The Ripple Effect

I finally made it to some of the nine villages I have wanted to see Yhat do not have water. I will add to this blog when I get to Xela but this will have to do for now. Last Wednesday I caught a ride with a team of medical personel and headed towards Los Encountros. The team dropped Gaspar, the young man with the cowboy hat, and me at Los Encountros and continued on to a village named Santa Clara. I knew before this trip that this project needed a lot of planning and does not have a easy solution yet I still wanted to visit this communities and am glad for the opportunity. The possible source of water for these villiages is a one day ride by horseback, and until there is a more serious plan, I did not want to make people go out of their way with another journey. This is the most remote place I have been to yet, and the villages that are beyond these are only accesible by foot.
Los encountros is very poor comunity of 100 adults. They have lived there for 80 years without water and during the war they were bombed and their crops destroyed. They lived in the forest and survived on a root called malgan. This whole area was hard hit during the war and whole comunities fled to the forrest. The goverment had a policy of destroying all the crops and many of the houses.
We had breakfast in the home of manuel who is very active in the comunity. I got the chance to eat malgan fried and was not very impressed. The only other food I saw in the house was tortillas and 4 bananas. It effects me alot when I see people with so little and know of ou abundance.
They know of a spring a hour and a half by foot away but it isn´t big enough to supply even half the community. They would like help with water tanks but that would cost 300 dollars a tank one for each house and when there isn´t rain one tank will last a family for about 25 days. They lack enough rain during three months of the year and at times will not be able to wash thier clothes for 25 or 30 days. We walked for the whole day and visited four communities out of the nine that need water. The country is beautiful and I look forward to adding photos to this story along with more information. In total, I have visited 7 communities without water. One of these has great potential for a water system and I will meet with them again tomorrow. This area is going to be hard to find a solution for even with money. The community of Santa Clara ,where we spent the night, had set two men into the hills looking for water and after twenty days they only found one little spring. I have to go now but in about a week I will have anouther chance to catch you all up. Things have gone real well and last week we delivered 22 cows and one freezer and food for 10 widows. I am greatful for all and pray for more. With my Love and hope for parters in this work when I can organize a discription of the projects. Until then Adios