A Visit to El Viento
Main Street, El Vientro, Colombia
Yesterday I showed you the incredible journey Bruce and I took to get here, El Viento. (Just a reminder: Bruce and I are funding all of our travel expenses so that Meal-a-Day contributions go entirely to fund the projects we take on.) Why go to the trouble of coming all the way here? Of course, we are just a little bit adventurous (i.e.crazy.) But, really, we feel the need to fully understand what it is Christadelphian Meal-a-Day Fund of the Americas is supporting. We feel a tremendous obligation to you to do the best we can with the resources you're putting into the Fund. And there is no better way than to see the needs first hand and talk face to face to the people we'd like to help.
Misleading photo; there was no light at this village committee meeting because there is no community electricity.
It actually looked more like this time exposure.
El Viento has at least a couple of problems, one regarding electrification and another involving clean water. Meal-a-Day has been working with Mauricio Gnecco (see earlier blog) to help with a clean water project. Basically, the water table is high in El Viento. Every house has its own shallow well. And every house has its own septic system...which is usually not far removed from the well. The wells often get contaminated...E coli, etc. You get the picture. The health of the village is often compromised. A possible and probable solution is to fix this well:
Broken deep well that could serve the community.
The well itself would need to be repaired and a water line run to each house. By seeing the situation first hand Meal-a-Day was able to understand the issues involved in a community project like this one. CMaDFA was able to offer some suggestions for alternative approaches for a long term solution to this problem. The mothers of El Vientro are eager to fix the problem because they want very much for their children to be healthy.
This little girl is ready to walk through the mud to school.
While we were in El Vientro, we took the opportunity to slog through another ten miles of mud (after you've done 100 km of mud what's another 15?) to visit an experimental farm. Meal-a-Day is not doing anything with the farm but it gave us a chance to see a "microhydro" electrification and clean water installation. This is exactly the kind of technology that small, poor villages in remote areas can install and operate themselves. Mauricio is an expert in making this sort of system work. Since this blog is getting a little long, I'll roll the video and fill you in tomorrow on an exciting microhydro development involving a village of indigenous Colombian Indians. Mauricio just found out about it today and was thrilled to tell us the news. Meal-a-Day had a direct hand in helping these people who live up in the Andes take a big step toward electrification.
September 18th, 2009 - 03:34
This is great – something very real that will make a tangible difference to people’s lives. What sort of time frame are you looking at for this project and how much need for this sort of project is there in Columbia?