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<your name here>'s Journal
Anna Lee's Journal
There is not a word that can properly describe my experience in Honduras. As an engineering students, I considered AguaClara project only as an opportunity for me to be exposed to real engineering projects. However, this trip has allowed me to see that this is not just an engineering project but so much more. AguaClara plants, not only bring clean water to the town's people, but it is a way for the town's people to come together as a community and to work towards one goal, to provide clean water to their families.
In Agalteca, my research team, inlet manifold drained one of the sedimentation tank to change the manifold. We thought this would not take long, but fabricating the new manifold design took a long time and the water level in the distribution tank was decreasing really fast. At this point, it hit me- this is a "real" situation! If we don't hurry up and fill up the sedimentation tank again, the town is not going to have enough water! The town's people worked hard to maintain this plant, and who am I to come all of a sudden and do things that would result in no water. No matter how good my intentions were, I thought this was something that the town's people does not deserve. I was so focused on restoring the sedimentation tank so the town's people would not have to suffer from our bad estimation of time. This sense of urgency and importance were some things that I could definitely not have been able to experience in basement lab in Hollister.
Seeing this social aspects of AguaClara project, has reminded me the fundamental truth about engineering. Engineers work for the betterment of people. They should not work for the sake of high technology or anything else but should find motivation from people's needs and wants. I think, working in front of computers and spending hours in labs, it is so easy to forget why and for whom we are working for. This trip has definitely showed me the greater need of active engineers in the world, who are willing to work outside of their labs and offices, out of their comfort zones, to really understand the needs of underprivileged people by living with them and sharing their culture.
AguaClara was just one of the many class that I took without thinking about it much, but now, for this semester, AguaClara is the most important class I am taking.
Michael Liu
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's Journal
Traveling through the underprivileged parts of Honduras was an experience that was completely different from what I had anticipated. What took me by surprise was the impact the children in Hondruas had on me. Before traveling to Honduras I had no personal connection with the work I was doing. I only read about the impacts that AguaClara created in Honduras but i did not truly feel affected by them. After the home stays with various families throughout Honduras I now have faces and personalities I can place my work with. The faces and personalities that are etched deepest in my mind are the faces of the children that met at these home stays by the name of Jorge Luis and Jenny.
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January 10, 2011 - We arrived today in Atima around 5 PM. Traveling here was maybe the bumpiest road I've ever been on. We were immediately distributed into host families. I'm staying with the owner of Pulperia Jenny. His two kids are Jorge Luis (8 years old) and Jenny (5 years old). We had a brief meeting with the mayor and he outlined the town's water problem. Recently a construction project broke part of the distribution line, so many places in the town are not receiving water. My host family doesn't have any running water. Right now the water they use for cooking and drinking is sent through a point-of-use filter given to them by a brigade. It looks like a 5-gallon bucket with a cylindrical canister filtering the water. My host family really didn't know how or if it worked. To me, it looked like some sort of cylinder containing activated carbon but I couldn't tell for sure.
January 11, 2011 - I woke up this morning and took a shower with a bucket of cold, dirty water. I was shivering the whole time because it was a cool morning. We met up with the rest of the team at breakfast. Jorge Luis and Jenny were there and were making fun of me for "sleeping in" until 8 AM and calling me a sleepyhead. They're fun kids. I haven't heard them complain or be upset about anything the entire time we've been here. I think Jorge Luis is especially mature for his age. It's hard for me to think about them growing up without any running water in their house, or think about them getting sick because of dirty water. It makes me feel proud to be part of a group of people who's actually taking concrete steps to help people in these situations. I'm glad the town is in touch with AguaClara - the townspeople owe it to their kids to do something about the drinking water problem.
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Robert Solaski's Reflection
AguaClara has served as a major catalyst in my life and given me the guidance needed to realize my full potential as an engineer.
Unprepared and immature I stumbled into the Environmental Engineering major at Cornell. The rigors of engineering were a rude awakening. Having glided through public school with all A's and almost no effort, I simply did not know how to work so many hours and study properly. Not knowing what else I would do and not wanting to simply take the easy way out, I struggled through the Cornell curriculum. My GPA was abysmal to say the least, and I constantly questioned why I remained on this career path. Then I stumbled upon CEE 2550 and I was formally introduced to AguaClara. On the Outreach team I had a smooth introduction to the program. The nature of the work, which I would truly not understand until much later, was honorable and the class functioned not like a competition, as I had experienced in many of my previous engineering courses, but more like a business where everyone is working towards a common goal. After CEE 2550, I knew that I had to get more involved with the program.
I then took CEE 4540 and the technical applications sparked my interest in a way that no other class had yet done. We were not simply doing problem sets of textbook questions; we were analyzing and understanding the physical equations and processes that governed the construction of water treatment plants that had been built and were fully functional.
Then I was given the opportunity to participate in the yearly trip to Honduras. The trip to Honduras unveiled to me the social context under which the AguaClara program operates. We met local families whose towns were plagued by water borne diseases caused by poor water quality. Compared to most of the towns that we visited our toilet water is of much higher quality than their kitchen sink. I had heard many times before that these people did not have access to clean drinking water but simply hearing it is just not the same as what our group experienced. In contrast when we visited the AguaClara plants that had previously been built in Honduras, the towns were happy to pay for such high quality water at the price we could provide to them with the technology We had helped to develop. The trip to Honduras gave us a me the big picture perspective that Cornell academics fails had failed to acknowledgeconvey. At Cornell it is easy to get wrapped up in the stress of grades, In AguaClara it is about so much more than that. In AguaClara almost everyone gets exceptional grades, not because it's an easy course but because the social context of the course gives students purpose and motivation to far exceed the effort and passion they would exert for a grade.
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The trip turned into a two-way learning experience which I think is exactly what it is supposed to be. I was really pleased with the performance of the stacked filter demo, and we generated a lot of excitement about adding filtration to the AguaClara treatment train. And just as the operators and APP staff learned from us about how stacked filters worked, we learned from them about the important practical issues we will face in bringing them to full scale. I am definitely excited to keep working with these people in the future as this new technology comes to fruition.
Tanya Cabrito's Journal
My experience in Honduras was simply unforgettable. This was my first trip to Latin America and I was captivated by the pervasive scenic beauty of the area and struck by the warmth of the people in the small towns that AguaClara services. I can't really say the same about the atmosphere in the big cities we visited, but I guess that's to be expected. The metropolitan centers were very interesting though. But for me, the small towns were the jewels of the trip - brimming with a deep sense of community, a plethora of local handmade crafts, and great experiences with local folk. Some of these experiences include helping with tortilla making at Dona Hilda's place, getting to know the host families, learning about coffee bean preparation, trying to make small talk while having the Spanish language skills of 3-year old Honduran (if even that) and everyone's great sense of humor when I accidently confused swear words for appropriate words in the process, and making friends who I'll cherish for long after the trip.
The trip itself had a diverse time-efficient itinerary that was packed full of fun and interesting things. We explored both rural and metropolitan centers, hiked around Pico Bonito/other, went to a beach and a swimming hole, attended a cultural event (I think it was called the Dance of the Saints), explored a cave; visited a Spanish oven, a sugar plantation, and local markets. It made two weeks seem more like a month and that's awesome. Oh, and the food was great - lots of avocados.
In terms of waterworks, we visited some conventional plants including a slow sand filter and a package plant, La 34, and AguaClara plants in Tamara, Cuatro Comunidades, Agalteca, Marcala, and Ojojona. This variety provided a good opportunity to assess the performance of high-tech water treatment plants and to compare their performance with AguaClara plants. Overall, we found that the conventional plants were generally inefficient, producing quality and service that were subpar to that provided by AguaClara plants. In fact, some of the conventional plants were not fully operational and had broken components that weren't easy to fix. This difference in performance may be attributable to the notion that conventional plants may be implemented without regard for the economic and socio-political context of the area while AguaClara plants are designed with consideration for the serviced community. Just considering the AguaClara plants, we found that the newer plants were performing better than the older plants, which is not too surprising since AguaClara technology is continuously advancing. Finding a way to retrofit the older plants would be cool. If I remember correctly, I believe the best effluent turbidity produced by the AguaClara plants was around 0.6 NTU at Agalteca. After implementation of the demo filter, we achieved effluent turbidities that met US standards of 0.3 NTU, which was super exciting.
At Agalteca, we actually had enough confidence to drink water straight from the tap. It felt kind of revolutionary although as a foreigner I am not really sure if I could fully grasp the sensation. Along that vein, the trip was a great window to gain first-hand experience of the water crisis. It really personalized the conflict and humanized those affected. It's always one thing to see a photograph and read pamphlet, but having the opportunity to be there with the families and actually live, albeit for just two weeks, with an unstable supply of clean water is a poignant wake-up call. And for me, it really made me appreciate having the opportunity to do something about it. It really bolstered my respect for organizations like AguaClara and renewed my motivation for service. Also, it was really wonderful to see that despite all the hardships, the people generally had what I would consider a very vibrant sense of life. This is in contrast to the largely material culture of the US, where it seems like high tech and instant gratification can turn slight inconveniences into tragedies. Overall, it was refreshing experience and a good reminder of the sweetness of community and of the small things that are often overlooked.