Processing & April

First, I apologize it has taken me so long to make this post. On the one hand, moving back and starting a new job has made life really busy, on the other, I have still been doing much processing about our past year and it has been hard to but those thoughts to paper (or the ethereal blog cloud).  I have come to realize that I will not be done processing our experience in the Ulpan Valley anytime soon.  As much as I would like to sum it all up and write a final blog - I don't think that can happen with any real honesty.  So I will continue to throw a few snippets about my processing out on this blog here and there until most of the processing is done.

Here is summary of the work we accomplished in April:

Drew and I had a good time in April when we returned for two weeks.  We had planned to help with a team from Engineers Without Borders (EWB) and to design a system for San Vicente 2 (SV2), but as often was the case, our plans changed a little when we got there.  SV2 was not ready for us to design their system so instead we did preliminary studies of two other villages.  Chirubiquim (CBQ) is a village slightly outside the valley near Semesche (where we did our Decemeber construction project).  They had seen the project in Semesche and wanted something similar in their village. I spent two days hiking through this village with their leaders looking at potential springs that could provide community access points to better water.  We found several springs that, when combined, may be able to provide a source of water for their school and a couple of community access points, but they unfortunately were not able to show us any springs that would be an ample supply of water for the entire community.  We left the community with a list of things to accomplish before we would be able to help them complete a design and project.  Those things included getting written permission from property of the small springs that we found and sending a letter to CAFNIMA asking for help with a water system.  The property permission has always been a long process in our experience.

The other village that we visited was Ulpan 2 (ULP2).  ULP2 is in the middle of the valley (and though I don't know this as fact) I believe they were the original village in the area.  They are now ULP2 because the farmers who took over the land in the valley displaced the original ULP from the best land in the middle of the valley.  ULP2 has a very nice spring that we believe is on property owned by the village.  We hiked to this spring and did a preliminary survey with some of the village leaders.  We left ULP2 with the same instructions as in CBQ - proof of ownership and solicitation letter to CAFNIMA.  The biggest problem in ULP2 is that - for some reason - not all of the people who live in this village want a water system.  We told the leaders that contacted us that we would prefer that everyone receive access to the water if we were going to help them with a system and the last I heard they were still discussing this as a community.  We did not want to create a situation of the "HAVE" and "HAVE-NOTS" so our hope is that they will come to an agreement where all will have access to the water system.

...more to come...