Aquascape Team Colombia: Monday

Our Team

Basin before we started

Aqua block assembly

300 Aqua blocks

Collapsed wall

Fixed wall

End of day1

Hello everyone and a special hello to two little girls, Isobel and Isla. Well, were do I start, we arrived safely and settled in over the weekend. On Sunday we visited La Rosa de Sharon School to check out the place and see what progress had been made. They were going to have the hole we needed dug and we had hoped to be able to tidy up and get right to the nitty gritty of the project.

We  arrived at the school this morning with high hopes and a determination to get to a certain point for the day. It was a hot 92 degrees with humidity. Rough after coming from our weather!

We hit a few snags along the way such as a wall, that we were really concerned about collapsing, it did, and make shift braces not holding so well, it’s all sand… No worries though everyone was safe. Martha and Jose (wonderful people who run the school) did have the foresight to pull most of  the wall down, thank goodness, before we got there and it was just the last bit which came down. You can see it in the photos. Everyone just took a deep breath and started clean up. By the end of the day we had assembled 300 aqua bocks, shaped the basin,lined it with underlayment and liner. We started to get the blocks in place and the day was over.

I can’t begin to tell you how rewarding it is to be here. The people are so gracious in the face of such adversity. When we arrived at the school, we found that the water had been off for the last three days and know one knew when it would be back on. I was suprised to find out, that it just wasn’t the school without water,it’s the entire community! Just and example of what some people are up against, if  you look at the photo of the hole….check out the house next door, it’s 10 x 10 and what looks like a lean too in the back, that’s their bathroom. Their kitchen is the two buckets by the back door. To put it in perspective, the kids we’re helping here would be thrilled to have such a home. 

After a long and tiring day, were all looking forward to a good night sleep and a early start tomorrow. The goal for that will be to get the holding basin done and start on getting the gutters up which is fraught with it’s own challenges. We’ll also pitch in and get some painting and clean up done of the school during the times when there are “too many cooks in the kitchen” 

I forgot to mention, that the kids aren’t there at the moment. Schools closed for a few days so that we could get in and do what needed to be done without any of them getting hurt. We’ll get to meet all of them on Thursday when school re-opens and we can finish up.

Til tomorrow….

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 11:27 pm and is filed under Colombia Clean Water Project. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.