How to chlorinate your community water

May 17 part B

Speaking of water chlorination, Gustavo took me to see him teach a community to chlorinate their water today. He told me that he would come at 10 to go out to Rio Colorado. At 11:30 or 12 he arrived at the clinic and apologized for being late. A little girl had come to the clinic in San Nicolas needing stitches in her leg and he hadn’t been able to get away. I watched carefully as he drove us down the hill on his motorcycle. We went slowly and the motorcycle handled the grooves and potholes much more smoothly than I had anticipated.

Along theway Gustavo explained to me that a child had recently died in Rio Colorado. The Ministry of Health had looked into her death and determined that it was, at least in part, due to water contamination. A water group was formed in the community, and that group chose water chlorination as the intervention they wanted to invest in to improve water quality and protect their children. The more I hear about the water projects in the community, the more complicated I think it would be to try to intervene as an outsider. There is already a lot going on in this area and it would be difficult to navigate without doing more harm than good.

When we got to Rio Colorado, Gregorio, a nurse from San Nicolas, and a group of volunteer health workers from Rio Colorado were giving out vaccines and weighing children. The Ministry of Health has a program that provides the vaccinesand gives out food staples like maize, beans, milk, rice, and sugar to families with malnourished children. Gregorio told me that they come out to the communities about once amonth to do the vaccinations and weigh children. I also talked with one of the volunteer health workers. She said that she and the health workers would help me get the kids together for the survey and that they would love to learn how to apply the varnish – already a successful trip!

Gustavo and a couple of other health volunteers then led me straight up the side of a hill to a deeply rutted road. Gustavo explained that the road was too bad for the motorcycle. Having just braved the washed-out road that passes between Las Mercedes and the main road on motorcycle, this meant something. We began to hike. Parts of the trail reminded me of the dried out limestone riverbeds of central Texas. Other parts reminded me of the rust colored rock formations of Moab.

(this doesn't really do it justice)

Inboth cases the road was littered with small canyons rather than potholes. About half an hour later, we were all puffing as we made it to the top of the mountain. We stopped to pick up the hypochlorite powder (theysay hipocloro, so I’m not sure what it is exactly – Ideas, Jamie?) and to acquire a few more students. These men from the community then lead us to the tank (tanque). The tank was pretty large and had a smaller holding area at the top for the chloride solution. Gustavo helped me across the log bridge onto the tank and began his teaching session.

The tank The bridge

Before he showed them the steps, he started by talking with them about why the chlorination was important. He reminded the men that they were doing this for the children. He also showed them the report from the water quality test. The report had a coloredpicture of a bacterial culture plate with growth. He explained to the men that this was fecal bacteria that had contaminated their water and gave the men a copy of the report to share with the water group. Although he and the doctor in San Nicolas had told me that open defecation is an issue in theses communities, he very tactfully allowed that it might have been animal feces contamination when talking to the community members.

He then taught them the process of chlorinating the water. First, they calculated how many gallons flow into the tank per minute by measuring how long it took for the water flowing into the tank to fill a 5gallon bucket. Gustavo told the men that the flow would change depending on the amount of rain, so they needed to measure the flow every time they refilled the chloride tank. Gustavo had a chart for the community that told them how many pounds of hypochlorite they needed to put in the holding tank based on the flow. Then they measured the area of the chloride tank and used a second chart to determine how many drops (gotas) of solution should pass from the chloride tank into the water tank per minute. He showed them how to mix the water with the hypochlorite and they filled the chloride tank.

Finally, they adjusted the number of drops per minute until the right amount of chloride was being added to the water. He had the community members complete each step rather than doing it himself. I’m not sure if it was clearly conveyed that the chloride tank had to be filled to the height they measured to ensure that the right concentration of chloride entered the water, but over all I thought Gustavo did a really good job of teaching them. Before we left, he reviewed all of the steps of chlorination and had the community members repeat them back.

As we hiked back down the hill, Gustavo remarked that the road would be horrible if it rained. I suppose that cursed us because about ten minutes later a massive drop of water hit my arm as clouds began to darken the sky. These drops were the size of grapes, but they began slowly. When we reached the main road the drops where still sparse enough that you could almost dodge them, so Gustavo and I decided to try to make it back to Las Mercedes. As we started down the road the sky opened up. The grape sized drops stung my face and arms, but it was refreshing after the long hike. I had been kicking myself for not bringing a water bottle, but now I was swallowing rainwater unavoidably. I squinted into the rain and tried to duck behind Gustavo. He steered us expertly back to the clinic, picking his way through the tiny rivulets that were forming on the washed out road up to Las Mercedes. When we got back to the clinic, I brought out towels and preemptively apologized for my coffee making skills while Gustavo waited for the storm to let up.

As we sat shivering with our towels and coffee we started talking about soccer. Motagua, the team from Tegucigalpa just won the national cup. The game was actually in La Esperanza last Sunday and I’m really disappointed that I didn’t know it was happening – I could have gone L. We moved on to a wide range of subjects – health care in the communities, what it’s like to be so far from home, work, family. I was surprised at how little trouble I had with the Spanish. I suppose I’m getting better. It only took me two weeks to not struggle with a normal conversation and finally make a friend. Now if I can just make the motorcycle thing work out tomorrow I could actually make some progress with my survey.