Pastaza II

We returned to Santa Rosa, Washintsa and Karamá, 3 of the 6 communities we visited on our last trip. We spent about 2 days in each one, inspecting their water source and figuring out how we would go about protecting it, testing their various sources with the newly acquired and working DelAgua kit (funds still needed!),

showing them the results and explaining why springs are cleaner than rivers (the spring we tested had 4 coliforms per 100ml - less than 10 is good),

 

teaching bible stories to the kids in the schools, teaching good and bad hygiene behaviours,

explaining the project to the community, and generally sitting around and getting to know them.  We discovered: they like playing volleyball  A LOT, and Stephy is not very convincing at pretending to drink chicha.

We experienced some new food - frogs (they actually have green bones), smaller grubs which were fried and tasted almost like sausages (maybe not delicious, but if I have to eat grubs I'd like them like that please).  And are getting quite blasé about taratulas - we shared a house with one in Washintsa for 2 days without much fuss.  He went out at night to hunt (at least I hope that's where he went).

Spending more time in the communities we discovered more about family life.  In Karamá there are about 40 people, all in one family.  The community leader, his 3 wives (who are all sisters - apparently this means they're more likely to get on), his 25 kids, the eldest 3 of which now have their own families.  No sign of technicolour coats but I am on the lookout.  All 3 wives, 13 kids and a son-in-law are in the photo below.

Finally we spent a day in San Juan, a community with a handpump - which apparently has been broken for between 1-2 years.  After some persuasion, they found some spanners and took the casing off - to discover a chain had come off and they could easily fix it.  Unfortunately the intervening time had meant it was full up with mudand had to be cleaned - we semi-took it apart and will be going back in a few weeks with the right tools to fix it. 

On no account must you drop the rods down the well...          The pump as we left it - still not working but slightly closer to being fixed.