Latrine Luck

Part of our work as environmental health volunteers is promoting sanitation by education about disease transmission and encouraging the use of latrines. I've been helping my friends Carolyn and Kayla with latrine building projects in their communities. The projects provide interested and dedicated community members with resources to construct latrines for their families. 

The day I returned from hiking around the mountains of the comarca between our sites my latrine building skills were put to the test. My next door neighbor was 2 meters deep in a hole he was digging for a new latrine. He had the materials to build a reinforced concrete platform but told me he wasn't confident in how to set it up and of the concrete mix proportions. It just so happened that I was a latrine building expert after those past few days. To me, this is my ideal work: community members using their own motivation to do projects and drawing on my technical resources. 

We built the platform or plancha and a few days later I used a mold to make a toilet seat or taza for the latrine.  I had some help from a visitor friend. Hopefully I will be able to assist more of my community members in a community wide latrine building project in the next year. 

The plancha, with rebar handles so that when the latrine is full, it can be moved and placed on top of a new hole.

The center and sides of this taza were removed and it was moved on top of the plancha, creating a toilet seat.

UFO

One evening I was spending time at my neighbor's house. Her husband had come home from working in another town for the night and I always make sure to go by and say hello to him. Their family is so nice to me. The woman, Gillermina, while lounging in her hammock, was looking for insight on a very strange occurrence she had witnessed the night before. She told me about a peculiar light, like a star but not, that was oscillating repeatedly a short distance in the sky. "About the size of that jug..." she said and pointed. That didn't help me. I tried to explain shooting stars but that didn't fit the bill. I then explained people living in outer space, aliens, and sometimes they will come visit earth. She remarked that those those people were my family. Verrry funny. We all were still confused but the family told me they would come get me in the night if it happened again.

Sure enough, at about midnight I was woken up from my sleep. "Erica, the light!", the girls urgently cried. I didn't grab my glasses and hoped whatever light was out there was bright enough to be seen by my foggy vision. Another neighbor also came, comparably more annoyed at being woken up. I was curious. When I saw it in the sky I immediately knew what was happening. You see, their house faces out of the mountains where we live, towards the city of David. Right now in David there is a fair. How do you say "search light" in Spanish? I struggled to describe. The other neighbor confirmed my hypothesis. We all went back to bed. I was disappointed it wasn't a real UFO.