Work Update

I stayed up till midnight last night finishing a progress report for the Canadian Embassy. I don't often hear the church bells chime out that hour but last night I did, determined to get the report in on time.

The Canadian Embassy is helping fund a 59 cistern project in two communities 2 hours from where we live. The project is going very, very well.

I've copied and pasted some of what I wrote, for those interested in a work update. The questions were in Spanish, so I didn't include them here. Martin has been working on this project.


"Health Project - Cement Cisterns to Capture Rainwater" has been a success. There is a serious lack of water in this particular region, and since water is such a vital part of life, there is a high demand for this type of collection and storage system. Fondó Canada donated money for 22 cisterns. Mennonite Central Committee donated money for 22 cisterns. The municipal president donated money for 15 cisterns. With this mix of funds, we are able to build 59 cisterns in two communities over a period of three months, benefitting 371 people plus one primary school.

We are pleased to report that we are ahead of schedule with this project. Participation by the beneficiaries has been excellent. There are always extra workers in each group. The next group in line comes early to learn the construction process and people from the previous group often continuing working with the following group to help out. There has been great community spirit in both Tecozajca and Rincon de Cozahuapa. 26 of the 39 cisterns have been completed in Tecozajca and 12 of the 20 cisterns have been completed in Rincon de Cozahuapa.

The first difficulty has been with the quality of the sand that has been delivered. We took the lower of three bids and tried a new supplier for sand. The contractor showed us a sample of the sand that he would deliver (it was fine, clean and just what we wanted) before we accepted his bid. Unfortunately, he delivered dirty sand that was full of rocks to the communities. We have talked to him several times about this problem, but nothing has changed. Because we aren't always in the community when the sand is delivered, we asked the community representative to refuse the sand if it wasn't a good enough quality. But that hasn't happened either. Since there are so many rocks in the sand and the quality isn't improving, we have adjusted the formula of the cement mix to match the materials at hand. This means that we put in less gravel to adjust for not having pure sand. We haven't had any major problems so far, though none of the cisterns are full of water yet. We will have to wait until they are full of water to really find out if they turned out alright. They look great now, but the real test will be when they are full of water. If they do leak, which is highly unlikely, we can paint the inside with a sealant. We will certainly NOT work with this sand supplier again.

The second challenge has been with the cement. Again, we accepted a lower bid for cement and ended up buying a brand we had never used before "Apasco". The supplier assured us that it was of equal quality. Our experience has been that this brand of cement sets up VERY slowly. We tried to buy an accelerant, but that did not work. So therefore we have changed the process of what we do each day to allow for more time for the floor to dry before we start the walls. This has been successful and the solution actually came from community members during a commentary process that we have after building a cistern. After we finish a cistern, we facilitate a group meeting to talk together about the problems we encountered. This solution came from the community during one of these meetings. In terms of team building, the community was very successful at working through the "challenge".

For each cistern built, there are 10 to 12 men from the community working together. For every day that the men are working, there are 2 to 3 women cooking two meals a day for all of them.

For this particular project, the women have not played a major part of the decision making process, nor have they participated directly in the meetings. This is an area that we are continuing to work on. In other group situations we have had more success with participation and building leadership skills among the women. In these particular communities, the "traditional gender roles" seem to be well set and thus the men do the building and the women do the cooking.

In terms of protecting the environment, the cisterns help reduce the problems that a of lack of water creates.

So far with this project, there have been two main lesson learned. First, we learned that we only have one local supplier whom we can count on to deliver quality materials, though we have to pay more. We tried a new, local sand supplier and were dissappointed. Next time we will go with the higher price and the quality is worth it.

The second lesson learned was with the brand of cement that we purchased. We won't buy "Apasco" again, but we actually came up with a better building process. For example, after pouring the top of the cistern in place, the molds are removed and moved to the new site where they are set in place. Then the floor is poured at 6 a.m. the next day. With the old process, the 1st day ended up being a 12 hour day and the 2nd day was a 4 hour day. The new process moves some of the work from the 1st day to the 2nd day. The 1st cistern is still a 3-day process, but the rest of the cisterns only take 2 days to build, so we are more efficient. This process works particularly well for a large project such as this one. We plan is to continue using this new process during future building projects.


Again, we are pleased to report that there has been great community spirit and the beneficiaries are really working together and eagerly contributing to this project in both Tecozajca and Rincon de Cozahuapa. 26 of the 39 cisterns have been completed in Tecozajca and 12 of the 20 cisterns have been completed in Rincon de Cozahuapa. We are ahead of schedule and are pleased with the way this project is progressing.

In conclusion, this project has been a big success. People are working together and putting in more time then we asked them too. The community is really working together. So far, we are exceeding our goals. We need to continue to work at having greater participation from the women in the community and figure out how they can be included more in the meetings and decision making processes.