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Michael Thompson ’12, a civil engineering major, traveled with other members of Lafayette’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders for two weeks this summer to continue work on gravity-fed water systems in Honduras. Joining him were civil engineering majors Mickey Adelman ’10, Joaquin Indacochea Beltran ’11, and Zhuo Wen Wu ’11; electrical and computer engineering major Andrew Kotsopey ’10; Elroy Saldanha ’12; and faculty adviser Joshua Smith, assistant professor of mechanical engineering.
Drinkable water is something that most Americans take for granted; it is so essential to life, yet in many countries around the world, it is something that families struggle to find. Our destinations this summer were the extremely rural villages of El Convento and La Fortuna. When the villages’ previous water systems were knocked out by blows from Hurricane Mitch, EWB Lafayette answered the call.
Our first stop was El Convento. Open arms and giant smiles were the first things we saw, soon followed by a swarm of excited children. Our first day was spent bonding with the community members (“futbol” is always a popular choice), but the remaining days were for work. We constructed barbed-wire fencing to protect the watersheds and bushwhacked a new pipeline since technical issues rendered the old route inadequate. I must stress how important the community’s enthusiasm was. We would need five volunteers and they would give us 20; it was amazing to work alongside such skilled and dedicated people.
The time to leave eventually came. An hour-long truck ride up thousand-foot cliffs and an hour-and-a-half hike in, and we were at La Fortuna. Completely cut off from the outside world, we were working to bring water into the homes. We would repair burst pipes; construct numerous branch lines and install taps at houses; connect the potable drinking line; insert, clean out, and air valves; fix the pressure break tank; and construct and teach community members to build greywater drainage systems.
The water system is set to be finished in August, and will deliver filtered potable water to the community members. The dedication of the people was evident to us again. We hiked miles through the jungle alongside women with bare feet and wearing dresses, who would do just as much work as any of us. It seems impossible to portray just how incredible the people of these communities were in so few words.
On May 27, we celebrated Andrew’s 21st birthday with the community members, and how else other than by drinking potable water from the sand filters. At 2:30 a.m. the next morning, we awoke to the roof rattling and Joaquin yelling, “Everybody get outside!” as an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter Scale shook most of Central America. Across seas, our families struggled to find out if we were ok, but with no electricity or cell phone service, communication was extremely slow. A little shaken up, we went back to sleep as there was still work that needed to be done in the morning.
Personally, I can say with confidence that this was one of the best experiences of my life. I love the people we met and the places we went, and now we can only try harder to give water to more people in need.