You can blame the late first entry on my lack of knowledge of blogging. I was entering the wrong address.
We have now completed a full week of research in Mondaña. It was dry and mostly sunny through the first part of the week, but today has brought true “aguacero” or tropical downpour. Although the level of the river here is more dependent on rain in the highlands, today’s rain will be good for the plants and for travel downstream.
During the week we have oriented ourselves to this complex community in which there is a Kichwa [local spelling] village with three distinct geographical “neighborhoods,” the Colegio Técnica Yachana (CTY), and the Yachana Lodge. There are many positive changes since last year including a brand new, beautiful dormitory to house the upper two grades and the microenterprise classroom, whose construction began when we were here last January, is now completed and functioning well, with students busy silk-screening T-shirts, making crafts to sell, and learning the principles of microenterprise. CTY has a new teacher in the microenterprise area and another person doing research on agricultural practices.
Mondaña now has a Peace Corps Volunteer in the area of public health who has been here four months and will stay twenty more months working on water and sanitation projects. Yachana Foundation has a new manager of the Yachana Rainforest Preserve.
Our project this year is work with the colegio students on follow-up of the portable water filter system project that began when we were here last year. We are almost finished developing a set of questions about water, sanitation, and illness and the condition and use of the filters, that we will ask of members of two nearby communities that we visited last year: Puerto Rico and 30 de Agosto. We will also be observing water sources, sanitation facilities, and community members’, students’ and teachers’ experience with the water filters over the course of the last year. This process, we hope, will yield important data about these topics specific to these two communities as well as provide methods, concepts, and key points from which colegio students can design and implement their own follow-up of the filter project in other local communities. CTY recently received a donation from a guest at the lodge so that each incoming student for the next five years will receive a filter that they can take home to their families. In addition, they just received another donation from the government in Loreto to install filters in 77 schools. Amanda Israel, who was a student in last year’s field school, is working with colegio students and teachers on this project. We hope to accompany the CTY students to Loreto on January 14th for the formal presentation and opening of the project.
