In Celebration of Water

Early Tuesday morning my counterpart, María called me and told me to hurry to the office, that we were leaving for Nueva Esperanza (New Hope, in English). Nueva Esperanza is one of the farthest communities in the municipality where I work and the recent recipients of a water project from the central government. I wrote a blog a few weeks ago about working with the women from this community to fill out socio-economic surveys so they could propose the project, which they were approved for.

The community is made up of roughly 300 people and is 3 hours away from the municipal offices where I work. The women’s group of the community is particularly well organized and have formally evaluated their needs; they simply needed the assistance of our office in advocating for those needs. Each of the 32 women in the group received a water collecting system that will provide running water in their homes (the community previously had no running water or electricity- a project that will take a lot more time to complete). This effectively will service the whole town with water.

When we arrived in Nueva Esperanza the whole community awaited us with live marimba music, food, and decorations. After they served us breakfast of Atoll (hot rice drink) and bread everyone gathered together to express their thanks. Though I couldn’t understand most of it, as it was in Mam, it was clear how thankful the women were for our support.

Some of the young benificiaries of the project

Some fellow muni employees and I

Live marimba!

The water tanks

The women expressing their thanks (the center two are the leaders of the group)

Doña Juana preparing to carry her water tank home! Amazing!