Day 4-6

Day 4, Sunday August 7
We met the mason, Faustino early and he started laying the concrete block headwall. For the grout and morter, a large screen sieve was brought to seperate the gravel. Like the concrete, it was hand mixed on the ground with cement and water and then taken in buckets to the desired location. At the same time, our ewb team and several other volunteers dug the outlet and pipe beds. Our next task was to fill the very large outlet trench with rock. We had an assembly line of college students aided by willing and excited village children that hauled the big rocks from the staging area to the outlet. We were amazed at the motiviation and strength of the little kids. After a break for lunch, we laid the two pipes. The other 2 pipes still had not arrived...

Day 5, Monday August 8
Still missing two culverts, there wasn't much for the crew to do. Our EWB team split into two groups, the graduates stayed on the construction site while the current students followed Santos through the village to investigate future projects. On the site, we excavated around the inlet and headwall, shoveled and compacted dirt slopes for inlet ptrotection laid rock, and

finished the outlet trench. The heat was very difficult to work in, and those of us on the construction site were exhausted by lunchtime of the shoveling and compacting routine. On the other hand, the students looking for future work found lots to do for other crossings in Guadalupe Carney and were able to narrow down the village's priorities.


Day 6, Tuesday August 9
Despite being promised the missing pipes, we were still without on Day 6. Having completed most of the work that could be done in the previous days, we spent a couople hours finishing the inlet protection and then decided to follow Santos to see one of the two sources of water for the village. This was much more of an encdedavor than we had imagined. We hiked 4 km in the jungle covered mountains. 4 km doesn't sound like a lot, but the heat and the climb really took it out of us. We did see monkeys and enjoyed fresh mangoes. When we got to the top, we saw a dam that water piped all the way to the villlage. One of the most amazing things is that in order to build the concrete structure, they had to haul all the materials by horse and by man. Here we learned a lot about the water in the village. They first had water two years ago when this project started, and everyone must pay 50 limperia (about $2.50) per month in order to receive the un-filtered water. Santos himself, at 56 years old, makes the difficult trek every two weeks to maintain the water lines.

Famished, dirty, sweaty, and sticky we made it back down to the truck only to discover we had a flat tire. Luckily the rental was equipped with a spare and Randell and Scott were able to get it changed quickly. In the evening all the students gathered at one of the houses to enjoy the Fast and the Furious in Spanish (no english subtitiles).