Life abroad: As Robert sees it

On Tuesday, we presented our project results to the La Ceiba Rotary club. They were so impressed with our girls, they asked them to present at the Rotary District’s Incoming Board Members’ Conference.In short, everything that has been going on for the last month has ended well. At our local Rotary meeting, Enelida and Keyla did a PowerPoint of what Pure Water has accomplished so far in La Ceiba. The Rotarians were very pleased and asked if our girls would be interested in doing the same presentation ( Download Here) to all the clubs in Honduras at the District conference. They thought it was important to emphasize what Pure Water and Rotary have been accomplishing by working together and what we could continue to do in the future. This was a great honor for us not only because it showed that our local club supported us but also because Pure Water was the only NGO invited to present at this conference.

What we had to say was impressive. With Rotary and Pure Water working together, we have installed over 10,000 filters between six projects in Honduras. This is over 50,000 people with clean drinking water since 2003. We have another five project sites coming online with grants this next year in Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Plus there is the work that Mike Swirp is doing in Guatemala and our other project in Haiti. We didn’t even touch on the additional benefits of skills and knowledge transfer, job creation, and the grant money injected into the local economies. All told, I think we have made a big difference in this country and we are only now just gearing up.

The rest of the week we spent moving our filter molds into the new workshop. Willie, the owner, is a retired construction manager that is now raising Tilapia and making cinder blocks. He lives in one of the communities where we were installing filters and was so impressed with the technology that he practically leapt out of his seat when I first mentioned moving our workshop. Let’s just say at 55, he has more energy than I can possibly keep up with. So with our new partner, we delivered a contract for him to review and dropped off the molds to get production tests started. Next week I will spend out there going over the process of full production but I think he will do just fine.

We also went back to El Recreo to drop off the water bottles and to visit Digna. She was sleeping when we came but her mom said she was doing well. She also said that none of her 11 kids have had a water sickness since installing the filter and Digna has added some weight back on. The mom was actually so thankful for the filter, she made her full payment. Quite a vote of confidence considering how poor she is. Next week we will return with the Rotarians to conduct stool samples and give out deparasiting meds to everyone who has paid for their filter. I think this was also a big reason why she wanted to finish paying off her filter.

All in all, a week a great relief and finally some normality. I can’t wait to get filters going again next week

Here is Enelida presenting to all 25 Honduran clubs

Two of the many brothers and sisters of Digna

Bath time for the boys

Delivering the filter molds to Willie’s warehouse

Robert Kent Jr- robkentjr@gmail.com
Wat/San/Health Consultant
www.PureWaterForTheWorld.blogspot.com
www.RobJKentJr.blogspot.com
Cell: +504 9871-5318
Work/Home: +1 (631) 458-1119

This week had us on the edge of our seats. We thought we were that close to having everything we had worked for being wiped clean.

Let me start by saying how much I hate politics and how it can drive good people to make stupid decisions. Moving the filter workshop opened up an opportunity for some people to raise a fuss about the project. This, unfortunately, was directed at our site manager and health promoter, Enelida and Keyla respectively. At ‘issue’ was their ability to manage the project and how poorly they had done, for example, letting the workshop fail. I don’t agree with this at all and thankfully many other people didn’t either. I think what happened here is that these two girls speak their minds and in a macho culture they stepped on some toes so they became an easy target to implement a bigger plan.

This larger objective goes back about two years when the La Ceiba project was first put to paper. A contract was drawn up allowing MAMUCA to make, install and follow-up everything to do with the filters, the local Rotary Club would pay them for each filter completed and Pure Water would provide MAMUCA with the technical support it lacked. By the time the grant money finally arrived in October 2006 all the players involved had changed except MAMUCA, so they were still expecting the work and money. When they were told this would not happen a lot of people weren’t happy, especially so after we left the filter workshop MAMUCA is still using. This gave some MAMUCA loyalists the perfect opportunity to try and reclaim what had been lost.

Hence, the big meeting this week. All sides were called in and taken to account for what had happened. Rasa and I opted to stay as uninvolved as possible because this decision is for the La Ceiba club to make. They pay Enelida and Keyla out of the grant and it is their Rotary project. Besides, to build sustainability after we leave all decisions need to take place between the people who will stay here and continue the work. As hard as it was to keep quite on this matter, it is ultimately not my project (the mantra of Peace Corps) and the La Ceiba Rotary club has to live with the results. So with four hours of talk, each person was able to give their side of the story as to why we changed workshops and why they are unhappy with our girls.

The result of the meeting took a week to work itself out. This hanging shadow of the girls being fired was extremely damaging to our team moral and for the rest of the week, they were difficult and quarrelsome with Rasa and I. Lashing out at the ones closest to you I suppose. Rasa and I were sick with the thought we might have to go through the whole process of finding and hiring two new people again. Not to mention the possibility of having to work with an ex-employee of Pure Water who might be hired back on by MAMUCA. So not relishing the thought of this, I tried all the Machiavellian options I could think of to turn the situation in our favor. I was tired of being outmaneuvered and smiled at by the same people.

Stay tuned to see how it all turns out. I’ll give you a hint: this whole episode ended not at all how I planned but much better than I could have imagined.

It was Keyla’s birthday so we brought her to Applebee’s

We made another trip to San Pedro Sula to meet Tom Kennedy and his family

Delivering the water bottles, which are much better than buckets

This is Willie and he is thinking how to turn these buckets into plastic filters

Our new filter workshopand Tilapia farm

Robert Kent Jr- robjkentjr@gmail.com
Wat/San/Health Consultant
www.RobRasa.com/hisblog/
Voice Mail: +1 (631) 458-1119