6 weeks in site and still strong!

I'm pretty good at keeping up with this bloggy thing. I thought I'd be terrible at it, but it gives me a good excuse to go in and use the internet, so I'm actually quite excellent at it.

I'm still alive and well, in a new house in my community, making headway every day (except to day, of course, because I escaped to use internet and eat yogurt). This last week actually was a busy, busy week. I was a little low on Tuesday, and paseared (walked around and chatted) with my community, and then found out that there was a water committee meeting that night. So, I ended up getting to go and see, first hand, what the problems are surrounding the water in the community. Turns out there are a lot...

First, they have an old aquaduct that only supplies water maybe half the time. So as a result people have to fill up big buckets of water to have a store for when there is no water. That's a common problem in Panama, and one that I already knew they had. They are actually pretty good at storing their water safely, so that's not a huge problem.

They also have a metered system, which in general Americans would see as a good thing. You'll know exactly how much you're using, and you'll pay for what you use. Except when you pair that with people filling up big buckets of water, letting them sit for a week, then dumping them out because the water's "dirty", you end up with people wasting a lot of water and still paying for it. And it's the paying-for-it part that they're dismayed by. I suppose if I went from a fixed rate of $2/month to a metered rate of $8/month in the course of a month, I'd be pretty dismayed, also. Especially considering that a day laborer's average pay is $8/day. That's a big difference.

There's also one other big problem that they have. There's a new aquaduct that was built by the "government" (I'm actually not sure who it was built by; I've gotten mixed reports, which leads me to believe that I'll just have to figure it out on my own) that's going to pump water from a river nearby, through a treatment plant, up to the aquaduct, chlorinate it up there and feed it to all 4 communities that are attached to this aquaduct system. They'll have clean, potable water 24/7. Sounds good, right? Wrong. If this aquaduct gets finished, someone else will be maintaining it, meaning there will no longer be a local Water Committee collecting money, checking meters, and more importantly, deciding when to cut people's water off because they haven't paid in three months. The deal with the water committees is that they're assembled from the communities, and all the communities are related to each other. Basically that means that they elect people that aren't going to cut them off. People want family members on the committee because then they won't run the risk of having their water supply cut off if they're delinquent. Which they often are. It's disfunctional, to say the least. But, how do you convince someone that it would be better to have an outside agency managing their water supply, even if that means they're water could get cut? Yeah...dilemma.

Other than that, I'm also working with a women's artisan group that is starting a cooperative to sell their artisan work. They actually just voted on a name yesterday: Mujeres Artesanas Unidas de Pueblo Nuevo or United Women's Artisans of Pueblo Nuevo. I'm going to help them work with an agency named IPACOOP to start their coop and help them through some of the finer points once IPACOOP steps back a little bit. We'll see how that goes...

As always, I miss and love everyone at home. It's still hot here. It's eternally summer here, which I thought I'd love, but I find myself looking for the coolest spots and the coolest times of day and taking advantage of them. Although, I never have to "work" on my tan. Which is a nice little perk. And everyone has a hammock, which is also wonderful. Whoever created the hammock is a genius.

Til next time!

Molly