Closing Ceremony – La Banda and Montecillo de Nieto

Today we traveled over the hill and through the woods (fording a river long the way) to enjoy the closing celebration for our La Banda and Montecillo de Nieto project. 

We are joined this week by representatives of the Lotus Foundation who provided significant funding to these projects and also to our previous project at Ex-Hacienda de Pena Blanca. Mark and Margaret are here and they have brought along the president of the board of Lotus, John, and Eric who is also a board member. Yesterday they were able to see the construction of a pilot cistern at Vivienda Urbano after having a presentation at our weekly Rotary meeting from Dr. Adrian Ortega, the absolute guru and expert on our Independence Aquifer and its problems.

Alejandro, Ivar, David H, Tom and Sara also came from Rotary San Miguel Midday. We brought a few other visitors with us that wanted to see in person our water harvesting projects. We arrived early enough so that we could go see five of the new cisterns … moving our group along from stop to stop was a bit like herding cats but ultimately we were able to do this. John and Eric from Lotus had many good questions and observations.

The closing ceremony began about 1:00 pm at the pilot cistern location in Nuevo Rancho de la Banda. There were about 60 persons present including Saul and Chela of CEDESA. There were six person representatives from each of the communities of Ex-Hacienda de Pena Blanca, Presa Allende, Alonso Yanez, and Lindero. All of these communities are hoping to begin projects soon. We will begin in Alonso Yanez and Lindero later this month. 

We had short speeches from each of these communities as well as from Alejandro for Rotary and Chela for CEDESA. Several people from La Banda and Montecillo de Nieto spoke about their experience with this project. Reina from La Banda explained that she was surprised by how hard the work was being that never before had she had to manage a shovel and mix concrete … she is right; it is hard manual labor. Everyone chuckled a bit and said they would be more understanding of their husbands when they came home from working as construction workers. 

Another person from Montecillo reflected that even though the work was hard, it was really fun working together in the groups. The Montecillo spokesperson pointed out that although they have been waiting two years to get the resources for this project that it has been a good experience and they have learned many other important things along the way. 

Finally, after cutting the ribbon to close the project, we got to the real business of the day: lunch. Many persons brought many delicious dishes and we all left full and satisfied.

After lunch Saul and I returned to Vivienda where the pilot cistern is being built. I watched as Saul taught the work teams to form the cone shaped top of the cisterns. I could only admire the way that the materials (wire and reinforcing) have been mineralized to leave not much more than the “oink” as they say. 

Overall it was another great day in the campo and enjoying the fruits of these projects.

Tomorrow we will be taking the Lotus foundation visitors to see the Ex-Hacienda de Pena  Blanca project where there is already a new group asking us to fund a phase II project for them. We will also visit Juan Gonzalez where we have just recently completed 15 cisterns.

Submitted by: Lee Carter, Rotary San Miguel Midday

Global Grant Update La Banda/Montecillo de Nieto: & Alonso Yanez and Presa Allende: January 27, 2015

La Banda/Montecillo de Nieto: The pilot cistern at the elementary school in La Banda is now complete and the communities of La Banda and Montecillo de Nieto are ready to split into three teams and complete 17 more family cisterns. Hierro Comercial is delivering all the materials today and the other components, gravel, sand, plywood, were delivered last week. It will take about six weeks to complete and we hope to have a grand celebration in the first week or March which is also when we will begin a 12 cistern project in Vivienda.

Alonso Yanez and Presa Allende: I continue to go bi-weekly to the communities of Alonso Yanez and Presa Allende to collect water samples from their wells. CATIS and Rotary are doing a simple study to determine how and if fluoride levels rise over the dry season as the wells are drawn down by the extra water being extracted. We have been doing this since the end of the rainy season and plan to continue until the end of the dry season. Talks with the “pozoleros” (persons that take care of community wells in the communities) have told us that the months of April and May are when the extraction is at its greatest. Alonso Yanez is consistently testing at close to 5 mg/liter for fluoride which is the highest we have seen within our municipality (water levels above 1.5mg/litre may have long-term undesirable effects**read more about fluoride here).

We will be building about 46 cisterns in Alonso Yanez and the adjacent community, Lindero, in April 2015.

Submitted by Lee Carter, Rotary San Miguel Midday

La Banda / Montecillo de Nieto - Pre-Project Planning Meeting -

Tony DeCrosta (Rotary), Saul Juarez (CEDESA) and I traveled to La Banda today to get the second project started for our Global Grant 1422619. The pilot cistern in Juan Gonzalez is being completed this week.

We met at the community center in La Banda. After introductions of everyone in attendance, we talked about the process that had been followed by the persons in these two communities to finally come to the top of the list of those waiting for the Rotary water harvesting project. 

The families involved have done other projects through CEDESA and COCIRA during these two years which included dry toilets, stoves to replace open fire cooking, backyard gardening, and bee keeping. I asked about why they wanted to build cisterns and, in addition to concerns about fluoride contamination, they discussed water quality as it related to the obligatory chlorination of the SAPASMA well.

Next we discussed the importance of viewing this project not as a onetime event to work together, but part of a lifelong process of teaming up to make permanent and sustainable change in their community. This project is just one more step toward improving many aspects of their lives through their own initiative. Water without contaminants is just one step to improving health. Nutrition, relationships, cooperation, and mutual assistance by capitalizing on individual’s strengths are some of the future steps to be considering.

It was decided that the pilot training cistern would be built at the Primary School in Rancho Nuevo La Banda as it is equidistant between La Banda and Montecillo de Nieto. Saul reviewed with the participants their obligations by being a part of this project: 1. Participation in the construction of the pilot is mandatory. 2. Each group must have a qualified construction worker (albanil) on their team. 3. They must form work groups and help build all cisterns within their group. Building the cistern independently by the family only, is not allowed.

In Montecillo de Nieto, there are 8 families and they will all work together as one group. That group consists of: Hilaria Ramirez who is the person responsible for the overall communication within this group and with CEDESA and Rotary as needed. Her telephone number is 415.xxx.3273. Ana Gabriela Jiménez Jimenez is the “second” responsible and her telephone number is 415.xxx.7486. The rest of the group are Liliana Jimenez Damian, Alejandra Morales Jimenez, Angelica Jimenez Jimenez. Fabiola Pastor Ramirez, Maria Cruz Jiménez Balthazar, and Mayra Mirela Pastor Blanca. They will report next week, who will be the albanil to work with them.

In La Banda we will be building 10 cisterns in addition to the pilot cistern. (Total for this mini-project is 19 cisterns.) The Banda group will divide into two work teams as follows. Ma. De los Angeles Ramirez Vasquez was elected to be the overall responsible person in coordinating La Banda. Her phone number is 415.xxx.7246.

Group 1: Reina Ramirez Vasquez, group leader (phones: 415.xxx.0206 and 415.xxx.9420). The rest of the group includes Ma. Carmen Vásquez Ramirez, Concepción Vásquez Caporal, Ma. Elena Ramirez Vásquez and Maria de los Angeles Ramirez Vásquez. The albañil to work with the group is Marcario Ramirez Robles.

Group 2 consists of Ines Ramirez Pastor, responsible with no phone but borrowing the phone of Francisca Ramirez Blanca 415.xxx.3608. The rest of the group includes Carolina Ramirez Ramirez, Ma. Anna Gonzalez Ramirez and Catalina Ramirez Pastor. The will inform us who will be the albanil at the next meeting.

Following this we discussed the timing of this project relative to the upcoming harvest and Christmas obligations. I had been informed this morning that our primary supplier, Hierro Comercial of Dolores Hidalgo, would not be able to receive the special order chicken wire required for the cisterns until the first week in December. They had also called around to many other distributors to see if they could get the wire elsewhere with no luck. Getting this wire has always been a big challenge in our past projects. 

Hierro Comercial is delivering the balance of materials to Juan Gonzalez this week and they said if there was sufficient wire to do the pilot in La Banda that they would deliver those materials. It turns out that there is not additional wire available at this time.

After much discussion, it was decided that unless the wire could be available within 15 days that it would be better to wait to begin the project until after Three Kings Day on January 6, 2015. ie since the wire is not available, we will wait to begin in January of next year.

I have subsequently talked with Hierro Comercial and I will be providing them with a list of communities and estimated number of cisterns that will be built in early 2015. If there will be a price increase in any of the materials, particularly we normally have price increases in the wire, we will look into pre-paying for those materials so that Hierro Comercial can stock pile the materials in December to be used in January through March of 2015. Hierro Comercial has been the provider of 90% of the materials over the past 7 years and proven themselves to be a trustworthy partner in these projects. Because of that long standing relationship, I am comfortable that prepaying for materials to avoid price increases is a good decision in maximizing our use of funding for this project.

Following the meeting, we had a nice late lunch provided by the members of the La Banda group.

Reported by Lee Carter, Rotary San Miguel Midday