Water in the mountains

Our charity had contracted with a rural Water company to provide water systems to 12 remote villages. We visited the last two of the 12 installations. In each of these Villages the water systems brought water faucets to within 100 yards of each of the homes in the village. Before the systems the villagers would have to walk sometimes up to an hour and collect water in containers. Often times the water was also polluted.

In this instant a plastic water tank was installed because of the difficulty of getting a cement truck into the village. Cement tanks are preferred because of their durability. The fencing around the water tank is to keep animals from  damaging the system. Most particularly the pigs.

This is one of the typical water stands in the village. Some Villages had up to 12 of these. The design is mandated by the local Water District.

These are typical dwellings in the district. Almost all of the industry here is local farming.

This is a view from one of the roads to the Village. This is the large town. The largest building here is the Catholic Church.

On the way back Alex, our ngo contact had the driver pull over and he purchased this parakeet from a young boy who was selling it from the roadside. The boy had recently caught it in the jungle. The bird cost $5. It is going to be a gift to son.

In order for the water system to have longevity it needs to have a good maintenance program. This is a collection of the maintenance people from several of The Village's where water systems were installed. They were having a maintenance training meeting. The the guy with the beard on the front row is a humanitarian volunteer from Australia. He lives in these Villages and provides technical advice during the system installation.

In order to ensure proper maintenance The Villages have a program where they assess each member monthly for future maintenance costs. The assessment is usually about $0.50.

They had a thank-you ceremony at the meeting. They awarded Cheryl and I with the ceremonial tais. I then got to Handover the maintenance tool box for the Water District.

Once again we had a meal that was frightening. On the way there our guide who is a native of the country had to stop at his favorite restaurant to get our lunch. This is the picture of the kitchen. There was not a refrigerator on the premises.  We had rice, pumpkin, (not like the ones in the US), potatoes with pork, green beans with some kind of tofu in it, and chili sauce, which was very spicy. It's been 36 hours now and we are not sick so I think once again we have been lucky.

Once again the road to this Villages were terrible.  The rain made the dirt road very muddy and the truck was slipping and sliding all over the place. We probably averaged five miles an hour on this trip. It took about two and a half hours. I got car sick..

The elevation was high enough for these Villages that it was actually cool. We were comfortable in our short sleeves but it was not hot. We did get rain off and on.

Our ngo contact, Alex is on the left and the driver Ano, is on the right. The guide was very interesting. His family had lived in timor-leste during the occupation. Because his family was connected with the resistance movement at the beginning of the occupation and then at the end the entire family had to flea into the jungle to escape the military. It was a family with 10 children and Alex was 4 years old. They lived in the jungle for 3 years and subsisted on the leaves, vegetation and roots that they could find. They never found a snake to kill and eat but they did kill a dragon, which is like a huge lizard that is about 3 meters long. He said that it was really scary and he didn't want to eat it. They had to travel at night and hide in caves during the day. They also had to cook during the day because the fire wouldn't give away their position as well as it would at night.