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Heather Reed

Henry Zeng

Jeffrey Katz

From Day 5: Tuesday, January 6th

Although we've had three days of four hour van rides this is the first time I've felt like I've had any time to write in my journal.  And it's definately an appropriate time after tonight's reflections.

Thus far we've hopped from New York to San Pedro Suelo, to Copan, to Gracias, to Siguatepeque where I lay now in a bunk bed beneath Po-Hsun writing in this journal and sampling vino jovan de Mesa, from the CEASO ranch.  In this time we've seen two treatment plants, chlorinated cisterns, natural "wells", have ziplined a length of 5 kms over the canopy of Copan, explored the Copan ruins, and ate several reiterations of rice, beans, eggs, and tortillas. And this banana flavored wine is harder to stomach than the aforementioned. "Ugh, terrible," says Chris. "It's not that bad says Julia."

The people of Honduras are all really welcoming and pleased to have us there.  My elementary Spanish is enough to communicate with some efficacy.  Not being proficient however and the different tonalities of Honduran speech make it difficult to gauge emotion, but mainly truth in speech. \[Ed: I go on to discuss the mayor of Copan who says he doesn't care about politics just only what's best for the people. I wishfully agree with him and if he's legit then I'm anxious to start designing for them but when the words come through a translator it's hard to gauge if he's just being a good politician.\]

Our first water related stop was in a village with no treatment, just literally a hole in the ground.  Still there are smiles on their faces.  They "know about chlorine" and the need for clean water, but they still believe what they have is fine and that they can continue to drink it.  The weird thing is, they probably can.  Which cannot be said for us and the banana wine.

I can see why the people here can see why they don't need treatment plants.  Especially when a plant can be dropped in from Spain, with high technology, but only runs at 1/2 capacity or when the power turns off at the plant and nothing comes out of the tap.  Kids get sick without clean water but there is "no data" clearly showing this so when people cite that "less kids have diahrrea" we can only believe these reports instead of like good engineers looking of the numbers that say "200 cases in 2007 before AC, 50 after the plant. Woo hoo!" Still, numbers, charts, and tables may not appeal to the people that have drank water that looked like chocolate and lived to tell about it if it costs them less to have an ecru alternative.  Hopefully when we get to AguaClara plants we see clear results (and water) and hear the people talk about their experiences before and after (once again, hopefully) clean water. 

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 Editor's note: The wine was for cultural and educational purposes as it was locally and organically made at CEASO.

Julia Schoen

Kellie Kress

Friday, January 16th, 2009

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