So what is “LA TOMA”?
Well hang on to your britches and we will tell you!
This week was full of excitement and adventure and went by
like a blur. For those of you who don’t
have time to read this blog, click on the word PICTURES at the bottom of this blog. But if you have time, read on, it was a VERY
interesting week!
Church in Sabana
Grande de Boya
We attended Church in Sabana
Grande de Boya, a little branch that should have been a 1.5 hour drive. We took the Despains, a couple who work in
the temple and have no car and like to go out with us when they can. The trip turned into a 3 hour drive because
we got lost and went way out of our way—a long way!. Because street names are a rare thing we have
to rely on maps (not enough detail) and our GPS. The GPS had a mind of its own and decided to
take us the scenic route. At one point we
stopped at the side of the road to study the maps which didn’t help a lot. A car passed us slowly and stopped on the
side of the road a little ahead. As we
left and were passing that car, Wallace had the distinct impressed that the
people had something to say to us, but he felt a little embarrassed to say that
to the other people in the car, so we kept driving. We drove for nearly an 20 minutes until we
realized the GPS was just taking us to the nearest large city only to have us
turn around and retrace our steps.
Before we arrived at the true destination we had traveled a lot of rough
rocky roads through little towns who probably had never seen a group of white
folk on their streets EVER. When we
finally pulled into the parking lot, there was the car which had stopped ahead
of us! It was the District President and
his wife who had stopped because she had had the impression that we were
missionaries and we were lost! We got
home safely from a wild adventure!
Leonel Duarte with
INAPA
We have been trying to put
together a wáter project in San Juan de La Maguana to benefit a community
called Los Montones and a home for adult males struggling with addictions
called Hogar Crea. There are two types
of water systems, private and public.
Public water systems are all maintained by INAPA the national water
provided. However, INAPA has very little
funds and struggles with the same problem that every other utility struggles
with---- no infrastructure, no government support and people that do not
hesitate to steal the utilities if they can.
It is just a way of life. We
finally had a meeting with Leonel Duarte which helped move the project along
some. We are finding water projects to
be very difficult to manage.
Interview in Azua
Monday we interviewed the mother
of a family of 5 who live in Buenos Aires, a neighborhood who is part of the
water project we are investigating in Azua.
Dileysi is 31 years old, her husband is 32 years old. He owns a motorcycle and works as a “motochacon”
motorcycle taxi. They have 3 daughters
10, 11, and 13. He is one of many men who sit on the side of the street waiting
for someone to ask for a ride somewhere.
He earns $3,500 pesos (about $90 US) per month on a good month and
spends about 26% of his take home pay or more on water for the family.
The purpose of the interview was
to try to have a personal sense of what it is like to live without any water in
the house. We asked permission to ask
personal questions and to be able to use the photos and the video we took for
whatever purpose. Her words were very
touching to us. Though we listened to
the words, we still cannot fathom the difficulties she labors under without
that most precious of all liquids---water!
Here are some of our observations:
·
They purchase four 5 gallon bottles of potable
water for a total of $120 pesos per week from a truck that drives through the
neighborhood.
·
They pay $35 pesos each week to have a truck
that drives through the neighborhood to fill a 55 gallon drum of non-potable
water. They put a little chlorine in the
water to kill bugs and use this water for cleaning, bathing and washing
clothes.
·
Their total consumption of water is about 2.3
gal/day/person compared to a design value for people in the USA = 123
gals/per/day (people use about 5.3 times the water consumption as this woman
and her family)
They never have money to fill
the white tank
Her home consists of 2
rooms. The kitchen is about 5’ square
with a small propane cooking stove and a little table to prepare the
meals. The bedroom has two beds side by
side. Mom and Dad sleep in one bed and
the 3 girls in the other bed. The room
is just barely big enough for the beds and a refrigerator that someone gave to
them that doesn’t have anything in it. She
was very proud of the picture of Christ hanging on the wall as the only
decoration. There are no doors and no
windows and one light bulb. The heat
during the day is almost unbearable.
They have one little dog that looks like it is starving to death and a
few little potted plants the mother is so proud of. She somehow squeezes enough water out to keep
them alive. They have an outside latrine.
Before water trucks started
coming to town they had to walk several kilometers for water every day.
Rice and beans 2 times a day
if you are lucky
Their living conditions are
extremely difficult to describe and our words would not do it justice. It is a great motivation to us to push
forward to try to find some solution to their water problem.
We are learning more about how
things work here and how is it possible that the approximately 830 people
living in her legal subdivision came to not have water or power. In the USA you have to install the streets,
power, telephone, internet, sewer and prove a 100 year supply of water before
you subdivide your land and sell lots.
Not here! The problem is that anyone can subdivide property without any
infrastructure and without any proof of water supply.
We stopped in at the office of
INAPA in Azua to see if we could find any support to solve this family’s water
problem. We visited with the head
engineer and learned that she is struggling to keep up with the problems she
has with the parts of the city she is providing water to now, much less think
about adding over 800 home sites to the system.
They need pumps, vehicles, repair tools, hoses, tanks, etc. etc. They
get very little money from the government and are basically putting band aids
on serious infrastructure problems for a population that continues to
grow. There is no place in the city that
does not experience water “blackouts” for days at a time every week of the year. Of course none of the public water supply is
potable. INAPA has no resources to help
and in fact were asking us for help before we had left her office!
El Cigual
We spent the entire day traveling
with representatives of Sur Futuro to review 2 projects they want us to help
them finance. El Cigual is a water
project that was put together by the prior missionaries and was approved by the
Church to construct. Then we come along
and start asking questions and convinced everyone the water filtration system
that had been proposed was not the right solution for the community. The source of water they intended to use has
a very high clay content and is very dirty with animal and human
contamination. The filtration system
proposed was complicated and we were afraid it would surely clog up rapidly and
thus not be a very locally sustainable project.
So Sur Futuro proposed another solution.
The new solution is to run 11 km
of pipe to capture the water from a stream high in the mountains. They took us in a 4-wheel drive up and down
rough mountain roads to a stream that has water in it all year long. The ride was rough, but the vistas from the
tops of mountain peaks were incredible.
We took pictures, but the camera does not do it justice.
The point where the water is
taken is called “LA TOMA”. It just blows our minds how the system works
around here. Given the public water
system has no resources, people just take things into their own hands. If you want water and if you have a way to
run the pipe, you just go find a place to capture the water into your pipe, lay
claim to it with a sign and run your pipe.
This explains why we kept seeing 2 or 3 pipes every once in a while
along the roads and trails. Each pipe
represents a different family, farmer or group who ran their own pipe to their
own “Toma”. The pipes were 1 to 2 inch
pipe. There is no cooperation to share
in the cost of a bigger pipe to save costs and energy. So the solution for El Cigual is probably
going to be to lay yet another pipe alongside the others only we will run it
further than the other pipes to get to El Cigual.
"La Toma" for Cigual
When Sur Futuro asked the
community whether they would rather have water now with a filter that might fail
or clean water straight from the river but have to dig 11 km of ditch for the
pipe and wait a little longer, the men voted for the filter—the women voted for
the 11 km of pipe! The community is
already out clearing the brush and trees blocking the view of the land
surveyor. We have told them the Church
has to approve the additional funds before the project is real, but they are
moving forward because they believe this is what God wants.
Monte Bonito
On the same day as our trip to El Cigual we drove to the
site of another possible project called Monte Bonito. The 4 wheel drive had difficulty with this
one. We eventually reached an elevation
of over 5000 feet above sea level which is only ½ way up the mountain. Pico Duarte is over 10,000 feet high! The views along this trail made the views of
Cigual blush! Again we took pictures,
but there is no way to describe how beautiful and green it is.
Finally we reached the “Toma” which is situated on the side of a steep embankment just below a lagoon. There is plenty of water for the “Monte Bonito” community about 5 km away.
We drove up the road a little further to the lagoon where
one of our guides explained that 2 Americans had tried to find the bottom of
the lagoon, but couldn’t and that local legend has it that a monster lives in
the lagoon! The GPS coordinates of the
lagoon are: 18.69758,-70.84292 at an
elevation of 5100 feet.
The following picture is of Edith and Wallace standing in
front of the lagoon with Edith demonstrating a perfect Dominican Pucker. They use puckered lips to point.
Monster
Lagoon (Edith with her perfected Dominican Pucker)
This project will consist of running 5 km of pipe and then
pipe through the community. No approvals
are needed—just do the work.
San Jose de Ocoa Food
We got a good start to a food project in San Jose de Ocoa,
about a 1.5 hour drive from our home in Santo Domingo. San Jose de Ocoa is a little community on the
edges of the mountains. The setting is
beautiful!
Approximately 30 people attended the meeting where we
introduced the food project to them. The
Despains went with us on this trip also.
We sang an opening song using the Ukulele. We asked a few questions to begin. Here are some interesting statistics:
·
9 families produce some food on their lots
·
No families store any food
·
1 person has a garden
·
13 families know how to grow a garden
·
30 families want to have a garden!
Wallace showing how to get a supply of beans without costing anything
Wallace asked them if so many people wanted to have a
garden, why didn’t they have a garden?
It was touching to hear them tell of the difficult circumstances in
which they live and lack of resources.
It makes us feel happy to be involved in a project that may help these
people become more self-sufficient.
Wallace showed them how they can all begin to obey the
prophet,s counsel to get a supply of food in their home without costing one
single centavo. He held up a small empty
plastic water bottle and showed that each time the mother prepares a pot of
habichuelas (beans) she can take a small amount like that would fit in the palm
of your hand and put in the bottle to save.
If she does it without the family seeing her do it, no-one will miss it
in the meal. If she does it over and
over every meal, before you know it, the bottle will be filled with
habichuelas. And before you know it, you
will have several bottles stored. They
can do the same thing with rice and salt.
That seemed to be an eye opener to them.
Wallace also showed them how they can dry pineapple, papaya,
mangos and bananas in the hot Dominican sun.
Nobody does that here and were not sure they caught onto the idea that
this is another way they can follow the counsel to store up food for when a
storm hits and the trees are knocked over and the colmado (corner store)
doesn’t have any food. They will have
food and water if they follow this counsel!
Cheap homemade fruit drier
We showed them a film from the Ministry of Agriculture on
how to build a grow box for a garden.
They were all very interested in this.
During the meeting the branch president said one of their biggest
challenges is “water”. So we are back to
the water thing again. He asked if the
project might include a pump and pipes to bring water from the river that runs
at the bottom of the hill all year long.
We told them there is that possibility.
They need to design a solution to their problems and present it to us
for consideration, just like the Brother of Ether thought up a solution and
proposed it to the Lord.
The Food and Water project are a great blessing to us to be
able to work hand in hand with the Lord in finding solutions to some very
severe problems.
We haven’t solved any
big problems yet, but we are doing our best and feel the love and guidance of
the Lord every day. We wish all of you
were here to lend a hand!
PICTURES
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