Saturday Afternoon, January 12, 2008
This entry was meant to be posted Sunday,
but Internet outages made that impossible.
As usual, I have pictures with captions posted
from Saturday afternoon and evening at Flickr. Pictures
here, slideshow
here.
One of the most important things Edge Outreach
does is sanitation education and training. It’s well and good to setup some kind
of purification system, but if people don’t know how to use it or if something
goes wrong with it, they can be worse off than they were before. They could be
trusting water that isn’t clean.
Saturday afternoon half of us went to the home
of a man that everyone here calls pastor Antonio. He lives in a very poor part
of town, and though he is confined to a wheelchair, he works and ministers in
this little community. 80 to 100 people come to his house to get clean water
from an Edge system that was put in a few months ago.
Pastor Antonio's house. This room and two small
bedrooms.
The system is on his tiny back porch. One tank for
purifying, two on the roof for storage. He purifies three or four tanks of
water, two days a week for the community.
On this day pastor Antonio found a group of
children from the area to come and learn about water cleanliness and general
sanitation issues. There were a number of adults that showed up as well, though
the presentation was definitely geared toward children.
Edge has a set education program for children
in other countries, based on pictures. All you need is children, the pictures,
and a translator.
This was about as poor a neighborhood as I’ve
seen here in Santo Domingo. There is a vacant lot next to the pastor’s home
where they meet for church services if it is not raining. That vacant lot is
also, apparently, the local trash dump. There was a smoldering stump no more
than 5 yards from the stage.
And yet the children were spotless and dressed
in their finest clothes. Truly, these families take great pride in their
children.
I suppose the teaching would seem rather
obvious and simple to many, but the fact is, great numbers of people in poorer
areas do not know that bacteria in water cannot be seen. Just because water is
clear does not mean it is safe.
In one part of the training, the team uses a
little wooden doll, jokingly referred to privately as Diarrhea Debbie. Her
stomach is a clear baggie of clean water. Something dark is introduced, clouding
the water and making Debbie sick. The bag is punctured and she loses her water.
At this point the team talks about the necessity of hydration if you have
diarrhea.
Well, Debbie’s bag got punctured in the wrong
place on this day, and she sprayed water sideways on Amber and all over the
stage.
The children were delighted. Howls of laughter!
But apart from that, things went very well. We
broke out some balloons at the end and got mobbed by the children. I made as
many balloon sombreros as I could before we had to get on the bus.
At this point, all of our work was done. Both
purification systems were in place, and we had visited this previous
installation to check on it and do further education.
Saturday evening, we went out to eat at a Dominican
restaurant, treating ourselves, our driver, and our interpreters to a fine meal.
Not wanting to miss out on the experience of Dominican food, I ordered a lot and
then shared it with anyone who wanted to try things. I had boiled Yuca
(pronounced “Jooka” here), fried plantains, rice and beans Dominican Republic
style, and skewered chicken. It was all delicious. The plantains were not sweet
at all, more like fried potatoes.
Click for larger view
Sunday morning, the women from Murray State fly
out. The rest of us will attend church with our hosts and do a couple of final
things. Monday morning I'll try to post some final pictures and thoughts from
the trip. As always, internet access is irregular. I'll post when I can.
