Let the Work Begin
One Saturday morning I was headed to the shower to bathe. From inside the tarp enclosure I heard a women asking if she could take water. I hadn’t begun the process of bathing yet so I scrambled out and let her go ahead to the tap. The woman and her children, a family from Duima, were filling up jugs. Hmm… I thought, this can’t be good. She didn’t ask why there was no water in her tap, didn’t question the aqueduct. I did, however. I felt a rush of anxiety and excitement like an athlete ready to start a race. Go time. You go fix that aqueduct! There was a problem; I had never been to the toma.
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Gravity Fed Aqueducts 101
A toma is a concrete box constructed around a naturally occurring spring source. It allows for inflow, collects, filters, and diverts water into a pipe towards the tanke, a concrete tank large enough to provide water for the community at peak demand. Of course the toma is higher elevation than that tanke, and the tanke must be at a higher elevation than the highest tap or pluma in the community. The tanke is filled by the toma, and then directs the water through a pipe that distributes it to taps throughout the community.
See, engineering really isn’t that difficult.
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I knew at some point I would need to see the toma to understand the entire water system. I knew it was located… over there (with the wave of a hand in the direction of the hill rising just outside the Duima). Somewhere between that woman’s tap and the toma was an issue that was preventing water from flowing. I marched over to the house of the water committee vice president. [He recently demoted himself from president to vice president while replacing the entire water committee board in the frustration of him being the only board member in attendance at a meeting. Go figure. I still consider him the president.] To my delight he agreed to show me the system on the jungle-y hillside, after I threatened to go alone. Donning machetes and boots we hiked and found a broken pipe right at the toma. Maleantes, he told me. Bad people hanging out near the toma, most likely using it as a place to have sex. We hiked the rest of the system to the tanke, then back down to cut a replacement pipe for the broken section. We cut and formed a new section, hiked back up, and broke the new piece while trying to fit it. So we hiked back down, had lunch, made a new-new section, and hiked back up with a shovel and pick ax. We broke the newest piece as well, but were able to salvage it enough to get water flowing towards the tanke once again. It was a long, frustrating, gratifying day.
I learned much about the water system that day and about my future work. I learned my counter-parts in Duima are hard to motivate but once motivated, are extremely hard working.
A Day for Mothers
Dia de Las Madres (Mother’s Day) in Panama is a national holiday. Children don’t go to school (they usually never do) and no one works. In Duima we celebrated at the school on one day, the teachers put on an activity including games, singing, and performances by the kids, gifts, and speeches. The mothers were so shy in front of the teachers but you could really tell they enjoyed being doted on. On another day one home in the community had a bunch of women over and the men cooked, served the women, and made endearing speeches. I said a few words too about how I appreciated my host mothers, because my own mom is bien lejos (very far) away. I enjoy how much appreciation for mothers the Panamanians have.
The internet is too fussy to upload all of my new photos, but here is one for the road. The rest I will consider my Christmas present to you all, and upload later!
