Our third and final week in Santa Rosa. This time they were a bit more prepared so we could get started with the tank straight away, and the first day we worked until it got dark to pour the base.
Day 2 was similar – making a complex (it shouldn’t have been but somehow they managed to make it so) wooden structure and then filling it with 6 batches of concrete. Mixing concrete by hand is pretty hard work.
Finally we finished the roof of the tank and stopped work early enough to fit in a hygiene class on how to keep water clean. We got 4 members of the community to demonstrate good (or bad) practice by carrying a cup of clean water to their president – some found hilarious methods of contaminating it on the way.
Making our first latrine slab took a whole morning – the chainsaw enthusiasts got busy making molds, and then we dropped a hammer down the hole – but eventually retrieved it with string once they’d decided none of the kids would fit through the hole. But in the afternoon we got a system going and turned out 5 lovely slabs!
Our last day looked like an impossible challenge with too many things to do, but somehow we managed to finish up all the odd jobs, despite an hour of heavy rain, and even had time to sit and chat with the community.
There’s a fuel shortage again – this time the suppliers are on strike. So we were in danger of not being picked up and spending Easter in the jungle. But the wonderful people at MAF decided to use some of their fuel reserve in bringing us out. We only found this out on our arrival – it was quite nice not to know!
So I’ve spent an afternoon working in Shell (trying to put in all my orders of materials before everything closes for the weekend) and just enjoyed apple pie with some friends – they were inspired by last week’s effort and today’s was even better.
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