Back to school

I’ve been studying a Diploma in “Integrated Management of Basic Environmental Sanitation” at one of the Abancay Universities.

 

It looks at the laws and procedures around water systems, the roles and technologies, training village water boards in the skills they need, and how to apply for government funding for projects. It’s every 2nd weekend for 6 months - so far it’s been hard work but very interesting and I am very glad I decided to take the course. There are some extra training events too for local water system managers, and I am taking the opportunity to learn everything I can. It’s a bit of a new way of doing university for me - last week we had 6 hours of class time without a break!

Not just listening... we have to present back to the rest.
So far my Spanish is functional but not professional!

It's also been great to meet the other students - both for developing new friendships and meeting others who work in the same areas as AIDIA.

 

Radicales Libres!

The church I have been going to has a youth group called "Radicales Libres" or "Free Radicals".  I think it's a pretty good name - because of Jesus we are free, we are called to live radically, and we - like free radicals - will be constantly affecting others who become free radicals too...

We went to a youth conference in Cusco (I should explain here that "youth" in Peru and generally Latin America seems to mean a slightly different age range to in the UK.  Roughly:

• 5-12: kids
• 13-17: adolescents (doesn't seem to have the awkward and embarrassing connotations that it has in English)
• 18-for as long as you're single: youth

The "youth" category seems quite flexible too - there were also young kids, and married couples on the weekend.  Anyway...

It was really good to be reminded in one of the workshops that we should go beyond our limitations.  We talked about grace - which we commonly think of as God forgiving us our sins.  Ok, but it was pointed out that grace is so much more than this.  It is God making up the difference, in everything every day, between what we can do and what he wants us to do.  God doesn't want us to say "yes, I understand your requirements, and I'll do it!" - he wants us to say "I know I can't do it - please help me".  So in a job where I constantly don't know what to do, or feel I can't do it - this is good news! 

It was great also to explore Cusco with my friends - and to see that Peruvians as well as foreigners want to hang out in the main plaza and eat ice-cream.  Oh, and also go to the mall, go to the cinema and eat pizza.  These are pretty rare treats.

We also tracked down a little go-karting track and spent a fun couple of hours alternately racing round it and getting stuck.  I am trying to track down some photos to show you.

Dental work in Ancobamba

Erin had a week-long visit from a USA dental team and I accompanied them on one of their visits - to Ancobamba.  It’s quite a big village but takes a while to get to - it’s very high up (and therefore cold) and the track winds its way slowly up the steep mountainside, taking in very spectacular views and very alarming drops!  

I was along as a translator for one of the dentists.  Mostly Spanish was sufficient, but our last patient couldn’t understand me in Spanish, so I had to use my carefully prepared Quechua phrases.  It was a great encouragement when these were successful - I could ask her where it hurt, explain what the dentist was going to do, ask her to open her mouth wide, and explain how to take the painkillers we gave her afterwards. But I wasn’t only a translator. We were short a dental assistant, so I ended up learning how to keep the patient’s mouth dry during a filling, and generally be an extra pair of hands.  Being a missionary is very varied!

The water engineer side of me couldn't resist taking a photo of the water tower... and I was impressed to see a poster up about the village water management committee! There was running water inside the health post where we were working, although the houses in the village didn't have quite such an efficient system.

We were fed huuuuuge portions of delicious food

Washing our hands before lunch

We stayed the night, and this was by far the most luxurious accommodation I've had so far on one of these visits.  A whole bed to myself, electric light without hanging wires, and no animals.  And with the early start, the cold day, and the hard work, I slept very well.

Sañayca saga...

Sañayca is a village that received a very successful water project (i.e. one that involved not just construction, but change of attitudes and therefore ongoing improvement) through CARE and their sanitation programme a few years ago.  It was mentioned to me in my visit to the Cusco CARE office, and then again when I made contact with the local government office here.  So I have the phone number of the mayor and have been planning to arrange a visit.

The problem is that I put off phone calls for quite a long time because 1) my mobile is not great and even in English I find it hard to hear what people are saying, 2) conversations don't happen in English, they happen in Spanish, and it's harder to hear when you can't see people's faces and 3) signal in the villages is worse and so it's even harder to hear.

Last week: I finally bite the bullet and make this phone call that I have been putting off for nearly a month.

It is just as bad as I expect.

I ring the mayor of Sañayca and can only hear about half of what he says, because he is in the middle of nowhere... and speaking Spanish of course.  Then he says (I think) that they are having a big meeting tomorrow and I can come then – but then I am panicked because I don’t know how to get there yet and whether I even can for any useful time tomorrow because the buses are complicated... then he said talk to the local government office because they know.

Except that the local government guy (Omar) is probably getting fed up with me because at the moment I am emailing or ringing or turning up at his office every week with some enquiry.  But anyway, I call him and eventually work out that instead of going to Sañayca tomorrow I can turn up at some training event they are all coming to Abancay for – tomorrow.  So I know where it is and what time to go there.  Except that I have no idea what this training thing is actually about.

The next day, I go down to the town hall in the morning and they tell me no, no-one from Sañayca is coming.  I ring Omar (again) to check, and yes I am in the right place, I just didn't know the name of the training meeting.  Equipped with this open sesame, I go back to the town hall and this time get in.  But almost no-one has arrived for the training yet because I am only 10 minutes late.  I leave my name and number with the lady on the door who says she will call me when they arrive.

This works.  About lunchtime I get a text message, and about 4pm I go down again as I figure they will be finishing soon.  At the end of the session I go and interrupt Omar (who has just finished leading the training day) to get him to introduce me to the right people.  But, finally, there I am, speaking to the people I hoped to meet, and explaining about AIDIA and that I would like to visit Sañayca and their water project.

The water system manager says "Great".

Then he says "We should set up a visit.  You should ring me next week.  Here's my number."

...

I go home, envisioning an unending process of incomprehensible phone calls.

This time I decide that I have had enough, and I enlist Noemí, who works at AIDIA, to help me.  She phones up and after several back-and-forths they ring me back when she is not there, but encouraged by her help I manage to arrange a visit for Friday afternoon.

The journey involves a 2-hour bus followed by a half-hour taxi ride (returning is slightly complicated by the fact that our taxi doesn't wait for us).  And when we get there we discover that the CARE project wasn't actually in the village of Sañayca - it was in a smaller village in the district of Sañayca.  ("Here is the mayor's phone number - you can call him to arrange a visit...").  BUT this is all unimportant as we meet with the district mayor and the water system manager and hear a lot from them about the project.  They attribute its success to the fact that a trainer lived in the village for about 3 months before any construction work started, teaching about hygiene and management and making sure people were on-board, and stayed through to completion.  I am amazingly encouraged to hear that the system is being used properly, maintained and improved (and I believe it, because they show me the one here as well and explain their maintenance and management systems).

Elements of the water project - these models were given to the village on completion of the training programme

A break-pressure tank: in one piece, clean, and locked - a great improvement on many

Looking up to the water tank - very impressed that it's in a locked compound

The water system manager explains the cleaning schedule - each street takes its turn each month to clean and disinfect the spring and the tank.

They are also interested to hear about the work AIDIA does, and talk with Noemí about the possibility of some teaching sessions.  I am glad that they might get something out of the visit as well as answering so many of my queries.


This whole process has been a major triumph - in doing things that are difficult, in being willing to look stupid, and in asking for help - as well of course as actually finding out about what made the Sañayca project so successful.

Proof that I made it to Sañayca eventually!

Happy Easter!

It was a very Happy Easter...

During the week I made hot cross buns and shared them with colleagues at work... they went down very well, and it was nice to be able to explain the British custom.

On Easter Day I went to Curahuasi, the village about an hour and a half away where there is a mission hospital.  They had organised a combined service with all the Curahuasi churches which, in a context where churches are often very separate, was lovely.  I went to see my new friend Ruth who is working as a doctor in the hospital for a few months, but got a lift with Erin and Brendan as Brendan was preaching - using the AIDIA Quechua New Testament and some of the new oral Bible teaching materials.

 

It was great to be in the service, which had elements of Spanish, Quechua, English and German (the hospital is German-run) and to be among so many other people celebrating Jesus' resurrection and our new life.

 

Missionaries washing the feet of local Christians - a lovely symbolic act at the end of the service.

Afterwards I went up to the hospital accommodation with Ruth for a coffee and fresh strawberries and lovely views of the snow-topped mountains.  It's lovely to have these times of doing nothing wth a friend - there are lots of people and things happening in Abancay but I do miss housemates!

Local government

I am so pleased to have got this ball rolling, as it's something I meant to do from the beginning.  The local government has changed over, so I've been waiting til things got settled.


I had a meeting a few weeks ago with the CARE representative here, who works in the local government office.  I came away with lots of reading material, including the standard form for a project request, and lots of information on government-approved designs for water and sanitation systems.  It was great to get all this, as I had a suspicion it must exist somewhere, but now I have tracked it down.  This also means I can coordinate with other people doing projects, make sure I don’t duplicate their work and try to focus on more needy areas. 

First meeting of COMURSABA

The other great thing about the meeting is that it has got me into a network of other people who work in the water and sanitation sector.  The first meeting this year of COMURSABA - the “Regional Multisectoral Committee for Basic Sanitation” was 2 weeks later.  There were people from various government departments and projects, and it’s a good forum for discussion of projects, technologies, approaches - and they keep track of who is working where, so a good way to avoid duplication and coordinate with other organisations.  It also felt great to be back in a professional meeting context.  There’ll be a meeting each month.

Atancama

Another dental visit, and a village that AIDIA has not visited in the last few years.  We were VERY busy with patients all day, and I had to work hard to keep putting the instruments through the autoclave so they’d be sterilised by the time they were needed again.  I was impressed by the fact we can sterilise, take x-rays, develop the photos... it's got me thinking again of what equipment I might need, and the success we had with the DelAgua water testing kit in Ecuador - both for practical testing purposes and for showing and teaching.  There are a couple of visits planned in April when I have been asked to come as a translator (we have a team coming from the USA) so I have also been listening to learn some more technical dental Spanish.

The autoclave and camping stove which I use for sterilising

Brendan developing an x-ray in the "dark-room"

 

The literacy and orality teams came too, and we had good times talking with all the people who were waiting for their appointments.  I took down their details which led to a few simple conversations in Quechua - it was a big encouragement to be able to manage this! 

Trying out the tongue-twisters!

Noemi and her bookshop!

Because we were so busy, I didn’t get to nose around looking at the different water infrastructure, but asked a few questions.  We will be visiting again in a couple of months so I can find out more then.  Community development work is largely about building a good relationship, so I am happy with this progress.   

View down from the plaza

On a practical note, I made the important discovery that long sleeves, and leggings tucked into socks are successful in preventing insect bites!  Apart from one very determined fly that bit me through my sock.