No Shortage of Unclean Water

Guatemala - February 21, 2006

Ixil and Guatemala for that matter, suffer from a lack of clean water, not a lack of water. In fact, from the highlands to the lowlands to the coast, water is either abundant or easily accessible. Open wells, such as the ones that are in some of the homes in Ixil, allow contaminants to enter into the water source. The difference in drilled wells is that the water source (underground aquifer) cannot be contaminated from animals or people above ground either directly (dropping a dirty bucket into the water) or indirectly from cattle, animals, trash or human waste.

Today I spent most of the day helping Mary..aka Hygiene Mary as we all called her. Her purpose on this trip was to educate the village on hygiene and sanitation issues. I not only learned a lot while I translated for Mary but it also opened my eyes to the necessity of training the people in basic sanitation. Without proper sanitation, a new well becomes nearly pointless.

Mary covered basics such as cleaning your hands after working in the field or handling the animals, or prior to cooking and eating. Concepts that are engrained in our American minds from an early age are foreign to them. Some homes have no walls, with only packed dirt for their floor. Their beds are either planks or simply plastic on the floor, which they lay blankets on. The kitchen is as simple as a wooden table; when more space is needed, the floor is used.

Using clean buckets to bring water from the well, keeping the well covered, and emphasizing the need to rinse eating utensils and cookware with clean water may seem like common sense, but I saw that for some of them, it was something entirely new.

-Patrick

 

 

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