The One When Everybody is Thirsty

I think I have created a few enemies in the past few days.
For a place that has such a high annual rainfall, we still have our dry spells… and we are going through one right now. When I started with this rainwater project, my thought was to put the new tanks at the homes furthest away from the school, at the houses that are a boat ride away. We already have two thousand gallon tanks installed at the school that are available to those living in the surrounding area, so it made perfect since to start with the homes that didn’t have reasonable and feasible access to this source… right?

When we installed the new tanks, I did some education with the happy new beneficiaries regarding how to manage their new water source. i.e.: “this water is to drink and cook, not for bathing or washing clothes.” I also made them a little booklet that reiterated this message using little pictures for the illiterate. After all this, I am happy to report that I think they get it! We have not had rain for about 2 weeks now, and they all report to still have water in their tanks.

Unfortunately, on my side of the community things are a little grimmer. Maybe I should have reconsidered my choice on tank placements. Sure the people on the other side of the community didn’t have any clean water source within walking distance, and babies were getting sick, and they were in dire need… but the people on my side of the community are my neighbors, and like it or not, I have to see them every day.

Since I have been here, I have only seen the two tanks at the school go completely dry twice and they have never remained dry for more than 2 days… until now. Apart from the tanks at the school, I have my own 55 gallon tank on my house. Which is not a lot considering I don’t have a pozo (shallow water source) like all of them do to bath and wash clothes. So, if we don’t have water for two days, I launch my water hoarding tactics. I start out pretty lax, Ex: I allow myself to shower but not wash my hair. Then each day that passes without rain, my hoarding becomes a little more intense, but I think I had yet to arrive to the point of obsession… until now. Below are a few examples of how I know that I have gotten to that point. Some may call me crazy or selfish and I am sure if I were to act this way back home, my family would feel the need for some sort of intervention. But here it is a different story, it is truly a matter of survival.

Things I do to conserve my water:
•I consciously peel my Oranges by hand instead of cutting them (which I normally do) so that I won’t have to wash the knife.
•I make one large one-pot meal in the morning and eat it all day to reduce on dishes
•I leave all the dirty dishes on my outdoor sink and hope that a bit of rain will sprinkle them clean overnight. If not I make use of the dew it has collected and wash them the next morning.
•I am afraid if I ever go out of site of my house, because there are water thieves around every corner
Note: No one in my community would ever or has ever stolen anything from my house. I would feel comfortable leaving it open for days or weeks at time, but there is no shame when it comes to steeling water. Right now, there is a large sign on my water tank that says ¨NO TOCA¨
•I struggle with the intense urge to itch my athletes feet because I know if I do so I will have to wash my hands…it is probably just as well I don’t scratch.
•I don’t hike, or exert myself to the point of requiring more water intake. •I don’t bathe…yeah.
•I can justify making tea in the morning but not coffee, because I am certain it just makes make thirsty.
•I have said flat out “No” to the following beggars:
- A 6 year old kid who came to my doorstep with an empty 5 ounce plastic cup.
- A group of teenage kids who just arrived from walking over an hour back from school in the hot sun.
-The women who needed water to cook lunch for the school children.

Wow, that last one really makes me sound like a bad person, but trust me, you would do the same. I give a lot of things to my community, but clean water from my own personal tank is definitely not one of them.

So… I am in town right now for a few hours. I just placed and order at the hardware store to purchase supplies to install another 1000 gallon tank on the new school house. From this one we will run tube some 700 feet to reach a cluster of six homes. The tank will be installed tomorrow and we will hopefully finish laying the tube by the end of the weekend, and then my god it better rain!!

I know I have mention that water is something we take for granted. But sometimes I feel like that is just a saying that people who travel to or live in third world or developing countries always say ¨we take such and such for granted.¨ So I hope that the above list has given you a better idea of really how lucky you are…. I mean, if you have an itch on your foot, you can scratch it =) There is tons of great water information and facts online. One of my favorite sources is National Geographic. The had a great water issue that came out a few months ago, that I always share with my community, to show them really how lucky they are that clean water just falls from the sky. This particular issue had a postersize spread in the middle that displayed how much water is consumed in the producton on different items....I still am struggling to try to explain to my community why 1,800 gallons ot water is used to produce a a pair of Jeans.

-Meti

The One with the Ultimate Handyman

Someone mentioned to me the other day, how it may be hard for me to find a boyfriend/husband when I get back to the states. There are many reasons for this, but I think what they were referring to was the fact that I am going to have all of these unrealistic expectations of what a handyman should be. Their explanation was two-fold; First, I am getting tons of practical and hands on experience and learning so much myself that my expectations of what the man of the house should be able to do will be skewed, and second, I am constantly surrounded by hundreds of what I call the “ultimate handyman” that it will be a hard comparison.

I nodded in agreement when this was brought to my attention. I had never thought of that before and this comment really got me thinking, about how these guys are really the ultimate jungle handy men. Sure, they would be horrified at the task of fixing a dishwasher or garage door (they don’t even know what either of those are). But you put them in their element and they are unsurpassable… and pretty much just bad ass.

They build their own homes, some of them without even using a nail. They are master wood workers, molding and carving a tree into whatever they need or want. They are extremely innovative and resourceful, making their own tools (hammer, shovel, ladder, fishing net) or they simply use their multi-tool, the machete , for everything. They climb to the top of the highest tree to harvest fruit. They dive to amazing depths with handmade spears to catch dinner. They carry wood, heavy wood, amazing distances to build their own community buildings, schools, libraries, churches and docks. They sew their own clothes and they sew their own stitches when they slip with the machete. They plant, maintain and harvest all the food for the family.

Don’t get me wrong, the women are equally as amazing. They cook over an open fire. They can turn a dirty school uniform spotless white by banging it on a rock with dirty water. They make kitchen utensils and households cleaning tools out of the jungle bush. And not to mention their most impressive job of caring for all those children.

But, to be honest, I really don’t think I have been in the jungle so long that I would expect my life partner to prove himself to me by opening a coconut with a machete. After all, I am a full believer in the saying “The only thing more dangerous than a Ngobe with a power tool, is a gringo with a Machete.” This saying has proven itself true one too many times, and I would never encourage an untrained gringo to pick up a machete, just as I would never encourage an untrained Ngobe to use a power saw.

Recently I got the opportunity to go with a group of guys into the jungle and follow them as they carried a dug-out canoe to the ocean. The owner of this new vessel has been hiking to this tree turned boat every day for the past 3 months. Now it was time for it to make the journey to the water, and hope that it floats...

Note: If my "Mr. right" is reading this, don’t worry, I won’t expect you to carve a brand new Jetta out of a tree trunk =)

Here is a short video of our adventure:

Peace,
~Meti

The One About Meetings

I had a community meeting a few weeks ago with everyone that was receiving a water catchment system. Here, community meetings can break record books for most inefficient use of half a day. So my strategy was to schedule my meetings for mid-day. I figure they usually eat lunch around noon. So I calculate how much time I think the meeting should last, subtract that from lunch time and start the meeting then. I assumed their appetite would encourage them to keep it brief and stay on track. Unfortunately, I am still waiting for my strategy to work, so in the mean time I am developing a new approach that utilizes the act of the setting sun by starting my meetings in the evening. So when dusk starts to set in, it is a visual reminder that we better stay on track or everyone is going to be traveling home in the dark. They don’t like to be out in the dark, which makes the approach seem kind of cruel, but I guess it could be argued that making them starve at lunch time is pretty cruel too.

Anyways, this particular meeting started at 11 (I thought is should take an hour) and lasted until 3:30 pm. Here were two of my favorite tangents that the community went off on:

Tangent one: When they started talking about the Witch that came a year ago and left a white candle and black bottle held together with duck tape. I remember this incident; they had me take a picture of said bottle. At the time I had no idea what they were talking about because I had not studied my supernatural vocabulary yet but, I knew that this bottle had some sort of significance. Roberto asked me to print the picture, which I did in a very timely matter. Looking back, I realize this was the beginning of a very slippery slope, and the start of my part time (sometimes full time) job of taking and printing pictures for my community members.

So this whole Witch/bottle incident was over a year ago, but when the topic came up in our meeting, Roberto quickly pulled out the picture to pass around. He claims he carries the picture around with him, just in case. Just in case of what? In case the topic of witch craft comes up in a meeting about rainwater catchment systems…..? I guess he was more prepared then I was.

Tangent two: The group’s lengthy discussion about “Coco-nut credit”
This is a system they have loosely established in an attempt to evenly distribute the fallen coconuts among the community members. Note: I don’t get any because I can’t open them… Again, I am not sure why this topic came up in a meeting about rainwater catchment. However, it became apparent real quick that people were not happy with the organization of this Coco–nut system. So, they argued for a bit about coco-nut allocation methods and strategy, Roberto even drew a diagram on the board. I just listened. Eventually, everyone who wanted a voice on the topic was heard, absolutely nothing was resolved, and we continued on to the next point on the agenda.

I spent a lot of my first year here trying to introduce the idea of time management, only to come to the realization that this is a very relative term, as are the terms inefficient and efficient. If they think talking about witches and coco-nut credit is important and an efficient use of time, then why should I try to hush the topic or attempt to put it off to another time

The phrase “patience is a virtue” has never been more applicable in my life, and the meaning of true patience is something I have been learning on the job. At the end of the 4 ½ hour meeting, we did complete the task at hand regarding the rainwater systems. To me that is success and it didn’t matter how long it took us to get there.

Back in my “old life” I had a calendar where the days were broken down to an hourly agenda. Most days, every single hour had something written in it. Back then, it would be absurd for me to think that in the future there would be a time when my agenda would only list one task per day, sometimes even per week.

Things here simply move at a different pace. Not for better or for worse, just different. Here, the only reason someone would have a calendar would be to know when the next full moon is so they can cut down the tree to build their boat, or their house. Their life is not structured in the way ours is, and it shouldn't have to be.

~Meti