Ancobamba village meeting

After months of discouragement in Ancobamba (in which I have been trying to find the positive), I got invited by the water board and the local government representative to help them plan their budget for 2017, and to help train the whole village about pathogens in water so that they would agree to the necessary expenditure!

We worked out what I think was a fairly conclusive budget, and presented it to the village.

I did an activity about how we decide whether water is clean, then took a giant drop of water (ok, newspaper sheets stuck together) and some giant parasites (measuring tape, buttons and lentils) to show the kinds of pathogens that can live in it but are too small to see, and talked about how we can get rid of them.

The village agreed to pay about 60% of the planned budget - which is a lot better than I thought it might be!

Meanwhile, the engineers of the future...