.

Accomplished since the last post:

Community Meeting: A whole community assembly took place on October 30^th. This meeting was very important, because the turnout of this meeting was going to show us just how important this project is to the people of Pasmata. The meeting was advertised in 7 different common places in the town, and I scheduled domestic line mapping for that week so that I could personally tell everyone in the community that this meeting was taking place. In preparation for the meeting Karla and I created posters showing:

A map of the complete project: I drew this with markers, it wasn’t pretty J
A timeline: how long the project is predicted to take once digging starts (around 3 months, email me if you want a complete project timeline)
Funding contributions: Who was contributing and how much mas o menos
The Financial contribution requirement from the community: 200 Cords/family initially, 30 cords/family/month
A sign up list of squads: 8 squads in all are being asked to work, with at least 10 people per squad working 2x per week, people were asked to pick a squad leader and to work under them. I am working to get this list entered electronically.
The meeting was a complete success, over 125 people showed up, half leaders from households, the other women in the community. Already we have 15 of the roughly 135 households that have shown their interest by paying the 200 Cords. This meeting showed me that Pasmata is interested, and that we need to do this project well for them.

Assembling the troops: Lindsey was at the community assembly, she introduced herself and the community knows she’s going to be taking over general supervision when the project starts construction in February. Jaime, the project foreman is still on board, and I have decided that hiring a project engineer is not needed as long as we have approved project designs (see below).

Designs: I have designed the system components completely, all except the dam, since we’re still pending as to where we want to put the source, since to run the lines through the steep stream banks, we have to surmount an initial bump that brings us to around 835meters. The source location as of now is at 830, so to not risk having the flow stopped 100 meters from the dam, we’re likely to push it a bit more upstream. The topography is steep, and should only require another 100 meters of tubing, at most.

For system component designs, please see the email that I sent yesterday.

The complete system hydraulic calculations have yet to be completed, however I have the spreadsheet ready to go and simply need to place the GPS data into it. It’s actually not all that simple, since all of the data needs to be organized and exact pipe sizes iterated for, but it shouldn’t take more than 10hrs.

Permissions: Finally after 2 months of delayed meetings, false promises and frustration, we have legal approval to construct a water system on the land of the Finca de Pasmata! I have a copy of this contract that I will save in a file for FCP. We are still needing to get a legal contract written for the other land owners closer to Pasmata where we’re hoping to run the line, and the lawyer has told us that he’ll have them available by Tuesday of this week. However, all in all, we have these permissions guys, success!!

Pending Project Tasks:

Designs: I will be completing the system hydraulic calculations and sending these calculations out to everyone. With these calculations complete, I will be creating a design doc which summarizes everything for this design. I want EVERYONE to look at this design doc (if you haven’t already looked at the calcs I sent), to make sure I’m not missing anything. I will be sending this design document to the ex peace corps worker who made the spreadsheet I’m using to ensure I’m not missing anything, and will also have it completely looked over by Reyna, the project foreman Jaime and the engineer for ADRA Ramon Urbina.

Work Order: While these designs are being looked over, I will be creating an exact work order for the amount of supplies we’re going to need to order. Obviously, I will not be ordering any of these supplies until the entire system is approved by everyone. I have made contacts with a large hardware store on the way to Ocotal and will get exact prices from them before I leave.

Community Meeting: We are holding another community assembly on Dec 4^th. This meeting will drive home the idea of what’s going on with this project, and allow for more people to sign up for the project.

Household Association: I have yet to associate household leader names with actual houses, and that’s going to be a problem I feel. I am going to walk the entire distribution line, asking the folks at each house to tell me the name of the household leader. Moreover, I am going to ask them if they agree to pay the 200 Cord initial cost and the 30 cord/month cost, since there is some grumbling. We have to stay firm with these costs from this point forward, and anything less than 30 cords/month will not be approved by me, but certainly if FCP wants to veto this amount you can! I just know that asking less than that amount will not allow for funding of a maintenance worker, upkeep parts, and complete project overhaul in 20yrs.

Permissions: We will be getting the permissions of the other 3 land owners next week after the contract is written up. These land owner have already given me approval but just to be sure we’re getting this in writing.

Assembling the Troops: I will be meeting with Jaime the predicted project foreman to see his prices for doing work, and what the prices he feels will be for skilled labor. I predict that his price will be around $300/mo (what the alcaldia pays him). I will also run through everything with Lindsey and make sure she’s on board with what her job will be working as a supervisor for us while we wait for the new FCP rep.

Database: I am working to make sure a project database on the internet is set up in Drop Box. We have to be more organized in the future, we need all calculations to be available to board and FCP rep folks, to minimize current and future project confusion. This will be set up this week. I will populate this database with all of the calcs, design guides and regulations I used, lab data, permissions, and a complete project contact list.

Thanks!

Jess and Jeff

Pasmata Water Project – Progress report for 10/23/2011

2011-10-23T22:46:00.007-06:00

The weeks are starting to melt together. We have been here around 11 weeks now, and while I feel like we have made some amazing progress in getting Pasmata water, in the same blush I know there is so much more to be done. Here’s what’s been accomplished lately, some pretty great and positive stuff!

New Project Start Date: After much delay with permission from the Finca de Pasmata, and because we’re still waiting for the Rotary Matching Funds Grant to come through (which will likely take some time!), I have decided it would be best to push back the tentative project start date to February. This will allow us to wait for the Finca de Pasmata to either 1.) respond and approve our request or 2.) Allow the alcaldia to move in and put the Nicaraguan Law (ley 40) to the test, since it’s the law that water is available to all. The law says that this can only take a maximum of 45 days after the 3^rd attempt to have approval. So this could take some time... More on this as I find out, we have an advisory meeting with the alcalde and the alcaldia lawyer on October 31^st.

Community Meeting: The meeting has been postponed to October 30^th, and after talking with Karla quite a bit, we decided that it would be best to have this meeting simple and to the point about the project, what it will entail, and how the community is needed to help. More details to follow. This meeting will be very important as it will serve as a gauge for how many manual laborers we can expect per day, as well as the overall community perspective of the project.

Assembling the troops: This has been a lot of fun. As I mentioned before, I have met with a few engineers and foremen to get a guage for the availability of skilled labor and engineering that are available. From these meetings worth noting was one hydraulics engineer Roman, who during our meeting made it very evident that he’s highly capable to run the supervision of this project. Also, yesterday I had the pleasure of acquainting Jamie, a foreman who does specifically water system construction, with the project in Pasmata. While walking where we’re hoping to put the line, and discussing where we’re hoping to put the retention, it became evident also that he was highly capable and knew his stuff. I spoke with him about his recommendations for the project, his availability, and his rate along with the rate of 4 skilled laborers.

I began to ask Jaime how he runs his ship. He told me his interaction with the engineer, and with his team, and I was very impressed. He invited me to visit his project site in Las Pampas, where he is installing much larger project for a community half the size of Pasmata (a larger project in that the source is much further away than Pasmata’s source (9km as compared to 3km). I will be visiting this site next week.

After this meeting, and some thought, I have decided that what this project will need after the permission has been granted, the drawings are all complete, a thorough budget is made, the money is secured, and the community labor forces are arranged (my goals!), there will be no need for an actual engineer to be in the field. Jamie expressed the engineer’s job at his current work site, and this engineer only shows up one day a week for about 1 hr to check over the drawings and give Jaime a pat on the back. Obviously I will be checking to see if this is actually true next week. Not having to pay an engineer will make this project far more economically feasible.

Also, as I mentioned in an email, having a Peace Corps person to report back to us matter of factly concerning project progress, will be highly beneficial. And she (Lindsey) is free of charge!

THEREFORE, a breakdown of the project will be as follows (and please express your feelings on how I am running this), copy this link into your address bar to view:

https://bubbl.us/?h=b3fd0/155beb/73PkmyfIYzuPk

The crux now is getting the community on board, and getting the permission!

Designs: I have drawn up designs for the retention, the sedimentation tank, and the distribution tank, and am still working on getting exact figures for how the transmission (conduction), and distribution (domestic) lines will look. I have some great examples from what the Alcaldia office has put together for their past project, so with the help of my AutoCAD wizard of a dad (he has worked with AutoCAD for Shell Oil refineries for 35 years), my handy dandy GPS, and MS paint, I should have something to send everyone in the next couple of weeks…again pending that we can fully clear and walk the line. I can get project design calculations to anyone who is interested, but it will take some finagling. I am making sure that everything to do with this project is being backed up and well organized for the upcoming FCP rep.

So that’s about it. It comes down to having:

Complete and legal permission from land owners
Drawings completed
An exact budget made
Money from FCP, the alcaldia, Travis’s grant, Rotary, and Pasmata in one readily accessible account
A labor force constructed, and a contract signed by a foreman (we have this ready)
Materials, Tools, equipment ordered
A place for the Materials, tools, equipment to be stored (thinking the church)
And basically a marriage of all of these things working together by Feb….
I am sure I'm forgetting something...

I am hopeful that this can be done, we have mad steps to get each and every one of these items covered. Wish us luck, and we’ll do the same while you search for another FCP rep.

Jess and Jeff

Pasmata Water Project – Progress report for 10/12/2011

2011-10-12T19:04:00.007-06:00

Again, another couple weeks, and a few more steps forward with this project! Also had some awesome friends come visit: Cole, and Travis (who is still here!).

Accomplished since the last post:

Project designs – Moving forward, but still lacking crucial information in terms of where the line will be passing, as we have been told we cannot pass through the property of the Finca de Pasmata until we hear back from the owner. However, as shown below, contacting the owner isn’t necessarily the only way to get legal permission to pass the line through the property of the Finca de Pasmata.

I have been scouring sources for best management (design and construction) documents for projects of this type, since I was unable to find any useful design documents from past projects by FCP, something we’re going to have to change by having all project information (contacts, design documents, funds spent, funds saved…etc.) available on a cloud network (i.e. dropbox). We can accomplish some great things here but we have to start being more organized.

I have some designs written up for the dam, and will be meeting with a skilled labor team to talk over the feasibility of what I’m proposing we do. The tank design is still up in the air because Travis and I are considering baffling the system to ensure appropriate chlorine contact time, successfully avoiding short circuiting.

Travis and I managed to scroung up some old system designs from an Alcaldia project in Las Uvas. It’s great because this actually gives us a great idea for material prices. More on this in the next couple of weeks, these designs are going slowly, but the more important items are being addressed now, such as community interest, willing to pay, creating a work plan, and getting someone to fill my shoes and keep the momentum going for this project!

Old FCP Systems – I was originally in contact with Champigny to see their project site in order to learn from their design methodology. As mentioned in past posts, I found that the system, while very very successful (10yrs and providing water), the community was having problems providing everyone with consitent water, both for reasons of incredible population growth, and from what I can tell, poor system maintenance (overflowing tank, meaning the distribution system has something clogged). They have a fontenero (maint. Operator) named Jose, but I’m not sure he knows what he’s doing. I had a meeting with the community leaders, they explained their concerns (which always leads to them telling me they need to install a brand new system with 4” tubes (HUGE). Their way of thinking always seems to be to make the system larger, instead of working with what they already have. Also less than 50% of the people are paying the 10 $C monthly tariff, which barely funds the 3000 C$/month cost of a funtanera, since the town has 400 families paying for their access to water. As you can imagine this is leading to improper maintenance. I have made a meeting with Travis to walk the system to do a second diagnostic on Monday. This is the kind of work that the new FCP rep should be contracted to do, ensure that FCP projects are working well.

We can talk more about this stuff later, but I feel that monitoring and maintaining old projects should be one of the more important aspects of work that is done here with water projects in the Jalapa Valley, and I am going to be working on creating a somewhat ad hoc plan of attack to scale things up in the next few years!

Survey/census data: A pretty bare bones estimate was made from the surveys conducted last week concerning willingness to pay. The data from about 560 interviewees is shown in the table below.

Significant bias likely existed between surveyor and interviewee, as was obvious by the trend of answers gathered by each surveyor. However, the general trend was that most individuals can afford the initial construction cost of $8/family, and a 25 C$ monthly tariff to pay for the maint. worker and materials. The hard part will be collecting these funds, and having consistent payment. It was also found that roughly 50% of the people

ESTADISTICAS
	# Initial	% Initial
Number responded	130
Number Blank (NR)	14
Willing to Pay 8	91	63.2
Willing to pay <8 but >=6	14	9.7
Willing to pay <6 but >=4	14	9.7
Willing to pay <4 but >=2	7	4.9
Willing to pay <2but >=0	3	2.1
Not Willing to pay	0	0.0
	# Monthly	% Monthly
Number responded	127
Number Blank (NR)	17
Willing to Pay 47	14	9.7
Willing to pay <47 but >=20	82	56.9
Willing to pay <20 but >=10	18	12.5
Willing to pay <10 but >=5	9	6.3
Willing to pay <5but >=0	0	0.0
Not Willing to pay	0	0.0
Average Initial ($)	6.92
Average Monthly ($C)	21.32
Number responded	118
Number Blank (NR)	26
# Bueno	56
% Bueno	47.5
# Malo	62
% Malo	52.5

CAPS (Comite de Agua Potable y Saneamiento) meeting: This was enlightening. Yet another CAPS meeting where various communities came to understand the convoluted and highly involved process of joining the CAPS system and thereby having the organizational backing and rights provided within. CAPS, in short is a “non government based group” of leaders from the national all the way down to the community that came together with lawyers to create updated water laws, in the form of Law 722 for CAPS, to replace the past laws for water 620 and 40(municipal law). Although the only way for communities to join CAPS they have to have a community representative show up to the office of the Alcaldia, where Reyna then is in charge to distribute the 3 necessary applications. This meeting showed me that for those working here in Jalapa with water, we need to have these laws understood, since knowing the rights of community members will allow us to know how to proceed when times , like now for example, come up when land owners are not keen on granting the use of their land for water projects…

This meeting also showed me a small portion of the need for water projects in the Jalapa Valley.

Water Tests – Still waiting on these water tests. The most important parameters we’re waiting on are fecal coliform, and total coliform counts (evidence of shit), and nitrates, nitrites, phosphates (evidence of pesticides or other anthropogenic contaminants). We will be meeting with ENECAL Friday to get these results!

Somoto Rotary Story: The trip to Somoto last week to visit their Rotary (which has got to be one of the most organized groups I have met thus far in Nicaragua. They are certainly alive and well!) Here's an overview

Interested in supporting us with supervision as an in country contact
Wanting a more up to date budget (heck I want the same thing)
Interaction was good, they gave us a good contact for an engineer who does this kind of work in Jalapa who could replace me named Ramon (met with him today in fact!)
Travis and I are getting the completed application sent to Rotary this evening.

Building a database of best practices design and construction documents for the new engineer – This is more for future workers from the states here. I feel that starting a cloud database (dropbox) with designs, “contact trees”, contacts, lessons learned, etc. will be the cornerstone for fieldwork in the future. .

Contracting Ramon as the new engineer – Met with him today, but posted the outcome in the next section.

Teaching a Spanish class for Becadoras (scholarship winners from FCP) - Side note, Jessie and I are teaching English to about 5 grantee’s. It has been a fun experience. More on this later. We have been meeting on Fridays!

Organizing Labor Forces: 9

squads of 10 workers. – Oraganizing this will be an involved process, but just mentioning it here in short to show that we are now looking at how we should organize household manual labor. This would be 3 squads working 2 times a week. But it get’s complicated….more on this next week.

Organizing skilled labor forces – We had contact with a brick layer and concrete extrodonare, Jarvin, and he is going to be coming with Travis and us to visit the site. More on this later as well.

Walked the Domestic Line – This took place on October 8^th, and we are still looking over exact domestic line dimensions and placements.

Definite Fuenta location – (picture) This is still pending. The location for the new source is above the waterfall and I have chosen the spot shown below due to it’s rocky foundation. The crux will be attaching to the rock and diverting the flow…more on this later.

Design and budget of piping has been put on hold until we hear from the Finca de Pasmata. They are taking a while in getting back to us, and we’ve been in correspondence with Miguel. However, any correspond

ence with Miguel and with Orlando has been in the form of cancelled meetings, and broken promises, so I decided to visit the lawyer of the alcaldia. He told me a few ways to get permission, but ultimately what happened was a last ditch effort to meet the owner of the finca de Pasmata. A sidebar, the finca owner used to be the current owners sister, but he was killed by the Mafia. She ended up taking off to the states, and we were unable to get her to sign the document. Making a long story short, we can still get the fuenta property, but we have to go through a number of hoops, which will take 45 days or so to get completed, before we have legal access to the source. This is the kind of thing you read about in development books…let the delays begin! To make this whole thing a bit clearer I have attached a map of the owners and pipe lengths below:

The majority of this design should be completed, by the end of next week. I mean it this time.

Community Meeting : For now the community wide meeting to talk over the details of the water project has been changed from October 9 to October 23: More on this later as well, this date is also tentative, and pending on a lot of work on our part to create a detailed work plan to present at this meeting.

Pending Project Tasks:

WE HAVE TO GET A PERSON TO REPLACE ME!!! I met with Nicaraguan Engineer Ramon today (10/12) (shoot don’t have his last name, but have his email), and pitched the project, the tentative designs (planning on emailing these out when they’re a bit more presentable), the scope of work, and the desire to have him take over the project when I leave. He said that he is available to help 2-3 times per week, overseeing the work, ensuring the project is moving in the right direction. He would be working in conjunction with a project supervisor (still searching, likely this is going to be a Peace Core worker Lindsay (also no last name)).

I would like to talk this over with the FCP board to see how you guys might feel about paying (price not set) a local engineer to oversee the project. In my eyes it would be the best option, someone who knows the systems, knows the people, and knows the language. But again, more on this later, I have a lot of information to talk over with him, and he still needs to see the project site.

Meeting with Travis to talk over:

Project time line,
worker timeline,
funding, fontenero,
acquiring money,
reporting project progress and funding,
la cuenta (who has control of the project account?)
project monitoring
Much much more…

This post was pretty disjointed, I'm sorry, it really was just a much needed outlaying of the work that is being put together for this project in the last two weeks. So much progress! Man it’s a lot to think about but having Travis here, and having my 30^th birthday in Jalapa really makes me feel like a blessed man. This work is a dream come true, and an incredible experience and jumping point into development work in the WASH sector.

I will put out another similarly long progress report after Travis leaves, we still have a lot to work on!

Until then, take care and thanks for reading!
Jeff, Jessie, and for a time, TRAVIS!

Pasmata Water Project – Progress report for 9/25/2011

2011-09-24T23:00:00.006-06:00

This week went very well, of course, not as I had planned in my overly anal and naively built Gantt chart. Keeping with the theme of the past posts, let’s get started with some rigid engineer mind explosion.

Accomplished Project Tasks:

From last time (I only had this compiled in email form, so I’ll just paste it in here all nimbly-bimbly)

Prepared a survey for Pasmata to obtain basic census information along with information and opinions concerning this upcoming water project as well as a portion evaluating willingness to pay both on the initial construction front, as well as for a monthly payment – Conducting this survey went quite well. To summarize the survey process a bit better, the questions went as follows:

Who lives in your house: education, age…etc.
What kinds of infrastructural items to you have: electricity, water, toilet (with a way of rating their toilet on a good to bad scale for odor, cleanliness, and flies to allow for statistical coding-yep this is what my life has come to).
An introduction stating that this project is hopefully going to be happening, but only with the contribution of $8 from each family, and $2 per month to pay for maintenance and all that’s entailed with it. Each person was informed why these rates were as they were.
question about their feelings of the use of meters, and how they would feel having the cost of water based on quantity instead of a flat rate. We prefaced that this was likely to be requisite, Travis and I both agree that knowing how much water is being used is going to be highly important for reasons of: understanding system demand, household use (overuse?)…to name a couple. Didn’t know quite how to tell them that our goal would be to someday have the meters monitored over the internet. This explanation might have to wait until we get the pilot set up J
A closing statement saying that you for your time, we’re going to have a community wide meeting explaining in detail what is demanded of the community (time, money, labor), set for when Travis get’s here so we can have some more firepower.

In total we had 165 surveys to do. The surveys were divvied up between the water board, President Don Chico took 75 surveys, Julia, a guy named Miguel and Sulema took the rest. I was under the impression that everyone had somewhat of an idea about what a survey was about, seeing as I showed them the activity and role of a surveyor and an interviewee J.

These surveys did go relatively well,

considering that the majority of the folks (unbenownced to me) who were going to give these surveys (the water board of Pasmata, and a few random folks that showed up to meetings) either couldn’t grasp the premise of the surveys, didn’t agree themselves with what the questions were saying and ergo entered in their own biases while presenting the questions, or simply couldn’t read and write. I decided I would go out with a few folks to see how they were giving the surveys. Sulema, the woman I worked with first had eye problems so she had me read the questions and she continually gave her own opinions to the interviewee while I tried to explain that they were supposed to listen while the interviewee talked. Sulema spent nearly one whole survey explaining to me in front of a woman interviewee that people in Pasmata are poor and what that should mean to folks doing a water project. So, not exactly the professional façade we were likely hoping for. However, nearly all 165 surveys have been conducted (albeit by a group of random people, handed the surveys and told to do the work by the water board). A positive takeaway, the people know about the project and are ready for a meeting.

Fecal coliform tests done at the new source by MINSA – This went even better than we had planned. On a whim, I was called by Reyna instructing me that I had to be at the ENECAL office in 2 minutes. I got there in 3, and waited for 1hr. I love this place. ENECAL apparently had an opening in their busy lab schedule to accommodate our complete request for water quality tests. I was driven to Pasmata, and we made the trek up to the location of the new source. Two nutrient samples were taken and one bacteriological test was taken at the source. I managed to find the perfect location for the dam, solid rock walls about 3 meters wide (see picture below). This is at 830meters, the tank is at going to be at 740 meters.

The fact that we got these tests taken before the first of October was nothing short of a miracle. We hope to have the results by Thursday, I will include these in the next blog

Walk the tube line with a local pipe guru: We decided to wait for the response from the Finca de Pasmata. We heard back yesterday, after having called the representative for the farm (Miguel), that the Finca de Pasmata owner was going to be discussing the letter Karla wrote concerning using the source above Las Piedras (right above the water fall about .9km upstream). So we should be hearing back from them by Wednesday of this upcoming week . Exactly 1 week late. Not bad.

Land owners: We have yet to get signed documents from Dona Comila, Maria, Folia. However, we did hear from Dona Maria saying that we could use her land free of charge for the tank location. She was originally demanding $150, but then she decided to donate, not sure why but we are grateful!

Somoto Rotary: Ivonne confirmed today to meet with the water board, myself, and Jessie in Somoto on Tuesday evening of next week. I will be speaking with Travis to see what is needed from the Somoto club to get the ball rolling. We will also be presenting the scope of the project with Ivonne and the Somoto club.

Alcalde y alcaldia: Karla and I had a meeting with Orlando on Monday to solicit his presence at the upcoming community meeting (during the time that Travis is here) October 9^th. We are going to try to get him to commit to the $2000 that he has promised for the domestic lines at this community meeting. Just a bit of pressure from the community J. We’ll see how this goes. He certainly isn’t going to have any money to give until the first of the year, but that should be just in time for the domestic lines, shown in the Gantt chart, as being installed in January. I will do a back flip if any of the promises he’s giving actually take place.

Champigny System not working well: I walked the Champigny system to get another successful system design in my head. The system, which was constructed in 2001, is still working pretty good, with the exception of some plugged air release valves (common to both this system and the Nueva Esperanza system). The main problem with this system was there is something plugging up and slowing down water flow in the distribution line (after the tank). This was evident both by the overfilled 16k gallon tank, and the people in the community complaining that there isn’t any water. The people of the community think the reason they don’t have water is due to an increase in demand. Their fontenero (maintainance guy) doesn’t seem to know what’s going on, and how to fix the problem, mentioning that the system needs to be expanded and a new tank installed. After looking through some if-then troubleshooting diagrams in my engineering for developing communities book, I have deduced what I already thought, that the distribution line is either too small (not the case, 2” is actually overkill if you ask me), or is blocked. Blocked is the likely culprit, and since new households have been installed rather ad hoc, I would imagine that more sediment/junk could be entering the system.

I will explain the situation to the Champigny water board when we have a meeting, one is planned for the following week to discuss how their construction teams were run, and any lessons learned. I will also be discussing this with Gregg since he likely knows the most about this project. Looking after systems like this one and making sure that everything is running properly will be a great job for the upcoming FCP rep. I will be keeping a log of work that he/she can do so that his/her time is used effectively. Should be quite a lot of fun having a hand in so many projects.

Gantt chart: Emailed to the board to show where this week’s work has put us in the grand scope of things.

New project on the horizon -- I met with a man named Don Enrique from Trapiche. He and his water board have created an impressive document both in Spanish and in English outlining an expansion proposal of their current system to meet the demands of a neighboring community of 80 households that is developing close by. The community is filled with rockstars who have been very active in expanding and up keeping their water system funded in part by ISLA (Minnesota) in 1983. The system is still running. They are of course lacking funding, but I believe this project could potentially be a great one to piggy back the hopefully successful project in Pasmata.

My main fear is that they are trying to use donor money to get in place a project that will in tern allow them to charge the development company that has bought the land (solares) for the new neighboring community named Monte Verde. The only reason the community hasn’t been built yet is the lacking water system, and from the looks of things, they have been waiting for some time. The fact that there is corruption in the air is pretty comforting these days, as it’s something I’m getting used to dealing with and assuming it’s presence.

Pending Project Tasks:

Somoto meeting-- Getting ready for this meeting. I will be discussing this with Travis who is running the show states side.

Water System Designs – The first string of designs should be done and sent out to Greg et al (I will just take photos of the pages in my calc book, and send the excel spreadsheet and CAAD drawings) by the end of next week. We are hopefully walking the line as well on Saturday, which would give exact elevations, albeit we pretty much already have them having walked the general line area 3 times (mailman calves).

Permitting – During the walk, we hope to get signed the letters that Karla has written, by the 3 finca owners. We will also be waiting with baited breath for the go ahead from the Finca of Pasmata. If there are any issues with them donating the land, this project will likely screech to a sickening halt. Be thinking of us on Wednesday!

Line location cleaned and flagged—this would be nice as well.

Thanks for reading guys, I hope you’re doing well, and I look forward to posting again next week! Things keep on keeping on!

Jeff and Jessie

Pasmata Water Project – Progress report for 9/12/2011

2011-09-12T23:37:00.002-06:00

There were less steps forward this week than in previous weeks due to a bit of sickness on my part, and a few delays due to highway blockades and the lack of proactiveness (and apparent interest) on the part of the alcaldia. Please let me say first of all, everyone has told me that the government is corrupt, it’s a common theme in most governments, especially those in Latin America. And I would like to operate in the innocent until proven guilty prose. However, I am starting to see that the government, while not completely corrupt (they are doing something here and they’re overly busy and they are doing the best with what they can, amidst the obvious dissonance of gossip, jealousy, and keeping a jovial and serving public façade), just doesn’t produce when they say they will. I know, I should have seen this coming.

Ok on to what was accomplished of the pending project tasks:

Accomplished Project Tasks:

Water tests – I met with Karla at 8:00 and we left for the office of the alcaldia with Reyna (awkward, this happened because of our conversation on Saturday, when I told her Karla and I were meeting on Monday to get some tests set up), and went to MINSA to solicit their help to acquire water samples for the aforementioned tests (previous post). MINSA confirmed that they would be able to send a person into the field to appropriately bottle up the samples, but that they could only do total coliform, and physical chemical tests (pH, temperature), not E.coli, and the rest of the mineral/chemical tests. It’s funny, because when we talked to MINSA before, they said they were able to do the gambit of tests we needed. MINSA told us that we would have to get the tests done by ENECAL, and that the samples would need to be sent to Managua the same day the samples were taken from the source. Reyna told us that she would write up a letter and solicit the help of ENECAL, meanwhile we had made plans to meet with MINSA at 6:00AM on Wednesday to take the samples.

Reyna did in fact, to her credit, send a letter to ENECAL, however ENECAL replied by saying they didn’t have time on Wednesday to do the samples in Managua, and therefore we would have to wait for an open spot later in the week so that the samples could be picked up and delivered for processing within 24 hours. Due to blockades, we were not able to get ENECAL to confirm a time to test the samples, and therefore we have MINSA on hold until we can get a date. It doesn’t look like this is going to go quickly.

Permitting – After determining where we want the source to be, we now know that we need to have the following contracts signed:

Finca de Pasmata: Karla sent a letter soliciting their approval to pass a pipe on their land, and to use the water with a dam and sedimentation basin, one after the other, per best management practices (waiting on the turbidity results to see exactly how necessary a sedimentation basin and potential sand filter will be)

Finca de Dona Camilia: asking for 20m x 20m of land to place the tank

Finca de Dona Maria, y de Dona Fila: Asking to run the pipe through their land.

These will hopefully be delivered and signed by next week, and we should head from the finca de pasmata by next Tuesday, September 20^th per the demands of our letter.

Community Meeting (soliciting community financial input and manual labor) – We are still working to figure out a way to have an informative meeting pertaining to the projects scope of work, and desired sweat equity, and financial contribution, by the community. We are hoping to have this meeting when Travis arrives in the second week of October.

Soliciting 2 year FCP representative – Cole has told us that he is likely not able to be the next 2 year representative, which means we need to seek other avenues for soliciting volunteers.

Project Design: I was supposed to meet with Reyna tomorrow to do one final walk of the water line, since I figured she would have the experience needed to know exactly where a line should be run, but she unfortunately had to postpone to the following Tuesday. With the upcoming Independence Day holiday, and the Festival de Mais, I am thinking that not much work is going to be done in terms of exacting the design of this system based on a real pipe layout.

Report to Somoto: This report was sent out last Tuesday, and was received by Ivonne in Somoto. They are reading over the details and will be getting back to us hopefully this week.

Further Pipe Mapping: We are planning to have a group of 10-12 machete toting landscapers clear a line for the staking of the pipe layout. We have already bought the flags and paint, all we’re needing now is an exact location of the pipe.

Selecting Necessary Elements for a Successful Project: Travis and I spoke this last week about what we felt should be a required from the community for FCP support to be given. We felt that this list should be created to ensure that we stick to our gun with what we know to be true concerning crucial community contributions needed to ensure proper buyin, community pride and ownership, and ultimately a well run and maintained project. These elements were:

Initial community contribution: We had this set at $1000, or roughly $6 or 130 C$ per household

Sweat Equity: The community would have to construct the system with their own manual labor

Monthly Tariff: The community would have to provide a monthly payment, of around 1$, or 23 C$ for each household. This is crucial because this payment would help fund maintenance of the system and future system overhaul. It would also fund a worker to maintain the system. Greg told me that a maintenance operator in Champigny is paid around 300 $C per month to work 10hr/week maintaining the system. This person could be paid by simply 15 household contributions of 1$, where the rest would go into a savings account.

Maintenance worker: The aforementioned maintenance worker would have to be hired, trained, and held accountable for his work.

Water Board: A trustworthy water board would need to be elected, and hold meetings once every two weeks to discuss how the system is running, and address complaints from the community pertaining to system performance.

Meters: We are still discussing the use of water meters on each household tap, to monitor water usage, and the possibility of requiring payment by quantity of water used instead of a flat fee. Understandibly, this is a wildly unpopular idea by the current water board, since a larger household that uses more water, likely has less expendable money due having more mouths to feed.

Well maintained project account: We feel that we need to ensure that the community is using their money correctly, while instilling in them that a savings account supplied by monthly tarrifs will be the crucial element of project sustainability given necessary repairs and project upkeep.

Dignity Loan?: The extend of potentially working the monthly payments in a way that can help the community effectively pay back FCP, and thereby buying back their dignity so to speak, is one option we were considering. Plus the fact that if put back in the pocket of FCP, we would be able to continue forward with other water projects outside of Jalapa!

Others: We’re still working on this list, we feel it is very important to have these set into place well before the community meeting.

Pending Project Tasks

Water tests – I will continue to work on getting these underway with the help of Karla. Not having definitive water quality data presents a problem both from the design standpoint (number of filters or sed basin), and from a feasibility standpoint (if the water has evidence of high levels of pesticides, we may find that this source will not work). However, I am pretty confident that the coliform count will be less than what was found at Las Piedras, and that there will be little evidence of pesticides given the distance the source is from the farms upstream, offering a potential for chemical decay.

Permitting – We hope to have these all handled by the end of next week

Community Meeting (soliciting community financial input and manual labor) – We will continue to work on the content of this taller. I will be visiting Champigny to see how they ran similar workshops, and see how they delegated labor, and collected financial contributions from each household.

Soliciting 2 year FCP representative – FCP is on it! This is probably the most important aspect of this project right now.

Project Design: I will try to get the majority of the system components designed based on demand and assumed flow and turbidity, and get them sent to Gary and George.

Report to Somoto: I will email Ivonne again to see how this is proceeding.

Further Pipe Mapping: Hopefully we will be able to meet with Reyna and get the path for the tubes cleared by the end of next week.

Necessary Elements for a Successful Project: Continuing to draw up these elements. Any insight on this is greatly appreciated from the Board!

Thanks for reading guys, and thanks for an awesome Skype meeting! More from here in the next few days!

Jeff and Jessie

Pasmata Water Project - Progress Update 9/3/2011

2011-09-03T14:27:00.010-06:00

We had another eventful week--with a few hiccups that set us back a few steps. However, with a project like this, moving through hiccups can almost always be considered steps in the right direction. Similar to past posts, I will start by summarizing our progress with project tasks outlined in the previous weeks post, then explain any progress outside of the scope of these tasks, and end with pending project tasks, to hopefully be accomplished in the upcoming week.

Moving forward with last week’s pending project tasks:

Walking and Marking exact pipe locations with the project teams: We were unable to get out and mark the exact location of the pipes. It was a bit overly ambitious to think that we could both GPS and flag piping locations in two outings. Apparently, based on a few community recommendations, the job of flagging pipe locations will take a team of 10-12 workers with machetes about a day to proceed through the dense foliage to flag piping locations. We did, however, get out and figure where the pipes could be run, and a more exact feasibility map was created (see below). Blogger isn't letting me post this photo correctly, please email me if you want this image.

As you can see, this feasibility map has both an Option A and an Option B (red and yellow respectively). This is because, after doing a complete mapping of the houses that will need water, we found that Las Piedras was not going to provide enough head to households above El Polverin (the sub barrio of Pasmata where the majority of the houses are). In fact there are houses in Pasmata, owned by local farmers at an elevation above Las Piedras, up a road which bisects the carretera. We also found that due to some permitting struggles we’d be having with local land owners (explained later), that locating the source at Las Piedras would require running pipes in locations that we would have a hard time soliciting permission for. That being the case, as seen below, we have a map of two options (actually only one option as we’ll see later), with the new source being upstream, actually above the waterfall nearly 700meters up from Las Piedras. This will offer more than enough head, and should also give us lower fecal coliform counts. There is also a constriction in the stream that looks nearly the same as Las Piedras, and would facilitate in the construction of a dam to capture the necessary water. However, searching deeper, I found out last night, that Option A is the only feasible option (while also using the least amount of total pipe, but most amount of conduction pipe). This is due to the location of the storage tank (yellow and red box on the map), the size of which will depend on the amount of water we have rights to, also explained later. The storage tank for Option B would require getting permission from finca owner, Dona Blanca, who apparently does not approve of the idea. Option A, while also providing the necessary head to upland households, would only need clarification from mysterious finca owner, “Pasmata”, where we are soliciting that they allow us to pass tubes through their land, but not placing a tank. The tank will be placed on a hill slightly Northeast of Pasmata, on the land of Dona Camilla, who we spoke with a couple days ago, and has approved of tank placement on her land.

Therefore, all we are lacking for complete permission of Option A, is permission to pass conduction lines from source through farmer Pasmata’s, land. We have written and sent this letter to Esteli, to “INAA Las Vegas” to solicite approval from farmer Pasmata, and should hear back from him in the next 2 weeks. For Dona Comilla, we will be writing up a contract for proof of land owner approval for the placement of the tank.

Remapping, and redesigning system based on more accurate and detailed set of GPS points, making sure the available head is available at community grids (Feasibility step 1) – This design is currently underway, I have been reading up on a system installed by Peace Corps in Honduras, in a thesis written by Nathan Rents. In his thesis he outlines each step needed both from a feasibility standpoint, as well as from a nuts and bolts, design, materials list, design drawing in AutoCAD standpoint. Plan to go through similar steps as Nathan to design and plan out this project. If I can do even half a good a job as Nathan, this project will be designed very well. I am also using resources from the UFC professors, and hopefully El Porvenir in the near future.

Parasite and Ecoli testing, to ensure water quality is in fact good (Feasibility step 2, but likely should be step 1). I have written up a list of water quality tests we need to prove the new source has quality within allowable health and safety standards from WHO. These are shown below (sorry, left in Spanish, but you can get the idea)

Bacteriológico

Coliformes Fecales/100ml – Si es posible, también:

E. Coli – An indicator organism of fecal coliforms that is easy to find, but expensive to test for.

Bacterias Termo tolerantes – thermo tolerant bacterias, i.e. bacterias that can exist in temperaturas above 45 C. This is likely to be what is tested for.

Coliformes Totales/100ml – Looking over all coliforms, i.e. all bacteria that have the ability to convert lactos into energy within 35 – 45 C.

Parámetros Physicales

Temperatura – important to know the behavior of dissolved compounds

Turbididad – Turbidity, or cloudiness, which we need to keep low to have an effective residual chlorine dose, since too much stuff in the water (natural organic matter, silts, clays, poop) react with the chlorine and deplete concentrations.

Parámetros Chemicoles

pH – affecting the ability to chlorinate (acceptable range 6.5-8.3ish)

Conductivida – a great way to see if there are anthropogenic influences, in the form of salts that can be evaluated with how easy electricity is passed through the water.

Calcio Carbonate – Hardness, an aesthetic property of water which confound attempts to suds up soap.

Nitratos – predictor of fertilizers and pesticides

Nitritos - predictor of fertilizers and pesticides

Amonio – predictor of low oxygen levels in water, and skunky taste smell

Phosphorus (Fosfatos) - predictor of fertilizers and pesticide

Iron – Hierro – aesthetic property, could lead to reddening of clothing

Sulfates – taste

Floridas – teeth decay (if a high enough levels, crazy huh).

Arsénica – evidence of pesticides, and just is a nasty compound. Permissible levels in the states are below 5ppb.

Turning in Somoto Document, visiting Somoto Rotary – A document was completed, but not sent due to the uncertainty of the water source and required funding for this project. A new proposal is being put together now and will be sent out early next week to establish much needed contact with the Somoto Rotary.

Utilizing Facebook and Putting the Word out for a 2 yr worker – We absolutely positively need to get someone lined up for 1 to 2 years of work here. I am awaiting approval from FCP to create this site as I know some folks were a bit wary about the idea of creating a facebook account.

Soliciting Jalapa Government Involvement: Reyna has graciously given us a few project design programs designed by engineers in Managua, that will effectively serve as a check for the calculations I run with program from UFC, Goodwater, and with Nathan Rents design in his Thesis. This is great. She has also told us that the Alcaldia is willing to put forth around $2000 for piping within the community, that we will likely need to replace due to their relative ages (nearly 21 year old, from the old project in 1990).

Pending Project Tasks:

Water tests – We hope to run the aforementioned water tests early next week and have results in the next couple of weeks

Permitting – Writing up a contract to secure permitting from Dona Comilla. This will be headed by my wife, Jessie, who is a lawyer in Colorado. Sweet.

Community Meeting (soliciting community financial input and manual labor) – Planning of a full community meeting to discuss project details, desired manual labor from each household when the project is underway, and an initial and monthly payment from each household to pay for project upkeep performed by a responsible system operator. I will be meeting with the Pasmata Water Committee on Thursday to go through brainstorming the details of this workshop, which will be held at the community school. This community meeting wouldn’t take place until we have permission to run the pipe, but the farmer Pasmata.

Soliciting 2 year FCP representative – I have started a dialogue with a colleague, named Cole Sigmon, and he has expressed interest in taking the reigns of this water project, which will likely entail supervising project construction, as well as running operation, maintenance and monitoring in evaluation while the project in running its first 2 years. This conversation has been kept very informal (as we don’t know if this is even a possibility with current FCP funding), and I will be waiting the go-ahead from the FCP board before I progress with this conversation beyond the current point of hypothetical consideration.

Project Design: Continuing to work through the design process and have a design to present to the FCP board with a detailed budget.

Report to Somoto: The goal is to have this report turned in early next week.

Further Pipe Mapping: Begin organizing troops to clear a way for the hypothetical pipe route.

That’s it for now, more on how this project is progressing next week. If you have any questions, please email me at jeff.walters22@gmail.com!

Pasmata Water Project - Progress Update 8/27/2011

2011-08-27T11:46:00.002-06:00

We made some great progress over the past six days. Of the aforementioned goals, we accomplished, or at least started hacking away at them in the following ways, and some:

HERE THEY ARE:

Meeting with Somoto Rotary Club: This one is kind of a biggie, since Travis and François have been in contact with Local Rotary folks in Boulder and Denver, and are waiting to hear from local Nicaraguan Rotarians, and as was mentioned earlier, are interested in donating as a group if all ducks are in a row, and communication exists as to what the full details of the project entails. We made some great steps with this, however, after having called Ivonne in Somoto, who sharply told us that we needed to provide a report to her until Karla and I could have any face time. Loved hearing the conversation, Karla shortly after commented that Ivonne was dura, i.e. a hard lady. But this hardness is warranted, and requires us to do work that we needed to do anyway. The details put in the report thus far are shown below, the report is nearly completed and includes description of the project history and need (Karla’s part), with a project budget, donor needs, water quality tests, and a simple map outlining the tentative pipe sizes and routings.

Preliminary design of system and associated budget for an understanding of donor needs: After spending a few days looking over the Nueva Esperanza water project designs, and reading up on gravity fed water systems from a variety of sources, I came up with some preliminary designs based on the topographic mapping we did last week. I drew hydraulic grade lines for each pipe size estimate (2” for the conduction line and 1.5” (PVC) for the distribution line, while the main vanes within the town will be 1” and 0.5” PVC or hosing, depending on the house location. From this point it was possible to estimate major and minor head losses (where major head loss by friction was the main player in head loss), and based on GPS mapping, was possible to estimate the number of 6m PVC pipe was needed for each section, and based on hypothetical distribution tank and rock/sand filter placement. I also used some pretty basic sketches of the dimensions of the constriction at the Piedra’s source, which would utilize some of the gigantic boulders as a foundation, and the constriction as a damn with concrete and rebar (Travis has a great sketch up of this that his wife Laura drew. Mine was just drawn in my field book when I took some rough measurements during my first visit of the source. I am going to have to visit this place a few more times before I can feel confident with this design, and need to talk with some geotec folks about using rocks for foundation elements with drilled rebar as well). I don’t know much about dam design, so going through some documents about diversion, and dam construction methods will be highly beneficial to this project. Anyone who has seen documentation on this type of thing, please send them my way!

Water demands by the community were estimated (surveys weren’t done because we figured they would give inaccurate values anyway, and past experience and empirical evidence from the World Health Organization should and would trump anything we found by asking community members how much water they use (do we in the States even know how many liters of water we use per day without looking at the water bill?)) as 50L/person/Day, assuming a quasi exponential increase in population (good for populations less than 2000 people (Milhecic 2009)), and a project life of 25 years, yielding around 1000 folks. Sizing the tank was interesting, since based on current flows, there is no need for storage, however, in most cases to keep flow uniform, and to protect from any freak water outages, a conservative tank size of 1/4 the daily max usage (in cubic meters) over a 12hr period, was used to calculate hypothetical tank dimensions (around 3.5m x 3.5m x 3 m, which if you do the math is around 37,000 liters, around twice as large as the Nueva Esperanza tank, which makes sense seeing as their community is around half the size of Pasmata. The difficulty, however, is how much water should we assume it coming from the source, since there is no need to use the capacity of the source (which is 4x more than what was predicted as the source flow in calculations), I am thinking it would be cool to have a regulator valve at the source that a person could change based on flow in and desired flow out, if demands are higher than predicted, given that there is capacity to do so….email me if you want exact figures on this.

Pipes, valves, glue, cement, the works, was given to me in a spreadsheet from Reyna last week (that has been the extent of the alcaldia’s involvement, hopefully we’ll have more in the weeks to come), and concrete and rebar quantities and prices were found using ratios for impermeable concrete of 6:3:2 Aggregate, Sand, Cement, used in documentation, where the rebar costs were found from a local hardware store, given as 1300 C./ (about $65) per (8) 6m bars, and assuming a spacing of 6” O.C. in most cases. From these quantities, it was possible to make up a materials costs spreadsheet, which put us around $9,000 for total project costs, where Travis and I are thinking it would be better to estimate even more conservatively given the possibility of not having enough wood for forming, not having the proper tools, and having to compensate somewhat for manual labor, which Pasmata rep, Karla, has ensured me will be free of cost…but who knows.

The trip to Nueva Esperanza showed me in fact that the crux with this project will be grabbing monthly fees from folks hooked up to the water, as even $0.50/month has been hard to get from Nueva Esperanza folks (to pay for parts and a person who is in charge of checking the system $20/day). They have also mentioned that for any new household to be added to the system, a person must pay 1000 C./ ($50) for the rights to tap the line. This is good to know, seeing as Travis and I are still debating how we should charge folks based on water usage and new household connection.

Conduct the needed water tests to feel sure that this source is going to be an improvement: After reading through the 2004 WHO water guidelines (pretty basic I know, but it was in the FCP office here in Jalapa J) there was a mention that the presence of pesticides could be estimated by looking at nitrogen and arsenic levels (among mercury and other heavy metals), but mostly just nitrates and nitrites. So we actually had these tests already done for las piedras, which showed very low levels of nitrites and nitrates, fare below the permissible level. I would contend that this is good enough evidence that pesticides from up stream tobacco farms, is enough.

What we are lacking now is evidence of real pathogenic bacteria indicators, E. Coli and thermo tolerant bacteria (since in tropical areas, total coliforms do not show much due to the prevalence of natural coliforms in these types of environments), so I am pushing to have these tests done either by MINSA or some affiliate in Managua. The same goes for finding the presence of Giardia Lambia and Cryptosporidium . Old FCP project contact Greg and I were in contact early this week and he gave me some great references for labs in Managua based on contacts his wife has made over the past 6 years. He’s a rockstar too…I’m surrounded by rockstars.

Permission from Farmers, and source protection solicitation: Karla and I (mostly Karla) have put together a letter requesting 1 manzana (10,000 square baras ~about 0.9 hectares) of land around the water source to protect from animal fecal mater introduction by grazing (serious problem now, although only contributing to 14 fecal coliforms/100ml, which does show that there is some shit in the water).

Jalapa Government Design Collaboration: I had a great conversation with Karla. Travis and I agree that having governmental participation, albeit not what the town of Pasmata would prefer, needs to take place to forge somewhat amicable community and governmental relationships, even if they hardly exists, i.e. making the government feel good about what they “did”, facilitating them to take a bit more pride in the Pasmata project.

Topographic mapping: The only topographic mapping that took place this week was to see the location of break pressure tanks and air release valves for the Nueva Esperanza system (an FCP project). Their system is 5km long, and a heck of a hike (nearly 2000 feet elevation gain). This system appeared to be working well, due to good maintenance crews, who were beginning to become disgruntled by too low of pay (FYI, this could become a problem). Two air release valves were not functioning anymore, and many valves were not functioning properly, and just spitting out water.

Water Committee: We met on Thursday with the project committee in Pasmata, and had a very rich conversation (2hrs!) about how we should proceed with the project. On Tuesday we plan to go out with a piping expert to mark with flags where the pipe will likely run, and grab more detailed GPS points to facilitate a second calculation of a Hydraulic Grade Line. Neat stuff, they are all super dialed and excited to get this project underway.

Reaching Out to Find Project Contacts: I contacted El Porvenir’s president Rob Bell and got in touch with an in country contact and am waiting to hear back from him. I feel they will be a great resource for us with this project, as they have done so many similar projects. As stated in the previous post, I have contacted University of Florida’s development engineering guru, James Mihelcic and he gave me a pretty detailed spreadsheet that outlines how a project can be assessed for feasibility, designed, and monitored to insure sustainability. Getting through this 10meg monster is taking some time, but bearing fruitful conversations with Karla about cultural, economic, and political entities that are in the backdrop of this country’s present state. Joseph Ryan, a CU chemistry professor has also given his two cents on how we might test for pesticides. He basically just said that he didn’t know, but in the world of academia, that’s pretty refreshing to hear. I hope he can continue to be a resource.

PENDING PROJECT TASKS:

Walking and Marking exact pipe locations with the project teams on Tuesday

Remapping, and redesigning system based on more accurate and detailed set of GPS points, making sure the available head is available at community grids (Feasibility step 1)

Parasite and Ecoli testing, to ensure water quality is in fact good (Feasibility step 2, but likely should be step 1)

Turning in Somoto Document, visiting Somoto Rotary – We hope to have a document to Somoto Rotary by Monday, and to visit them later next week to talk face to face.

Utilizing Facebook and Putting the Word out for a 2 yr worker – We absolutely positively need to get someone lined up for 1 to 2 years of work here. Even if the project is completed by Februrary 2012, there will need to be someone here to run operations, maintenance and evaluations to tweak the system where it needs tweaking, and set the stage for 25 years of system life. I suggest we start a facebook page, with pictures, etc. just to put the word out, and to get people excited. Within the EDC department we have a lot of willing participants I am sure, and I am considering asking friend and collegue, Cole Sigmon, if he is interested, he’s an absolute animal when it come to getting work done right in the field. He has some project management experience in Latin American Countries and will be visiting Jalapa in October on an assignment with Water For People’s World Water Core. Please tell me your thoughts

Soliciting Jalapa Government Involvement: I am going to be sending an email to the acaldia to ensure that we can get some of their support in acquiring necessary information about materials purchasing, and asking their advice about our design. Reyna was unable to meet last Saturday and is up to her ears in 9 projects around Jalapa, so I am hesitant about asking for more than 1hr a week from them, however, as I said earlier, having some involvement from the alcaldia, even if it’s not financial input, would pay dividends for the relationship with Pasmata and the local government.

ONE LAST THING:

Tentative Project Date!: Ok this is big, but from what it looks like, the construction for this project will hopefully start in Late November and go through January, due to wetter soil conditions, and faster excavation, as the required tube depth is 1m in some parts of the line due to tractor traffic. This means we will need to keep moving forward on acquiring exactly what is needed in terms of labor teams, finca goaheads, parts and materials, in the next two months. However, as we know, things could take place that might delay progress to 6 months later. But we will remain optimistic!

FCP and whoever else, please feel free to share your thoughts with me at jeff.walters22@gmail.com!

Have a wonderful day and we’ll keep trucking away on this project! Thanks!

Pasmata Water Project - Progress Update 8/20/2011

2011-08-20T11:17:00.008-06:00

8/8-8/20, 2011

Settling into Jalapa: My wife Jessie and I showed up in Costa Rica around 2:00pm on August 8th. After some communication and logistical difficulties at the Costa Rica airport, we managed to be put on the right bus from the airport to a specific barrio in San Jose, where we found our Hostel right quick. The place was nice, and we stayed there until our bus trip on the Tica bus to Managua, one of the more dark feeling cities I have ever visited. No skyscrapers (none that I could see at least), just a ubiquitous gloom that seemed to cling to everything and everyone. We took the bus that morning, an uncomfortable yet hilarious ride to Jalapa, about a 6 hour trip. We stayed that night at El Pantano, a farm like feel in a rustically comfortable room. On a whim we met Karla, sans internet, as if by some sort of devine influence, and hit the ground running. That woman gets people moving, and gets things accomplished, like a newly divorced Wall Street fat cat, and does it with a grace and light that I have seen in only a few people in my life. We found a hotel (Hotel Jonathan) to stay at for a few days while we looked for a place to rent. We were blessed quickly with a place per Karla’s probing, and are now staying in a partitioned room of the daughter in law and two granddaughters of Dona Norita (Nora). After building a few shelves, placing sheets to act as a ceiling over the exposed tin roof, and getting some bedding (oh and abed), the place feels like home, and Jessie and I now have a headquarters base to get some work done!

Project Goals: To date the project goals while I am here in Jalapa for these 4 months (August 9th – December 10th 2011) are specifically to:

• Validate a new water source by running bacteriological, chemical, and parasite testing, while also performing a topographical survey to ascertain adequate hydraulic pressures from head at future domestic tap stands. The new source will be upstream from a unprotected source currently used, which has been shown to have high fecal coliform counts. During this

time…

• Run the gambit of permitting and water use law understanding for the new source (we’ll call it Las Piedras after the name given to the source of Las Piedras del Indio) with farm land owners, where piping will be passed, and clarification of community and Jalapan government buy in.

• Approve the water source based on permitting and water quality

• Use given turbidity, flow, bacteriological, chemical, parasite test data to design any needed sedimentation basins, sand filters, chlorine dosing along with needed pressure release, cleanout valves and other miscellaneous piping and equipment. Using these designs, it will be possible to ascertain the hours of labor and material costs.

• Continue to develop and hone in on a good water committee that we can train (we already have a group of about 5 committed folks, led by the rock star leader, Karla Pozo), along with finding and training a “circuit rider”, a person that will maintain the system: gather monthly tariffs, fix problems..etc. , and work with us and the Automated Metering Infrastructure (in the progress of being developed), radios to communicate real time water use over the internet to be monitored by Travis and I and possibly presented to associated donors..etc.

• Create a draft of an Operations, Monitoring and Evaluation plan for use when the project is completed (very important)

• Develop a transparent plan for construction, outlining a work schedule and management tool that the person coming to fill my place in November (1 month overlap at the minimum), will be able to use and build on.

• Other………

Thus Far, the following progress has been made

• Jalapa Government Design Collaboration: Contact with the Alcalde and department engineer Reyna has been made, and preliminary project designs are being constructed given…

• Topographic mapping: GPS topographic data, which was run on August 16 and 19 to get a preliminary idea of available pressure from hydraulic head, for the length of pipe needed for the conduction line, and distribution line (madre tuberia), considering that we are using the current water distribution lines once we hit the community grid. A rough idea of the number of houses and house locations was also marked with GPS way-points.

• Current Water Committee: I met with the current water committee of Pasmata, lead by Karla Pozo (members Julia (secretary), Sulema (Fiscal), Francisco (president), Luis (vocal), and Esmeralda (treasury), and we began to discuss times for weekly planning meetings, and planned last weeks GPS run, and project goals of the week….

• Laws and Water Rights: On Wednesday, August 17 we had a workshop to go over a new water committee called CAPS, which stands for Committee of Agua Potable and Sanitation, and is through the INAA, and law No 722, to have rights to form a committee with certain rights, outlined in the meeting. The whole water team was in attendance. The process of jumping on board with a CAPS requires national approval (a bunch of bureaucratic forms sent to Managua).

• Water Quality Testing: Department engineer in Jalapa, Reyna and I met to talk with folks at MINSA (a national water testing group), to figure out how to acquire tests for chemicals (from pesticides used upstream), as well as parasites, such as giardia and cryptosporidium pi. We are waiting for more information on how we can acquire testing, since I haven’t found anyone here who knows what cryptosporidium eve. I also spoke with Greg (last name) an old FCP field worker who spent a great deal of time installing water projects in Jalapa, who now lives in Leon, Nicaragua, and he made recommendations per his own knowledge and the contacts and knowledge of his wife who did water testing in Managua for some time. They have given me some leads in Managua that I will probe for next week. Knowing what’s in the water is of the upmost importance before forking out thousands of dollars to install a project.

Reyna made a suggestion that we look for statistics of cases of parasites and evaluate parasites in the water from that angle. This idea makes me uneasy for so many reasons.

Thus far we have nutrient and bacterial tests for the Piedras source and current source, which does in fact show a appreciable decrease in total fecal coliforms going upstream from the current source (~50col/100ml to ~14/100ml), but surely indicates the need for chlorination, as these tests show that while there may not be harmful pathogens in the water, their certainly is poop in there.

• Local Donor and Land Owner Meetings: Karla and I are working together to create times to meet with local farmers and to go over the CAPS law book and acquire forms necessary to apply as a CAPS member, gaining the rights thereby granted (or whatever, I’m not a lawyer :)). We are also planning to meet the president of Somoto’s Rotary club (nearby town to Jalapa), as Travis has been hard at work meeting with local Rotary contacts in Boulder (and in Denver Travis?)

Pending Activities:

• Preliminary design of system for an understanding of project donor needs, designing with two different programs (EPAnet) and with GoodWater V1.1 from a well known professor at the University of Florida to check the designs both by the EPAnet software as well as the designs by the department of the alcalde. This design is likely to entail:

o Conduction line and distribution line diameters, lengths, and spatial location.
o Storage tank (for peak demand times)
o Chlorination tank
o Filter (potentially)
o Sedimentation Tank (likely, the water turbidity is 40 NTU)
o Miscellaneous items I’m forgetting

• Meeting with Somoto Rotary Club to talk over the details of the project, and to hopefully gain support from them in some capacity.

• Conduct the needed water tests to feel sure that this source is going to be an improvement.

• Meeting with the farmers to get written agreements stating that we can use their land to lay the pipes, and to use a agreed upon amount of water through the controlled restraining of Las Piedras (from what it looks like if we can use even 1/10 of the available water that should sustain Pasmata for years to come.

• Continue to make community visits to get to know people, and to listen to their needs and hear the whole story.

I love this work! More posts in the weeks to come!

A Bridge to Saint Peter

2009-03-15T09:43:00.001-06:00

On 3/6/08, Dan and Hannah followed up on their November visit to San Pedro (see below). We went by moto, reducing the trip from 5 hours by mule to about 2 ½ hours. We left the bike at a pulperia (convenience store) about an hour’s walk from San Pedro and surveyed the trail as we went.

We met at Juan Quintero’s home, where we stayed in December, and met with several of his family members and the Alcaldito, or “Little Mayor,” of the town, who is San Pedro’s CPC representative at the Municipal Assembly. We discussed our ideas and expectations, and we were surprised to hear that many people expected us to build a highway- rumors are circulating that the Danish want to fund a real road between Jalapa and San Pedro. They assumed we were a part of this, as the first NGO people to visit San Pedro in 10 years or more. We clarified that we intend to focus only on what they reported as the “most grave” section of trail. We want to reduce the river crossings from 3 to 1, and construct a primitive mule-wide bridge that would clear the high water mark and make the trail passable during the rainy season. This disappointed them but they admitted it would be an improvement, since with the current trail they are cut off from Jalapa for several months during the rains.

They told us it’d be cheaper do the construction with machines from the mayor’s office, but we’d need 5 barrels of gas- at a cost of about $700. When asked where they’d get this money, they said they expected us to bring it. They were surprised when we told them that we don’t have that kind of funding, and we proposed doing raffles and other fundraisers, but they said they were “too poor.” We had assumed that the town would donate the labor (as all other communities have with FCP’s past projects) to build the bridge and gather raw materials (wood, stones, etc.), and when we proposed this, they again replied “we’re too poor;” they wanted us to give them money for gas or pay for their labor.

This was frustrating- whenever we proposed that the community share a stake in the investment, they responded, “we’re too poor.” I wanted to shake Don Juan- who we are relatively close with at this point- “are you telling me you’re too poor to donate a couple of work days from your nonexistant schedule build a bridge, so that your children won’t drown crossing the river; so you can bring your sick to the hospital; that will connect your town to commerce and provide (literally!) a road out of poverty?!” Instead, I took some deep breaths and explained this in calmer terms, adding that we chose this community only after they reached out to us, and so far, they have shown great organization, cohesiveness and motivation for progress. I also reminded myself that people here are used to receiving projects part and parcel, with no personal investment. Many orgs actually pay people to work on their own projects. This was the case in San Pedro when the the school was built 10 years ago, so they had reason to hope for it. We left town feeling disenheartened but as we thought through it, we realized how valuable FCP’s Huertos program is. Most communities are like San Pedro at first- completely disempowered by poverty, waiting for NGOs to bring them projects-- paying them to work . . . and feeding them. . . for 6 months while the project happens. We don’t experience this with new projects in the Huertos communities- they already understand that if they want something they’ll have to work for it- unpaid. We bring an initial investment of seeds and tools, and (with educational workshops) expect the beneficiaries to do the labor themselves. If they don’t follow through, their garden fails and we take the tools back. People learn that from a single seed, things can grow- this is the great metaphor of the Huertos. This seems to be very eye-opening whole communities, and facilitates work on future projects, as people understand that our role is to provide a seed that they will nurture and then reap. Not having gone through this in San Pedro, we are beginning well, at the beginning.

We scheduled another meeting for mid-April; we will invite all of the leaders and prominent families in town. We took names from Juan and we hope the ideas we planted on Friday will grow and that people will begin to think creatively about what they can contribute, enabling us to move forward with the project. At best, we were each certainly confronted with the realities of our conflicting assumptions, and all parties left the meeting realizing that some major reevaluation would have to take place to reach the compromises that will make this project happen.

Women's Foundation trip to Quilali for Treatment

2009-02-12T19:03:00.005-06:00

On January 18, Hannah accompanied a group of women to the Hospital in Quilali, as part of her work on behalf of the Women’s Foundation. Quilali is another municipality in the department of Nueva Segovia, 2-3 hours from Jalapa on bumpy dirt roads. We transported the women in one of the converted Land-Rovers that are the Jalapa ambulances.

FMJ coordinates with the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health (MINSA) to bring women who need pap-smear follow up and cervical cancer treatment to the gynecologist in Quilali, as there is not a gynecologist in Jalapa. Women also go to Ocotal, Esteli, and Managua, in extremely grave cases. For the Quilali trips, the Jalapa hospital donates an ambulance to bring the women to Jicaro, a neighboring municipality about an hour and a half away. Ramon Iban, the director of Jalapa’s hospital, coordinates with the hospital director in Jicaro to use one Jicaro’s ambulances for the second leg of the trip.

When we arrived in Quilali, the hospital was nearly empty so they attended to us right away. We were luck with this, as women from the foundation told me stories of waiting up to 5 hours in the hospital before being seen. . . We were also lucky, because the 5 women who went that day didn’t need any major treatments- some just needed a consult on their most recent results, and/or follow up paps. Everything went well; we were blessed with all good news!

Although I am a stranger and not technically part of FMJ, I felt the women lean on me for support, as I checked them in at the hospital, helped them read (and explain) their results, and had to track down the hospital director in Jicaro, who forgot to tell his staff we could take the ambulance- never taking “no” for an answer- even when I had to personally go to his house and pull him out of bed on a Sunday morning. That is another story in itself, but each step of the way, walking in FMJ’s shoes, I realized how much of a difference their work makes.

Everyone was relieved on the long ride home, and we passed the time telling stories and discussing our experiences. The women agreed that FMJ’s work was invaluable to their comfort dealing with their health problems, and that they felt personally cared for by the foundation, who hunt them down, making sure they know when their appointments are, and ensure they arrive for them, and coordinating with MINSA to make getting there easier.

Huertos- Worm Composting Workshop

2009-01-31T19:41:00.001-06:00

On 1/29, Karla gave a workshop in Santa Rosa on worm composting. Dan and Hannah attended to support her and to learn about the process. Karla discussed the characteristics and basic biology of the worms, and referred to a sample that she brought, of both the dried compost and the live worms in their moist, poopy environment. She talked about how to care for one’s worms, and noted dangers from common barnyard predators, such as chickens and ants, as well as easy preventions. Some of the people in the group had experience with worm composting, and offered other advice about how to handle and prevent predator attacks.

The worm farmer must check her worms daily; if not, she could return the following day to find them all dead! For example, one can give worms banana peels to eat, but don’t give them too much, or ants will sense the sweet sugar in the rinds, and invade the worm-box, eating the peels and worms alike. Additionally, one must give water and fresh “food” to the worms regularly, so they stay comfortable and happy. Interestingly, if one gives them too much food, they become lethargic and their compost productivity (ie eating and digesting) goes way down. One must be diligent to reap the full benefits of a worm box.

Karla ensured that everyone would have their worm boxes ready for her to deliver a “starter batch” of worms the following week, with elevated, covered wooden boxes in the shade to put the worms in. The people of Pasmata, where FCP did the pilot Huertos program a couple of years ago, donated the worms for this community to get started.

The workshop was well organized and informative, and people were eager to learn about the benefits of worm composting for their Huertos, and excited that someday they could sell the compost, bringing income to their households. There was even discussion of coming together to form a worm cooperative, once the worms reproduce and fill everyone’s boxes. A healthy worm box can produce over 200 pounds of compost every month, if managed correctly, which can be sold at a very good price, as it is rich in nutrients that help with foliage, fruit and root development.

ISLA VISIT

2009-01-25T18:39:00.000-06:00

We spent the last two weeks working almost exclusively with the Women’s Foundation of Jalapa (FMJ), in anticipation of one of ISLA’s quarterly visits. ISLA (Interfaith Service to Latin America) is another NGO that works in Jalapa, and they do cervical cancer screening follow-up for Jalapeña women, as cervical cancer incidence is very high here, due to a largely untreated HPV epidemic. Cervical cancer is often preventable if women follow-up on abnormal paps. ISLA’s medical goal for the visit was to perform 500 paps, and administer care for women whose previous paps were abnormal.

To meet this goal, ISLA called upon the Women’s Foundation to mount an advertising campaign in 139 communities, some 20 km or more outside of Jalapa, on bumpy, washed out dirt roads, off of bus routes. The Foundation arranged ads with radio stations, and made and posted hundreds of posters (using their own $$ to pay for supplies and transportation) inviting women to come. They travelled by bus, moto, bicycle, taxi, and on foot, walking around communities, asking business owners to let them hang posters. Since the women of the foundation are all small business owners themselves, they must close their shops to do this work. Dan and Hannah decided to pause other FCP operations for the week to help out, so the women would only have to sacrifice 1-2 days each, as they would also be closed to work with ISLA the following week.

We also delivered normal results from ISLA’s October visit (See 10/19 blog for a full report) and “citas,” for follow-up to women with abnormal results, from both ISLA and MINSA, (the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health). Since addresses here are, “from the Catholic Church, 30 paces north,” etc. finding women can be tough, but it’s generally possible. If you ask around, people point you in the right direction.

When ISLA arrived on 1/15, we had a lovely dinner and meeting at Cafetin Mama Chunga. We created a work plan for the ISLA medical team, FMJ, and the FCP reps for the week. In addition to the pap drive, FMJ and ISLA coordinated a series of educational Charlas, or “Chats,” about cervical cancer screening, in hopes of mitigating the fear and embarrassment that prevents women from coming in. FMJ planned each Charla to occur before a captive audience- at Preindustrias, or tobacco processing centers, as women worked.

Beginning the 16^th, part of the medical brigade worked at Jalapa’s hospital, and 2 other groups piled into the back of a big truck, with trunks full of gear, and headed to different community health centers to bring services to people who live out of town. FMJ women took patient data, answered questions, and checked people in. Hannah worked as a “floater,” so each day was different. She spent time alternately checking people in, taking patient data and translating for the ISLA doctors as they administered paps, and one day attended a Charla in one of the tobacco barns.

Hannah and Dan attended a Charla in San Judas, (about 10k south of Jalapa) with Heather Danckwart, a med student at The University of Minnesota. We arrived feeling lost, but we checked with the supervisor and he allowed us to enter and “do whatever we wanted,” as long as we didn’t interrupt the work. We wandered into the dark structure, lit by fluorescent lights and sparse, small windows, and were immediately stunned by the dense, musky, presence of mountains of dried tobacco. It was unlike anything we’d ever experienced-- though Dan is an avid smoker—there was a thick chemical quality to the air that penetrated one’s lungs, as if we were inhaling raw gasoline fumes.

From the middle of the room, Heather discussed HPV and cervical cancer. She encouraged women to come in to get screened. Hannah translated and afterword, they took questions. The women were shy at first, but they warmed up to us as we walked around. We were aware of how important it is to have someone from FMJ at these events, as women are more comfortable asking questions to people who share a common background and culture. Just the same, we felt like we reached a lot of women, many of whom had never had a pap before.

In the end, the brigade did over 475 paps, as well as many colposcopies and general consults. The ISLA doctors were very pleased with FMJ, and continue gaining confidence in their integrity and organization as a group, as this is a relatively new relationship. They noted that the trip’s success was largely due to FMJ’S work, and they were also very grateful for Dan and Hannah’s help.

Investigating. . .

2008-12-11T19:01:00.008-06:00

We spent a lot of time in the last month or so getting to know people and exploring the Jalapa Valley. In order to better understand the lives of Jalapeños, Dan worked with people in their daily jobs- repairing busses with our host family, harvesting beans, etc. Dan spent a day with Alejandro Aguirre (from ACADIS) checking on a solar-panel project for communities without electricity. Dan continues to study Spanish as much as possible with Javier, and he and two other friends now work together in a conversational Spanish/English exchange. On 11/15, CCAJ (Cooperative of Active Campesinos of Jalapa) invited us to observe their annual election and report. We were honored and excited to participate.

Karla’s work in the Huertos program is moving along well. She delivered seeds this month and Huertos are growing again, after waiting out the rainy season. She also led a successful vermiculture workshop in Santa Martha (former FCP Huertos beneficiaries donated the worms for this community). Unfortunately, the people in Santa Rosa are somewhat dis-animated at the moment, but Karla noted that after about 9 months in Pasmata, people lost interest after a harvest. She says this is common but surmountable with care and attention; she plans to visit Santa Rosa 2x/week until people get back into it. As we decided to pause program expansion, she has more time to do this than she would have otherwise. Impressively, upon our request to conserve funding, she cut the cost of each workshop in ½, asking communities provide some of the refreshments- things like bananas, oranges, and other fruits and vegetables. People were very understanding, happy and proud to contribute.

PU currently has very few active members- from the 3 Huertos communities, and a couple of friends from organizations around town. Attendance has been low at recent meetings, and after much discussion, the three reps decided that we need to reinvigorate the group. We hope to do so by bringing in new and old FCP comrades and writing organizational by-laws, to clarify the goals and diversify the representative base. At the 12/5 PU meeting, we asked each PU member to invite members from their community who worked with FCP in the past, and to seek out other people from new communities who may like to work with us. We understand that this process will have to be handled delicately and with a view to the future.

Doña Carmen acted immediately, and on 12/10, we met various folks at her house in Santa Martha- people who worked on FCP’s water projects, who are still active members of the El Corozo Water Board, as well as other leaders from communities near Santa Martha. Incidentally as we walked home, a man pulled over the big cargo truck he was driving, jumped out and asked us, “Ustedes son de Colorado- Are you from Colorado?” We told him we were, and he excitedly told us that Colorado are “his people--” that he worked with Brendan on the water project in Teotecacinte, and to hop in so we could chat along the way. This was wonderfully uncanny, as not an hour before, we were all lamenting that we’d lost touch with FCP’s collaborators in Teotecacinte, and didn’t know where to begin to find them, as this town has grown exponentially since we completed the water project.

Dan is researching grant opportunities for FMJ. At an FMJ meeting on 11/24, all recognized the need to formalize the organization with the government to secure such an opportunity. We need come up with a document of legal statutes for FMJ and send it to Managua for approval. The process could take 6 months or more, but Hannah is working with the women to prepare the document. Each woman is also looking for cheap or rent-free places to set up an office. If we can find such a space, FMJ will have a secure, centralized place to base their activities, counsel women and store confidential documents. While room rentals are not more than $100/month, this is currently impossible for FMJ, as the women are all unpaid volunteers and the organization has zero funding.

Hannah has also been researching setting up a fair trade market in the States to sell artisanal pine baskets, made by local women. The baskets are beautiful and a learnable craft, as well as inexpensive to make, using mostly locally sourced pine needles that fall from the trees. We plan to hold workshops in the new year to expand this skill to other women, campesina a campesina as a form of income for Jalapeña families.

Poco Falta la Gloria, Anduvimos en San Pedro.

2008-12-03T18:09:00.008-06:00

(Just short of the Glory, we walked in Saint Peter.)
Dan and Hannah spent the final days of November (through 12/3) in San Pedro (Terrerios). This is a remote community, five hours’ ride from Jalapa by mule. There is no electricity and no road into town. The nearest town is Terrerios, which is about an hour’s ride away on a steep, up-and-down trail. Most people grow coffee and depend on this and excess corn and beans for income. As they are currently harvesting coffee, we spent much of our time here saturated with learning about how coffee is initially picked and processed. Hannah was completely fascinated with the entire process and we were both delighted to help in any way we could.

We planned to spend the week picking coffee, but our hosts found this option impermissible- for fear of Coloradillas, little animalitos (bugs) that live in the coffee fields and bite the workers. We said we were willing to risk it, but they would have none of it. They did let us pick coffee for about an hour, a couple of times. We helped dis-pulp the fleshy part of the fruit from the beans, and picked out malos (“bad” beans- damaged from bugs or otherwise malformed) from semi-dry coffee that after sorting, goes to market in Jalapa (5 hours away) at about .41 cents a pound.

This community is organized and people work together to solve their problems, in a way we have not witnessed in Jalapa and other communities sobre la carretera (along the highway), where FCP focuses much of its work. The first morning we were there, we went with Don Juan Quintero (who we stayed with) to a neighbor whose cow had expelled her uterus. Don Juan and others worked on the cow to get the uterus back into its proper place, while others looked on and helped in whatever way possible. Afterword, we drank divine coffee and discussed community issues.

The most pressing issue for San Pedro is that the road to Jalapa is actually a single-track trail, impassible by anything but a horse/mule, bicycles or one’s own feet. The 4 river crossings become dangerous when it rains, severing the community from healthcare and all other basic amenities, available only in Jalapa. Also, there is no high school in Terrerios, so many students in San Pedro receive primary education only, as commuting is impossible. We could potentially work to improve the camino into town, with Dan’s trail building skills and the labor of the community to reduce the river crossing to one (instead of 4), for a start. The idea behind trail work is to use local resources, along the proposed trail. Costs would be limited mostly to labor, to be provided by community itself. This community shows a clear disposition to hard work, demonstrable coherence and internal organization necessary for such a project.

Final note: one morning in San Pedro, Don Juan and Dan went with the rest of the men of the community to a swamp in the middle of the jungle to slaughter another injured cow, weigh it and divide it among the community, taking tabs in a book about who owed what to the cow’s owner. Each man did his part chopping up the cow with machetes and axes until there was nothing left.

Workshops, Elections, Pause.

2008-11-10T13:33:00.007-06:00

We spent much of the second half of October 2008 in the office, discussing logistics, creating a quarterly budget proposal, and Karla continued to show us her work system and give us background on FCP’s current projects and community engagements. We also met with some of the many organizations that FCP works with in Jalapa, and we are realizing that we have a lot of work ahead; that the need here pervades most conceivable sectors of life, from basic things like food and water, to other, less obvious issues like access to community activities, art and cultural events, health care, and education.

On 10/27, we went to Champigny for a meeting with community leaders. This is a barrio in Jalapa that is notoriously divided and with whom FCP has had issues working with in the past. We planned to meet with several people, but few came. Ultimately, we confirmed that there is a lot of burning anger in the community, especially within the leadership. There are also problems with the water system, and service is intermittent. We feel some responsibility to this community, though FCP’s work formally ended when we completed the water project. One of the people we met with pushed for a community-wide assembly to discuss the issues, and we suggested revisiting this option after local elections on 11/9, when the political situation would hopefully be calmer.

We share hope with Champigny because while this community is divided and disorganized, there is a tangible interest among people to improve the situation. During our meeting, people crowded around the windows of the Casa Comunal to see what was going on, adding insight to the conversation. We’re not sure what we can do, but we hope that we can facilitate something
positive, working with the leaders to build bridges between the many “islands” of influence here— to help them work together to facilitate the changes their community longs for.

Dan now attends classes four afternoons a week with Javier Aguilar, ISLA’s in-country coordinator. We met Javier through our work with ISLA and the Women’s Foundation (FMJ). Javier speaks excellent English and shares this knowledge with Jalapeño youth by offering English classes Monday through Thursday. Dan helps the students with pronunciation of English words, and in turn, they help him to learn Spanish. He comes home from each class with a homework assignment!

On 10/29, we met with Don Isidro Traña, the head of UNICAFE, an Nica org. that works to improve conditions for small coffee producers in Nicaragua. UNICAFE hopes to liberate cafeteleros from dependence on unpredictable coffee markets by diversifying their income base and improving the quality of their coffee to bring a better price. UNICAFE’s work in Jalapa is currently focused on Santa Rosa and another community, as the needs are most profound there. Since Santa Rosa is also a Huertos community, it is natural that FCP would work with UNICAFE
to serve the joint ends of both organizations.

Don Isidro invited us to a coffee-quality workshop the next day in Santa Rosa. There were representatives from UNICAFE, CATIE, CCAJ,and Café Nica, as well as 20ish campesinos from Santa Rosa and other communities. We learned about standards for coffee production and quality rating in Nicaragua. Some producers gave samples of their coffee to Café Nica earlier, and the rep. from Café Nica went over the quality report for each of the samples and described how to improve quality. We did a coffee tasting that took about 2 hours. Overall, the workshop was very informative, and it was exciting to see campesino a campesino (a methodology based on horizontal learning, where people exchange knowledge, instead of learning from lecture) in action.

On Friday, Karla and Hannah went to a women’s health/STD workshop with FMJ. We learned about HIV/AIDS epidemic, HPV, and how people can protect themselves. There is an ever-growing movement here, mostly directed at youth and women, to promote better sexual health practices and raise awareness about the risks posed by STDs.

On 11/3 and 11/4, Karla went to a workshop on behalf of FMJ in Matagalpa. This workshop was the last of 5 workshops , hoping to educate organizers on different themes, enabling them to more effectively work in their world. The program is specifically focused on women’s groups, as they often become targets for sabotage and are attacked as “money launderers” for receiving the funding they do while employing imperfect accounting practices. In many ways, Nica women suffer prejudice- the more empowered they become, the more trouble they recieve from machista men who are threatened by them. The people giving the workshop invited FMJ to participate, in hopes of augmenting the workshops they give to the women of Jalapa. These workshops remain pending.

The early days of November were slow, with Karla in Matagalpa for the workshop, and Dan and Hannah out of town for about a week to catch the US presidential election with other American friends on holiday. The two days following our return were consumed by the local elections, which are critically important to Nicaraguans, and only occur every five years. Sandinista caravans have been blazing the streets at all hours bearing flags, music blaring, and trucks, bikes, motos, cars, horses, and all other imaginable modes of transportation laden with excited people triumphantly declaring victory. To look at it, one would never know that the election in Jalapa was actually very close.

At any rate, we look forward to getting busy again tomorrow.

İBIENVENIDOS A JALAPA!

2008-10-19T19:06:00.008-06:00

When we arrived in Jalapa on October 8, we were greeted with more pomp and circumstance than we could have expected! Our local board, Pueblos Unidos, came together to throw a magnificent welcome party, complete with traditional Nica music and dancers, and delicious food- enough to feed a small army. We were made to feel very at home and welcome, from the outset.

We spent the past two weeks with Karla, (FCP’s in-country Nica rep), exploring the Jalapa Valley, meeting the communities that FCP works with, getting acquainted with current FCP projects, and discussing needs and ideas with beneficiary communities. Karla updated us on her work for the last 10 months, and we’ve been amazed by all she has done; keeping everything running smoothly, and initiating new connections and projects! She participated in a nutrition workshop this week, as part of her ongoing collaboration with FEDICAMP (another local development organization), on top of all her work with us.

The Huertos (family gardens) project is currently in pause because of the rainy season. The heavy rains wash away newly-planted seeds and bring plague to mature plants, so people are waiting until mid November to plant again, when the rain subsides.

On Monday, we met with the Guitar Cooperative and discussed thoughts on a fair-trade market for their (beautiful, AMAZING) hand-made guitars. We also met with the leader of a dance troupe that provides free dance classes for Jalapeno youth. It is really exciting to learn about the great things happening in Jalapa, and start thinking of ways that FCP can support them. We are looking forward to getting things moving, after this introductory phase.

This week ISLA (Interfaith Service to Latin America) arrived with a brigade from Minnesota. Cervical cancer is rampant in the Jalapa Valley because for many years, women didn’t receive regular pap-smears, and when they did, necessary follow up was limited. There is a high incidence of HPV (Human Papiloma Virus, which can lead to pre-cancer) here, and many cases that could be mitigated become cancer. To help with this problem, ISLA gives free pap-smears and follow-up treatment to Jalapeña women.

Karla and FCP work with the local women’s foundation (Fundación de Mujeres Jalapeñas- FMJ) to support these brigades by ensuring that women arrive for their appointments, and by delivering the results when they come in. FMJ also provides education and outreach to underscore the importance the entire process.

FMJ is a volunteer group of women who came together when the previous system proved inadequate in addressing women’s health issues and providing ISLA support during these invaluable visits. FMJ also works with the Ministry of health toward accountability and effectiveness in the gynecological sector. FCP’s former representative, Tamara Cyzyzk, helped with the formation of the foundation and FCP continues to provide some funding and general support for their work.

This work is long and difficult for many reasons. Many of the women who come for pap-smears and treatment live far from Jalapa and are nearly impossible to contact as they don’t have phones or specific addresses. FMJ must go directly to the communities and ask for the women by name, to ensure that they come for their appointments when ISLA is in town. There is still a lot of stigma and shame surrounding women’s health issues, and FMJ has been working for the last year to educate women about the dangers of cervical cancer and put them more at ease with prevention and treatment processes. The foundation provides counseling for women when their results are abnormal and assistance if they need immediate care, arranging for them to get the treatment they need in a supportive and nurturing environment.

It’s been inspiring to work with this group and to see the progress they’ve made. We were continually impressed by everything they’ve done and by their collaboration with ISLA to make their own work more effective.

One day, as Hannah and Karla worked with ISLA at the hospital, Dan went with the rest of the brigade (ISLA runs two other projects in Jalapa, aside from the women’s health program- more info at: http://isla.cc/index.html) to a coffee plantation (finca) in the mountains. They hiked through a virgin forest with giant Oak trees bearing giant acorns. These trees shade the coffee plants on the steep hillsides. There is an international movement to promote this type of coffee production, called “Café de Pajaros,” or Coffee of the Birds, because it is less intrusive to the environment, and preserves habitat for a milieu of rare and beautiful birds. Four varieties of Tucan live in the hills in and around the finca that Dan and ISLA visited. The owners of this finca wish to develop a sustainable eco-tourism base here, and with Dan’s trail building experience, he found this possibility particularly interesting.

Hasta Pronto, Da Repzzz.

Check back this fall!

2008-07-06T17:53:00.001-06:00

Dear Friends,

Please check back in the fall for news and updates; Dan and I will be headed to Jalapa in September and will be beginning blogging at that time. Sorry for the tease, but come back again soon!

Tha Repzzz