Water is hard.

We are in the dry season here in Valle Las Perlas, which means we have water once or twice a day ( we turn it on for an hour or two in the morning and an hour or so at night). This means a lot of saving and hauling around buckets of water. It also means that we reeeeeally would like a new aqueduct. Which is why earlier this week three members of our water committee and I embarked on a mission into the mountains, looking for a new source of water. To begin, I will say what I discovered by the end, which is that water sources are hard! I now understand the great popularity of water conflicts around the world. In fact, I myself will probably be pursuing my own water conflict in the near future.

Another thing I learned on my hike for water, which I kind of already knew, is that Gnobes are insane. And by that I mean they exist on some higher plane of existence far superior to us gringos, which I can’t quite understand. And by that I mean that we left at 8am, 2 machetes between the four of us and nada mas. Nary a water bottle. Then we hiked up and up and up in the humid sweaty jungle. Then we hiked down a little, then up a lot more, down and up another few hillside mountainsides or so. By 10 or 11 I was literally wringing the sweat from my shirt and dizzily begging my guides to let me drink from any creek we passed. They were smart and made me wait until we got closer to an uncontaminated source, around 12pm. Fernando folded me up a leaf to make a cup and fed me cup after cup of water, amazed by how much I wanted to drink. They also finally gave in and said, ‘ well I guess its good to drink water, I guess I’ll have a handful’. Those who drank then complained that drinking the water gave them a stomach ache.

They were planning on going the entire day without drinking a drop of water! And not one of them had eaten breakfast! And we hiked from 8am until about 1 or 2pm. And Fernando just skipped through the mountains smiling and laughing like a little jungle sprite the whole way, occasionally taunting me about my sweating. “Already sweating Elsie, this is nothing, we’ve got five more times the distance to go! hahahha” Fernando probably wasn’t going to eat until around 3, if his lady was there and food was ready. If not , who knows he might not eat until 6. And at that time he would probably have one big glass of sweetened coffee and consider his daily hydration done. He is a camel. And he is not that unusual in Gnobe land. What wussies we gringos are (at least me), needing food and water every 4-5 hours. HA.

So, anyhow, about my planned water conflict. We have really got to start getting the troops ready now. During our hike we found 3 water sources. Number 1, very small and no good, Number 2 very nice but runs through someone’s property in the neighboring town and hydrates their cattle, Number 3 ridiculously far, looked promising but all the trees had been cut down by the source making it no good. This leaves us with source number 2 and a field of cattle to battle.

In other water news, Engineers Without Borders recently approved my request to look for a group of EWB volunteers to come to Valle Las Perlas and help construct an aqueduct. wwwaaaahizzzzle!!!! We still have to wait for a local EWB chapter to adopt the project for their very own, fundraise, visit the site and then hopefully (fingers crossed) come down and help us out. Because as I said, water is hard and we need help.

Also a few weeks back I took some members of my towns water committee to a management of rural aqueducts seminar, led by another group of Peace Corps volunteers. We learned all kinds of good stuff. Here are my happy folks with their happy certificates.


Here is a photo of Fernando, jungle sprite, my first host dad and president of our towns water committee. He is shown giving a presentation of our towns aqueduct map, which we made at the seminar.



and that is that.