During our last few weeks in Honduras, Scott and I began teaching classes to instruct a small local group on the operation and maintenance of the water treatment plant. The group consisted of the plumbers that worked on the existing water system, a few members of the town's Water Board, one of the laborers for the actual construction of the plant, and the engineer from a local NGO we were working with. While the construction of the plant was not yet completed, we were able to do some initial training to instruct the group on things such as the operation of the basic parts of the plant and the types of tests that must be regularly done on the plant. Here is Alexis, one of the plumbers, performing a "jar test" which determines the proper dose of chemical for the water treatment plant through performing test steps that mimic the processes in the plant.
Here is Julia, the secretary of the Water Board, performing another step of a jar test - slowly turning the bottles that contain the treatment chemical in order to simulate the slow mixing that occurs in one of the stages of the treatment plant.
As part of the class, we took a trip to another water treatment plant that had been constructed by a different ESW group in Northern Honduras in a town called La 34, named after its history as the 34th banana plantation of the United Fruit Company. This is part of the group that we taught. The treatment plant at this location was in need of some upkeep and possibly some further training of the operator, but it was good to see what a finished product could look like and furthered some of the class discussion.
Hills near the water treatment plant at La 34. It was indeed the rainy season in Honduras and the green hills are the happy result of that.
The construction of our water treatment plant continued along very well, with Dan (one of our other volunteers) mostly responsible for overseeing that work. This shot is from the last afternoon that we were in Honduras. At the right edge of the picture is where the tanks are that we were working on for a large part of the summer. Directly in the center of the picture is a platform that will hold the water inlet, chemical storage tanks and dosing, and one of the "flocculation" tanks, where particles in the water begin to join into larger particles before they eventually sediment out.
Here's the crew that worked on the construction. Dan worked with them a lot, so that when he left he felt that they were clear enough on the direction and far enough along in the construction to complete the plant. On the left front and to the far right were the two foreman - Don Juan and Elias. They had a huge amount of combined experience, and could really assemble anything given leeway to do things their way. They were not as used to (at all used to?) working with design drawings, and thus Dan's work to try to communicate the design plans. They were a rather fun and hard working group, particularily the two foreman.
I took some final shots around town, and this blog wouldn't be complete without another shot of the town dogs. Here they are, hanging out by the pulperia across the way from the Water Board office and internet spot. Just waiting to bark at and chase some harmless passerby.
On our last night in town, the family that prepared all of our meals had a small party for us. We got to know all in this group shot rather well, as they all were living in or around the house where we ate three times a day and spent much of our free time for our 10 weeks. They were a most welcoming, hospitable, warm family, and are certainly one of the things I miss the most about my time in Honduras.
No good party is complete without a cake, and here is Dan with our cake. It says, "Good travels friends".
Here's another shot of part of the family.
After our party with the family, the group that we worked most frequently with (mostly member of the Water Board and the plumbers) held another small party for us. More food, and this time dancing. It was a genuinely fun and memorable evening, and based on the heartfelt thanks we received from many in the group, I felt like our time in the town working on this project was indeed a success.
And before we knew it, we were heading back to the "Aeropuerto" to get back to the US. We felt that our contribution to the project during the summer was rather successful as we were both able to get the construction to a good point for us to leave and provided some preliminary training to serve as a starting point for operation of the plant. The portion of the project in the US continues to reside at Cornell University, where one of the professors and his students continue to look to ways to improve the plant design for future treatment plants, and make decisions on how best to support the existing plants. The other two volunteers returned to their respective spots - Scott returned to school at Berkeley, and Dan moved to Vermont to begin his first job post-college. And I spent the last couple months moving around the US visiting friends and family, and continuing the job search. More on all of that later!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment