2010 Honduras Trip Journals

View the pictures from this trip.

See the attachments for a powerpoint presentation of the trip.

Yoon Choi's Honduras Journal

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The second image I saw was at a basketball liked to spend court. A few of time with them rather than the party. the taller guys on the trip and I (the only one shorter than six feet tall) went to go play basketball with some of the local basketball players. We started playing at dawn, and the sun shortly went down. That is when we realized that there was only one street lamp (on the corner of the block) to light the entire court. Poor planning, I thought again. Then the light went out during a basketball game. I figured that everyone would go home and wait for someone to fix it, when Dan told me that this was a light that the basketball players paid for. One of them (called "the doctor" because he was a pharmacist) collected money from everyone in order to support the electrical bill for this one street lamp that they needed to play basketball twice a week. I saw that the Hondurans didn't leave or get upset. They simply waited for ten minutes until the light flickered back on, and resumed playing. Today I think I saw some of the resilience and patience of the residents of Tegucigalpa.

I'm not sure whether or not these glimpses into Honduran life helped me learn anything in particular, but after the trip to Honduras I now believe that we have much more work to do, and that there are people that would truly benefit from what we do in the future.

Katie Weible's Honduras Journal Entry

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I have some great memories from the trip to Honduras.
To begin with, I would like to point out that this trip completely changed my view of the project. While at Cornell, I always felt the project as a great idea to provide safe drinking water to different communities in Honduras, but was always more focussed on the technical aspects.
As engineers, I think that is inevitable, but once you go on this trip and you see the background, the Honduran part of the team, the perspective changes radically. I think that during the trip, I totally forgot about the technical aspects of the project and enjoyed learning how the whole process really works. I got to learn the really hard part of the project and also the most rewarding one, the people.
The whole trip was full of emotions and good lessons, but Agalteca, in my opinion, was something different.
First we got to know the area a little, the way of living, we had lunch and met our families. Afterwards enjoyed a soccer game together with a big group of Hondurans who immediately included us in the pool of players.
At night everybody had dinner with their families and shared thoughts with them. In my house there were a lot of little kids who where always asking us questions and willing to play. They taught us some card's games and we played for several hours.
We also did a some work in the construction site and, in my opinion, seeing the construction procedures, was a good lesson to improve the system.
It was great to know the engineer also and learn his point of view, thoughts and inquiries.
This trip was full of good lessons. Each plant we visited had a different story, the story of the people that manage each of them. There is when you see that those water treatment systems that you see in the drawings, which look all very similar, are only the base to create every unique Water Treatment Plant, that each community manages with pride.
I feel grateful for this trip and this project and look forward to continue improving this technology and being part of this great process.

Rachel Philipson's Honduras Journal Entry

Before this trip, I can honestly say that I had zero expectations. I am not very well traveled and certainly had never been to a third world country, so I wouldn't have been surprised if we were sleeping in tents or in nice hotels (I am very glad it was the latter). I will never forget our first van ride out to Copan when we pulled over to get gas and there was a guard standing outside the gas station holding a shotgun. I was astounded to learn this is the norm. The following two weeks proved to be one of the greatest learning experiences I've ever had. Not only did I learn a lot about water treatment, but we also got to truly experience the culture of Honduras. This was especially apparent in Agalteca when we stayed with families that graciously opened their homes to us. We were able to eat meals with our family, play soccer, attend a health fair and even wake up at 5 am to a combination of some very loud farm animals and the machine that our family had to make tortilla dough from corn. This is an experience that not many people have and it had a very profound impact on me.

The whole trip, and the home stay in particular really taught me never to take anything for granted. I never really appreciated the value of clean water, a hot shower or sleeping in a room with no giant cockroaches and I now know that none of these are assumed luxuries in Honduras. Now that I'm back, I look forward to helping make one of these luxuries, clean water, available to the people of Honduras.

Jeff Will's Honduras Journal Entry

I went down to Honduras expecting to see many problems similar to those I see in Nicaragua when I travel there during spring break; however, what I saw was completely different. Fortunately/unfortunately I could not help but compare the two neighboring countries. Instead of finding a country struggling to put food on the table and a roof over their head, I found a country struggling against political corruption to the point of disenfranchisement. What I did find in common, though, and still inspiring was the spirit of the people to persevere through the tough times and enjoy life. Every evening in Agalteca, the town would come together on the field in the center of town, clear all of the horse manure, lay down wood chips for lines, and pick teams for soccer; anyone who wanted had a spot on a team.

I found it especially heartwarming that the family I stayed with gave up two of their three beds so that Matt and I would have a place to sleep. No matter how much or how little our host family had, they would give us what they could. Their generosity was juxtaposed to much corruption, in particular amidst the coup, and it made me think about the possible futility of our work if our designs never get built. I am curious to see how Agua Clara will grow and face these challenges in the coming years to become a pervasive technology in the global south.

Art Shull's Honduras Journal

Today we worked in Marcala. We spent half of the day working at the Marcala Agua Clara plant, which was great. I really appreciated not only seeing an Agua Clara plant in action, but getting to work on it and learn its quirks a little better. Seeing the plant operators clean out one of the sedimentation tanks was very educational and I feel like I could learn so much more about the plants by spending more time there working with the Hondurans in their typical routines. Its so hard to see and address problems from the outside without understanding the full picture.

Vanish and I also drank water from the Marcala plant, which doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was pretty cool to be drinking water that our technology was treating. We also climbed up to a waterfall in the afternoon, which was a very powerful experience (literally). That is an experience I'll always remember.

Tonight we had our final reflection meeting, and we tried to really put into words how this trip has effected each of us. I know that I personally had a hard time with this because it is difficult to see how this experience will trickle down into my future experiences. I do know, however, that this trip has provided me with a great deal of motivation and it is going to be crucial to maintain that focus upon returning to the States with the other distractions provided by life.