Amanda LaBelle
1/27/07
Some thoughts on Honduras...
It was good to be back to Latin America - to the rhythm, the tortillas, the people, the language, the mariachi, the heat. For me, the immediacy of sand, sun, and roosters was a welcome change from the all-too-insulated world of academia.
After spending the semester approaching the problem of potable water in Honduras through MathCAD algorithms, being in Honduras brought the challenge of water treatment into three dimensions, complete with all the nuances and complexities borne with such a transition. Time and again in Honduras we saw treatment plants that had been reduced to skeletal structures no longer serving a functional purpose, designs that failed in some way to make this transition from blueprint to implementation. In their exclusion of such design parameters as accountability, regulation, maintenance, economics, or politics, these plants generally proved to be unsustainable. While the following should be taken with a grain of salt as two weeks is hardly time to begin to understand the intricacies of a new place, new people, new attitudes, and old histories, below are some themes that came out of my time in Honduras.
Perhaps first and foremost is the need for capacity building and the development of human infrastructure. Capacity building means training plant managers to understand not only how the treatment facility works mechanically, but also equipping them with an understanding of the scientific processes to reinforce the significance of each part of the process. For example, knowing that the lamella in a sedimentation tank should be at a 60 degree angle because that is how the designs are drawn holds less immediate consequences than knowing that they need to be this way to achieve the necessary settling of flocs by substantially increasing the active area of the tank. We talked some about the possibility of having a certification class wherein a handful of interested engineers attend and take an exam to chose and certify the plant operators. Such a system would ensure not only a certain level of training, but also a degree of staying power, hopefully capable of outlasting the vagaries of the local political scene. Furthermore, such a system might help to develop an increased sense of accountability and personal investment among plant operators.
Capacity building also means assuring that, on a daily basis, plant managers have the materials, chemicals, finances, etc to effectively operate the plants. It means eradicating the possibility of running out of alum or chlorine or of not having the correct equipment readily available to perform maintenance. It means not having to order parts through Cornell. Or wait for funding from Cornell. I am not sure how one approaches this as it seems so tied to further reaching issues of economic security and availability of resources.
Building human infrastructure also means developing relationships that are broader than the technical realm, that take a genuine interest in individuals and communities.
Secondly, there seems to be a need for community-wide reevaluation of water strategy. This means local education pertaining domestic usage, relevant health concerns, the conservation of available resources as well as some degree of regulation and planning with respect to natural water sources. This was evident in the Tela plant where lack of foresight and land use planning quickly made the treatment plant obsolete. As pig and cattle farmers began settling upstream from the plant, the water was made so turbid the plant was no longer capable of treating it. Now murky waters flow through empty sand filter chambers, are ineffectively chlorinated, and flow directly to people's faucets.
Antonio brought up an additional factor that is especially pertinent when considering these needs and the role of AguaClara. He spoke to the deep-seated history of paternalism in Honduras and the ways in which international help can be crippling to domestic ingenuity and community ownership. That is to say, there is a history of international aid that has led Hondurans to expect that, given time, solutions will come from abroad and, in so doing, has quashed any tendencies for solutions to be generated domestically. The resulting reliance not only discounts the notion that Hondurans know what is best for themselves, but also reinforces a sense of disempowerment to change one's own circumstances, which has implications that extend indefinitely beyond water treatment technologies.
I think this is something that AguaClara generally recognizes and tries to grapple with. It is why we evaluate our presence in Honduras and why the involvement of Agua Para el Pueblo is so very important. It is why the technology should be replicable but at the same time scalable and adaptable, not a cookie-cutter design, but one that accommodates its community both technically and socially. I think this is one of the most difficult challenges of the project - knowing how long to stay and how much to influence and what kind of legacy to leave. At the same time, we should not be paralyzed by these concerns, but aware of them.
Brianne
We've been back from Honduras almost a week now and I am still trying to digest everything that happened. Whenever anyone asks me how the trip was all I can say is "it was really good" because there is so much to say that its hard to know where to start. I have my day-by-day journal sitting in my room, but I think this version may be more interesting and beneficial to me as a reflection rather than as an itinerary.
Going on the Honduras trip I expected to see a lot of heartbreaking sights. I expected to see poverty and disease, dirty drinking water (of course) and people who had just given up. And while we certainly saw a lot of these things, what shocked me was the amount of truly amazing people that I met. Before going to Honduras I had never really believed the "one person can make a difference" adage that we hear all throughout grade school, but on this trip I got to meet people who really were making a difference themselves and in some ways I think this trip restored a lot of my confidence in the human race.
The first amazing person we met was our driver and Monroe's close friend Jorge. On the surface alone he was a great, happy man who bridged the strong language gap (he only speaks Spanish and I speak so little Spanish that I am embarrassed to even try) with his enthusiastic gestures and ability to communicate. He was one of those people that is just good at everything whether it be playing the guitar, playing soccer, playing basketball, driving- pretty much everything I saw him do on the trip he did well. I think my favorite Jorge moments were 1) the time we were sitting in the town square of Ojojona, all of us a little gloomy and tired- Jorge came up to Sara A. and said, in English, "get happy!" later we found out that he'd asked some of the Spanish speakers on the trip how to say it 2) the time we were in the vans and Monroe asked Jorge what his least favorite part about being our driver was and he said that he wished he could understand our conversations and that he plans to try to learn English now, granted I agree with Sara that he'd probably be very disappointed at the topics we discussed, but the sentiment was very touching 3) the long bear hugs that he gave everyone as we left the airport 4) him singing along with the mariachi band at our final night dinner, I love seeing someone who is so happy and 5) meeting Jorge's wife and family, but more on that later.
On our third night in Tela, we had an "interview" with Jorge and through this and other tidbits along the way, I was able to hear a lot of Jorge's life story. I wish I could have understood it the way he told it because I feel like I missed out on all the details. From what I understand, Jorge grew up in La Ceiba, which is named after the Mayan's sacred ceiba tree and known for producing intelligent people. Jorge tried his best to get through as much education as possible, but in Honduras it is costly and difficult to remain in school for long. I am not sure of the order of his jobs but he had many included driving dignitaries (Monroe was surprised to know that Jorge knew what a "doughnut" was and had been trained to do them) and running his family's sawmill. The family lost the sawmill and a great deal of money in hurricane Mitch, but Jorge's only comment was that he learned a lesson about helping other people. One day we got to see Jorge's house, the family used to own the large house next to it, but had lost it in a sketchy business deal and was forced to move into the small house that they used to rent out. When I first walked into the house I was surprised to see his daughters watching Gilmore Girls in the front room. As many people know, that show is kind of an obsession for me and I had a short and very simple conversation about the show with his daughters. I think that little connections like this were my favorite part of the trip.
Jorge's current job is working with his church to help gang members. Gangs are a huge problem in Honduras, when we met students from UNITEC, an engineering university in Tegucigalpa, on girl explained to Z how recently a group of gang members had broken into her apartments, tied her and her mother to chairs, and taken everything in the place. This happens to them every once in awhile and there is nothing they can do about it. If she had a brother, they could gain protection by him joining a gang himself, but other than that they just have to put up with it. It seems that in many cases joining gangs is viewed as a necessity for teens. To join a gang as a guy you have to kill someone and as a girl you have to sleep with a member of the gang. To become a full member of a gang you must kill three people and drink the blood of a person or animal. The members get tattoos of teardrops and a coffin for each person they kill. Jorge works to protect members of the gangs in prison and to help members who wish to leave the gangs. He helps them get out and get rid of their tattoos so they are not always branded from their past life. It's a very dangerous job, and I am guessing that it doesn't pay much, but he does it because he dreamt that it was the right thing to do. Another interesting detail of his job is how the system is set up. His Episcopalian Church works with one gang while the Catholic Church works with another. In this way they both maintain the trust of the gang by no mixing with its enemies, I think it is a great example of cooperation with those of different backgrounds in order to do good in the world.
Jorge's wife works as a teacher. We had a short interview with her as well and she stressed to us the importance of education. She works at a public school and knew she could make more money working elsewhere, but she chose her job because her family had always stressed the importance of helping other people. When Monroe arrived in Honduras, it was apparent that Jorge's family was just scraping by; yet they spend their time helping others who are in worse shape than them. We saw this all over the country, people with little means of their own helping those with even less, and it was very touching. The strange thing to me, however was that here in the US it seems like we have a pattern of the rich helping the poor through donations and service work, but in Honduras most of the help from the poor comes from the poor. The richer people there seemed less concerned with helping others. I wonder which system works best, though I don't know enough about it to even speculate.
The second amazing person we met was at a Mennonite water-bottling facility we went to on a whim. Jorge used his connections to get us in - that's another thing about Jorge, he seems to know everyone in the country. The treatment system was small and expensive looking, certainly not a solution for a community, but for me the water treatment was not the striking part of the afternoon. The head minister explained to us how he had bought the huge factory site near Tela on a loan, which he had to pay back in one month. Somehow he was able to sell all the scrap metal on the site to pay for the land; he attributed it to the grace of God, but I got the feeling that he was the type of man who got things done and that he had known what he was getting into when he purchased the land. He started the bottling plant with the idea of making clean water for his congregation, and it is mostly his congregation that buys the water. He researched the technology and bought it, and now produces clean, good-tasting water at a cheap price. What is even more inspiring is his plan for the rest of the land he purchased. At first I thought that it was a little silly of him to purchase this huge tract of land when only one room of it was used for the water purification, but then he told us why he had bought it. In the future he hopes to form a sort of safe community and commerce area with shops around and a university. This man has a vision of what he can do to help his congregation and his community and he is doing it. After meeting him, I have no doubt he will succeed, and the whole thing was just amazing and refreshing. It is great to know that there are people like this minister and Jorge in the world.
The final amazing person we met that comes to mind (I am sure there are plenty of water board members and others that I am leaving out) was Ken Brown. Ken Brown was a Cornell engineering student who went on to become very successful and is now the main source of funding for the Agua Clara project. He and his family cam down to spend a weekend with us for the opening of the Ojojona water treatment plant. The family was fun and happy, and on a more personal note, Ken Brown was the first person in a long time who has made me feel that its okay to go and work as an engineer then move down the managerial MBA route rather than getting a PhD. But relating to my earlier thoughts on the best way to help people, it was nice to see the American way of helping work. Rather than just throwing their money at a cause, as I believe Americans are prone to do, Ken Brown took his time to find a good project and to check up on it and see it through. As much as I want to make change in the world, I know that I am not a Jorge and could not do something like this for the rest of my life. I want to be the type to go out and join the Peace Corps, but I am just not cut out for it, and it was good to see that there is another way I can help and other things that need to be done.
Another major thing that struck me in Honduras was the way of life. This was definitely the most relaxing, mind-clearing vacation I have taken, and for the first time I arrived back at school on Monday completely refreshed. The number one thing in Honduras was that people were happy. They may not have had much but I didn't see people walking around looking sad or grumpy, these people put on their best clothes and walk around with smiles on their faces. I have a lot of guesses about why this is, it may have something to do with appreciating the little they have or not working so hard. I think it's more likely about the way they interact with each other. When we were in Ojojona we got the UNITEC students to help us do surveys in the town. I expected them to be the way American students would have been, hesitant to walk up to people and afraid to knock on doors. But they were quite the opposite; they quickly walked straight up to people, all of which were happy to stop, talk, and answer the survey questions. If we had done that in the US I imagine that maybe one in every ten people would have been willing to answer, which explains why the American students hesitated before walking up to people on the street. In Honduras, people are welcomed with open arms; the family that cooked for us in Ojojona treated us like old friends and they felt like old friends by the time we left. Also the people there are always outside. The kids are always around playing with each other, interacting with others in the town, and its great to see kids acting like kids. Also the people there are not as paranoid. Dave asked Jorge's wife a question about kids and food allergies and she sort of laughed and said they had no such things there. They let kids eat with dirty hands when they're little so their bodies become used to it. A lot of the things we saw made me feel like as Americans we are big babies, and more importantly we spend way too much of our lives worrying about what we have and what could take it away from us.
I guess I should close by talking about the water treatment plants we saw, as this was the focus of our trip. While the people of Honduras pleasantly surprised me, the water treatment plants, for the most part, surprised me in a negative way. First we saw a treatment plant in Tela. The plant was mainly broken and just diverted dirty river water to the town, I think they had even stopped adding chlorine because it was pointless. At least the town was trying though, they had gotten an engineering proposal written up for a new plant. However, in a town with only 8% percent employment, there was not enough money to complete the plans (or even pay for the plans for that matter) so the town was trying to get money from another country or NGO so they could build the plant. I knew that much of the country's projects were supported by aid, but I never realized that the country goes out in search of aid. The second plant we visited was La-34, the first plant designed by Agua Clara. We were unsure if the plant was even running because the town had been left to its own devices since it was built before we started working with APP. The plant was running, but at first it was a bit of a disappointment to me. The flocculator baffles were all falling apart and it looked like they weren't maintained well. However, we then went to the town and had lunch with the water board and I realized that the situation was quite the opposite. They were thrilled by the plant and claimed to have the best water of the 8 towns in the area. Even better, the plant operator showed real initiative in dealing with the plant. A float valve had broken, so the engineer had gone into a larger city to get a new one made. He also had managed to secure enough alum and chlorine to keep the plant running for another few months, and I realized that the baffles were a design issue and did not have much to do with the plant's upkeep. Overall it was great to see a town really taketo our project and keep it going after we left, it was a big difference from what we saw in La Ceiba. In this town, there were two plants from Spain, and the manager there had no sense of ownership for the plants. The first one had a flocculation system that wasn't really working, and the manager did not know much about how it should work. The bigger disappointment was an entire metal plant that had been shipped from Spain. The plant was not even running because the operators could not get it to work. Apparently there is a similar plant elsewhere in the town that is computer automated and it cannot be adjusted without an engineer from the company going out to look at it. It was sad to see a town that had an opportunity to make their water clean (unlike Tela) but lacked the knowledge necessary. It was a model of exactly what we don't want our plants to be like. The next plant we saw was our recently built plant in Ojojona. This was a bit of a disappointment as well. Again there were major baffle attachment issues, and parts of the plant just weren't built well. Furthermore there was tension between the town and the engineer Gabriel. However, I think that with the new engineer Antonio, things will work better. Also we now have ideas of how to fix the Ojojona plant and how to make our future designs better. Finally, we went to a few possible sights for new plants. These were mostly a disappointment, one town hadn't used its chlorinator for months because sediment had clogged the tube and they were waiting for an engineer to fix it. The town next to Ojojona, however, seemed promising. They were very excited about the prospect, and I think that building our plants in towns near each other would be ideal, not only for APP's sake, but also so the towns could work together in the future for fixing problems and securing chemicals. Ultimately new towns will be the choice of APP not us, but it was interesting to get an idea of what they're working with.
Overall I think this trip was less about the technical aspects, with the exception of the plant fixes at Ojojona, and more about seeing the way things work and making connections with people. We got to connect with Jacobo, the head of APP who always seems to bring a mariachi band with him to dinner, Antonio, the APP engineer in Ojojona, UNITEC students, who may someday be our Honduras student partners, and other friends in Ojojona. We got to see projects that worked and projects that didn't work, and I think now we understand this project more fully and know what we need to do to have successful plants in the future. As much as the engineering and design is important, connecting with the towns and giving them ownership of their plants will be the key to success.
Daniel
Honduras Journal
So let's divide this into three sections: Tela, Ojojona, and Copan.
Tela:
My first impression of Tela was of a town that once was something. Our hotel was right on the water, many of our group's rooms faced the ocean, and the mountains, and hmmm all that stuff. It was sad to see how badly kept the beach was, with trash floating around in the water and strewn about the sand. Also on the beach were loads of children, mainly girls selling pan dulce and maybe a few other little food items. They all sold the same things, and I never saw anyone purchase anything from them, yet they were out selling every day. One older lady offered Steven pan dulce and trencitas. Jeje, he should have let her braid his hair. I would have if mine was long enough.
The hotel room was pretty nice for what I expected. You'd think room 1 would have an ocean view, but our room just led out to a hallway full of A/C exhausts. The first night I made it a point to become familiar with the owners of El Hotel Puerto Rico. They seemed like nice people, and they were. We had dinner at the hotel's restaurant and I had some fried Robalo. I didn't know we would be having fish the next day, but it didn't matter. Since we had been traveling all day, that afternoon/night was free of anything except for our first meeting to get everyone on track.
A few of us tried finding away to communicate with El Norte (the US) but failed because some places were closed. We also tried to buy a chip for the cell phone, and no luck. So the family had to wait. That night a few in the group went around town meeting people. It was great to see everyone trying to communicate even with little Spanish¿enjoying the friendliness of the people. We also went dancing at Iguana's, and that of course was a great time. People are a lot more open to just dance in Honduras (compared to Cornell).
The next day we went to Punta Sal, and it was amazing. We got on two different boats and were bouncing around in jellyfish infested waters for about 45 minutes. It was all a blast. Once we got to Punta Sal the difference in the beach and landscape was immediately apparent. There was not one piece of garbage or anything on the sand. The only things there were a few little huts where a family lives. They are allowed to be there because they were living there before Punta Sal was made a National Reserve. Getting off the boats was a bit of a mission for some in the group¿no one expected to have to jump in the water to be able to get off. But it was warm and the water was perfect, so no complaints were heard.
The next part of the day consisted of hiking through a trail and making noises to get the monkeys to respond. After this we got on the boats again to a different part and went snorkeling and played like little boys and girls in the water. And we tanned. They were tans that lasted the rest of the trip and beyond. After this we ate fried fish and tajadas (fried plantains) and of course: good old American soda. We were able to hang out for a while, drink coconut milk, eat almonds, but soon we left.
The Tela leg of the trip had those fun parts, but we also worked. We visited a "treatment plant" that was really just, well, nothing. Dirty, really dirty water from the top of the mountain poured directly into a distribution tank where some chlorine was added and then it flowed out of there through asbestos pipes directly to people's taps. Back in the day in the 1940's when the plant was built, the water was cleaner and there was a sand filter in place that apparently used to function very well. But it's not the 1940's anymore and the sand is nonexistent and the water is much dirtier. The water was visibly filthy, it was a brownish color and this wasn't even during the worst season. The water was also much more than just visibly dirty: up on the mountain, above the "treatment plant," there are pig pens and cattle farms and all sorts of contaminants. The water is no where near fit for human consumption.
We also saw other treatment plants near Tela in La Ceiba. There were two in the same location. One was functioning, though not very well. It was a standard floc-sed setup with slow sand filters. I will make a few comments on it: there were fish swimming in the water in the floc tank. It was pretty dirty and the operators weren't very clear on what was going on in general. This is a general problem we ran into while visiting Honduras. Adjacent to this plant was one of the famous Spanish plants. This space age monstrosity was just sitting there, out of use, causing debt to the town that it was "given" to. It is a huge modern looking....thing...that serves absolutely no purpose because it is all computerized and uses many electronic parts that break down and are almost irreplaceable. The operator really had no clue what that machine was about. It was a disaster.
Ojojona:
Getting to Ojojona was a breath of fresh air. It is a tranquil small town with very hospitable people and loads of fun kids running around. The best part of being in Ojojona was by far seeing and working with the water treatment plant. It was a thrill to hike up there and finally see the product of ones work. To many, it was a disappointment and a sort of disillusionment to see the problems that the plant had. I didn't look at it that way. The plant was built in Honduras and led by and engineer who didn't care about the project. It was clear that problems would be waiting. Even so, the plant was functioning and it was a pleasure to see water coming out cleaner than it had started even with the plant not working at its capacity.
After a quick inspection with the group, we discovered that the flocculation tank was only partly working. Some of the baffles didn't quite reach the bottom of the tank and thus the water was not making the up and down travel path it was designed to make. The baffles and lamella were all attached to the walls of the tanks with screws that were placed there rather unprofessionally. A few other problems were discovered as more time passed and I became more familiar with the plant operator, Antonio. He seemed to be very dedicated to the plant and its operation and also knew what was going on and what the problems were. The best part of talking to him was that he also offered his opinion on solutions to the problems. He was very willing to work with us and showed sincere interest in the plant's success. After that first day, a chat with Monroe let me know that he felt the same way. I thought that if this was true, then we had a teammate in Honduras and the plant would indeed work perfectly fine in the end. This was the main source of realistic optimism¿the best kind.
While in Ojojona some of use decided that being up at the plant was too much fun and working up there as much as possible was the best way to spend time. After talking to Antonio and learning about the details of maintenance and such from him, we emptied out a sedimentation tank and confirmed yet another problem that we had suspected, the lamella were not only incorrectly attached to the tank, but they were at an incorrect angle. We knew that a relatively small change in lamella angle could cause a big change in functioning in the plant. The water was probably coming out dirtier than it needed to, all due to a simple error.
So we decided to fix the emptied tank as best as possible for the sake of experimentation. The inauguration was in a day and a half, so we had little time to waste. We started removing lamella and placing them under the stock tanks very carefully. It was a mission because of all the wind up there. After a few were out we had to jump in to inspect the tank and finish removing the lamella more easily. Lotta fun. After going in, we saw that the inlets into the sed tanks were also incorrectly made. The cuts on the elbows were totally incorrect¿another simple error with very negative effects. We called the other group that had gone to a hardware store in Tegucigalpa and asked for tie wraps¿the second greatest quick rig invention in the world (second to duct tape). We did a few nerdy engineer things involving shoelaces, rocks, and a calculator to figure out the angle we were going to place them in and then got to work. We replaced them and tied them up with tie wraps.
After this it was time to refill the tank and this taught us another lesson. There was no way to refill the tank without disturbing all the settled floc everywhere, including the two other sed tanks. We finished on time and the inauguration was coming.
The inauguration was a great pleasure because I was able to see support and curiosity for the plant coming from all different sources. In line with tradition, everyone thanked everyone for about two hours. It was great. We later trekked up to the plant and had to give a million and one explanations on how it worked to all sorts of people. All a fun time. Then the ribbon was cut and we drank water and Monroe was soaked and all sorts of things were going on.
Memorable character of the day: the old Cuban man with the Billy club tucked under his arm and the unlit half-smoked cigar that never left his lips.
Copan:
Copan was a good last leg of the trip. The first day half the group (I was in this half) went to see the ruins. We had a great tour by an old man who was recommended to us named Antonio. He was great, a funny guy who speaks a million languages and talks about how much of a ladies man he still is. He has been giving tours of the ruins for decades and was very knowledgeable about, well, everything. After his grand tour he got the group in contact with a canopy tour. After lunch we loaded up on the back of a broken down pickup truck with no idea who was driving us or where we were going. We were perfectly safe though, no one could miss a truck full of gringos speeding down the streets of Copan. Once we made it to our destination we were suited up by Ginger Loveless and her gang of Honduran zip-liners. We again loaded up on the truck, except this time with a few extra passengers hooked on the back with their harnesses. The rest I will leave to pictures, it was a blast.