Potable Water Project in Zhucos, Ecuador

When my girlfriend, Katie, first came to her site in the city of Loja in southern Ecuador she was assigned to work in a small town just outside the city named Zhucos (pronounced shucos). After working there a couple of weeks she decided that Zhucos would be a good place to do some surveys that the Peace Corps requires us to do in our first couple of months in site. These tools are basically just a long list of questions to help us identify areas within our communities where we may be able to help. As Katie went from house to house asking the same questions she found that the people of Zhucos were all expressing the same thing, the need for a source of healthy drinking water.
Fast forward a year, Katie’s family in the US are all part of the Great Bridge Presbyterian Church of Chesapeake, VA who was starting to participate in the “Living Waters” program. “Living Waters” is a non-profit group that supplies the necessary filtration systems to churches who wish to do potable water projects in third world countries and the circumstances couldn’t have been better for the church, Katie and Zhucos. So Katie went to work, first testing their water which turned out to be filled with bacterias and then she began to set up everything for the project which included ordering about 300 plastic bottles, organizing the town to have participants come help and learn, and figuring out where we were going to put the filtration system. It was a long drawn out process but things all came together at the last minute (as they always do here in Ecuador) just as the installation team from Great Bridge arrived.
The installation team was composed of the two Sam’s, Sam Howard (Katie’s Dad) and Sam Chalk whose responsibility it was to set up the system and make sure it ran properly. The other Great Bridge team members were Karen Gibson and Traci Chamberlain Bagley who worked alongside Katie in educating the women and children about the importance of clean drinking water and in how to clean the re-usable bottles. My friend and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, Jason Kreisselman and I were able to help the two Sam’s as helpers and as translators to the locals who also assisted in the installation process.
The system consisted of the water running through three initial filters to catch any sediment in the water then passing through the “ozonator” where ozone was mixed with the water for the ultimate step in the cleansing process. The water then went to this huge storage tank where it was stored until required by the community. We were very lucky to have some great hard working Ecuadorians helping us which enabled the system to be completed, including the construction of an enclosure around the system for security, in only two days.
After the system was installed and all of classes were over we celebrated the completion of the project with a small fiesta complete with bubbles, candy and our new, clean water. The community came down from their houses all over the hillsides just to try their new water and to express their appreciation. The “Living Waters” team of Great Bridge Presbyterian Church should be very proud of the great job they did preparing for and delivering clean drinking water to this small community and from a Peace Corps Volunteer’s standpoint it was very fulfilling to be a part of something so great and I will definitely look upon this project as one of the highlights of my time here in Ecuador.

Tsachilas visit to Vilcabamba

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a friend of mine who lives with an indigenous tribe named the Tsachilas (Pronounced Sachilas) who reside outside of the city of Santo Domingo, Ecuador. My friend, Clay, had come to visit me a couple of months ago and I took him to my women’s group to see the artesenia they made. One their products, baskets hand-made from banana leaves, seemed like they might be a good thing for the Tsachilas to make as well seeing as they have an abundance of bananas where they live.
So Clay and I arranged for what is called a “Tech Trip” through the Peace Corps. A tech trip is basically where the Peace Corps pays for one volunteer and a member of their community to travel to another volunteer’s site to learn a specific skill. In our case, Clay was going to bring the mother from his host family to San Pedro de Vilcabamba in order to learn how to make these baskets and sell them with the jewelry they sell in fairs. Tagging along with Clay and his host mother was his host father who is also a Shaman medicine man. Unfortunately the Peace Corps would only pay for two people’s trips so we decided that Alejandro, Clay’s host father, would do some “cleansings” with the some of the local Peace Corps volunteers in order to pay for his trip. Also the goal of this trip wasn’t just for Clay’s host parents to come and learn how to make the baskets and to do the cleansings, but to experience the people and places of a part of Ecuador which they have never seen before due to the fact that they can rarely afford a trip like this.
So a week ago Clay and his host parents came into San Pedro de Vilcabamba at about 8am following a long 14 hr bus ride. After a brief rest and a change into their native dress, we all went over to my women’s group to get his host Mom started with her class. While she was in training, Clay, myself and his host Dad walked around my town to introduce him to the people in my community. I was fascinated how intrigued they all were to meet him and how they all were very interested in his culture and in being cleansed. We also were able to meet with the people of my organization, Colinas Verdes, to give Alejandro a tour of our nursery and the work we do there. He was very interested in all the coffee we had planted and so as a gift we decided to give him some coffee plants to take back to his farm and plant.
After Rosa, Clay’s host Mom, was finished with her class we all headed back to my house to prepare for the cleansings. That night we had about 15 people show up who all participated in an individual spiritual cleansing which he used different rock statues and some grain alcohol to basically tell us about our past, present and our future. Then he used an egg to cleanse our spirits and rid us of all the evil surrounding us. (The entire process is very hard to explain, you will just have to visit and experience it for yourself!)
After the cleansing it was time for our herbal sauna. This involved boiling a number of different herbal plants in a large pot as well as digging a deep hole for a sauna. What they do is fill the hole with the water and herbal plants, then drop a super hot rock in the hole to create steam. Then they put a stick over the hole for you to place your feet as you sit in a chair with a blanket wrapped around your body and the hole, thus creating a “mini” sauna for your body.
The entire cleansing and sauna experience was very soothing and relaxing (even though it felt like my feet were burning off in the sauna at one point). I literally almost fell asleep while he was doing my cleansing and the sauna felt amazing!
The next day we decided to head to the nearby tourism town of Vilcabamba and hike to the top of Mount Mandango to give them a view of the Valley of Longevity. Both Alejandro and Rosa really enjoyed the view from up there even though they hard time understanding why we would do a hike like that for pleasure. After treating them to a spaghetti lunch, the Tsachilas unfortunately had to head back to their town, but not before buying some souvenirs in the local artesenia shops.
The Tsachilas visit was a great experience for everyone involved and even though it was brief they really enjoyed being somewhat celebrities in my site and seeing a new part of the country. The cultural exchange for both the Tsachilas and the people of my site was really something special and both Clay and I were very happy we organized the tech trip. Their visit also got me super excited to go and visit Clay to experience their culture first hand in his site (and maybe get another cleansing/sauna).