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 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.