Adventures with Water

Week three kicked off with some ground work practicing our newly acquired community diagnostic tools. The goals of the tools are to discover important insights into a community, including where are the important buildings (churches, stores, hospitals, schools, etc.), what are the important yearly holidays (to avoid scheduling issues), and what are typical daily activities. The tools include having community members draw maps, detailing daily routines, and compiling seasonal calendars. 

Yanocoto - where we practiced our community diagnostic

Working on community maps in Yanocoto

On Thursday we took a trip to Chosica, a nearby city to explore the area and practice our Spanish by navigating the winding markets, restaurants, and streets. Our goal was to find the "puente colgante" which means "hanging bridge", but I did not know that was what I was looking for, so I ended up terribly lost. But, by asking enough people and being pointed in a million different directions, I eventually ended up on the correct bridge and found my language teacher and the rest of my class waiting for me :)

Chosica

My class on the "puente colgante" - I finally found it!

Friday, the water and sanitation group went on a field trip to a river about an hour away from the training center to practice building biosand filters (BSFs). I was extremely excited about building biosand filters since I just spent time building them in Fiji. 

On our way to the river

Punching holes through the plastic tanks for BSFs with a flaming piece of PVC pipe

Washing sand and gravel for the BSFs

Jar testing to ensure adequate washing of sand

Our completed BSF

The whole WASH (water, sanitation & hygiene) group!

Saturday we went on a field trip to a university in Lima called "PCUP" and learned about simple gravity-fed water pumps, radiant heating for houses, crop plating techniques to conserve water, and improved cook-stove designs. 

Cookstove in a small radiant heated house with a tarp as insulation for the ceiling

Gravity-fed water pump, requires no electricity and can pump water up to 20 feet

We practiced building gravity-fed water pumps out of plastic bottles

Completed water pumps

This was a see-saw that pumps water as you use it!

Over the weekend a few water and sanitation volunteers and I visited a construction site at a nearby community that is currently building a slow-sand filter to treat the drinking water for the community. It was a dual tank system, the first tank had three chambers for large gravel and the second tank had three chambers for sand. The water is fed horizontally through the layers, so each layer can be maintenanced from above. 

Slow-sand filter

Workers taking a break on top of the slow-sand filter

Construction Schedule for the slow-sand filter

Construction plans for the slow-sand filter

The water that feeds the slow-sand filters comes from a river that is across a large ravine that is full of water in the winter due to flash floods. So, the community built a suspension bridge to support the pipe across the ravine. They call it the "Golden Gate Bridge" of the community...you can see why. 

Suspension bridge to transport water pipe across a large ravine