The One Where Emilie Climbs a Mountain

9-27-10

A few weeks ago my counterpart, Don Alfredo, came to talk to me.  For those of you who have been following my blog, you might be wondering, “What’s this “counterpart” nonsense?  Who is this man Don Alfredo?  Why has Emilie never mentioned him during her voluminous yet spectacular blogging career?”  The reason I’ve never mentioned him is simple: I never see him. 

Theoretically, a counterpart is supposed to be the volunteer’s point person in the community.  They’re supposed to be a sort of community guide to help the volunteer transition into life in their site – show them around, take them to the stores, post office, church, community center, school, etc.  Unfortunately, for some reason, my community chose a “point person” who works and lives mainly in San Salvador, only coming home every other week.  In his stead, Don Alfredo’s wife, Niña Cruz, has fulfilled the counterpart role for me.  She’s been really great at helping me get to know the community, taking me around, introducing me, and getting me involved with both the women’s and youth groups.  (But she’s a woman, so we couldn’t possibly put her name on any kind of official counterpart form, could we?  That’s just crazy talk.)

 In any case, Don Alfredo came to talk to me a few weeks ago.  He said that everyone was glad I was here because I could do a lot of good things for the community.  (Good to know.)  Then he talked about the other volunteers who came before me, two women whom the people seemed to adore and still talk about (even though the first one served at least eight years ago).  He seemed to say that, while they were both really well-liked, they didn’t really help with the real problems in the community.  (He left out the fact that one of them worked extensively with the youth group, knew the name of every person in town, and – oh yeah! – started a microempresa with the women’s group, a clothing workshop that continues to run and bring in income).  He finished this impressive speech with a small demand: we need you to build us a new water system. 

Oh.  Um…hmm.  Well.  That’s…well.

I didn’t know what to say.  My official program title is Rural Health and Sanitation, so theoretically (read: laughably) building latrines and water systems fall within my purview.  But really, let’s be honest here.  I’m the girl who doesn’t know how to change a tire on her car (when I still had one, that is).  Who is floored by putting together a cheap computer desk from Wal-mart (one of those one’s that only requires a screwdriver and an allen wrench).  Who still calls her dad to come fix leaky faucets and clogged toilets.  I am truly, outrageously, manifestly unqualified to build a water system.

But it’s what my community needs.  Well, shit.

So, I started sniffing out various sources of funding, and hoping I wouldn’t have to get into the actual nitty gritty of trying to construct anything.  I decided that it would be good to try Engineers Without Borders, since they have the two things we need most: expertise and money.  However, the application is about twenty pages long and requires some serious detailing of the project, which meant that I had to do some serious talking with my counterpart, trying to figure out exactly what the problem was with our current system (contaminants and limited resource), what exactly we needed them to construct (a water storage tank and distribution system), and what the new source of water would be (ground water higher up the mountain).  In Spanish. 

That last question led Don Alfredo to invite me to see the new water source, located five kilometers up the side of a mountain.  We agreed to meet at 5 am (!!!) at his house, to start up.  When I got there around 5:02, I knocked on his door and was clearly waking him up.  He told me that, since it was raining (as usual), we were going to wait a bit.  He told me to go back to my house and descansar (rest).  Grumbling not a little, I went back to my house and finally managed to fall asleep again in my hammock.  About five minutes later, he knocked on my door, saying, “Are you ready to go??”   Grrrr.  We drove the first three kilometers or so, up to a town called Sicahuete.  Then we had to hike up the last two kilometers.  The climb itself wasn’t really that bad except for the fact that it was raining, and had been raining for the last month or so.  We weren’t even walking on an actual trail, just tromping ankle-deep through water in some places, mud in others.  I tried really hard at first to keep from getting my feet wet, then gave up such a pointless attempt.  

We actually had to climb up above where the water source was and climb down to it, because there was barbed wire fence lining the stream that we couldn’t get through.  When we got to the source, it was as they said, groundwater that leaked out of a wall of rock.  There was a kind of cement tank (from another project, they told me) that collected the water and poured it out of a plastic tube, which created a stream leading down from that point on.  I though we were done after we saw it, but no, Don Alfredo decided that I needed to see another source, further down the stream.  Since the stream was kind of gouged out in the terrain, it wasn’t possible to walk down the side of it.  So what did we do?  That’s right.  We walked down the middle of the stream itself, knee-deep in water.  In a lot of places we had to use our machetes to chop down branches and foliage in the way.  You know how I always say that I live in the jungle?  I was wrong.  My house isn’t in a jungle.  This stream was in the jungle. 

After seeing the other source, we walked back up the stream, and finally started heading back down.  My counterpart decided that it would be más recto if we took a shortcut through the fields.  He was right, it was straighter and shorter – but only as the crow flies.  He led us over a series of small hills and valleys, up and down, up and down, and finally just down…it ended up talking us twice as long to come “down” the mountain than it took to get up it.  And the fields were not so much fields as they were swamps.  We were literally walking through marshland.  My poor sneakers and socks will never be white again.  We stopped halfway down the mountain to buy some tomatoes from the vegetable vender who lived and worked there.  We got to the truck three hours after we started, and I was wet, muddy, and cranky. 

 At least I got some good pictures out of it…