Maine Rotary

The month of February was packed full of Rotary! First, a group from the Freeport, Maine Rotary Club came to visit. They sponsor one of the grants for Agua Pura para el Mundo and were coming down to help out with the project. On February 9th I went to the airport with one of the local Santa Barbara Rotarians and Ramon, the driver for the week. We actually had to find a new driver at the last minute because the one we had set up went mojado (illegally) to the states without telling us. We called his house the night before to confirm for the third time that he would be the driver for the week and his wife informed us that he had left the country. Anyway, we got a wonderful driver at the last minute and met the group of five at the airport.

From Left: Allison, Paul, Katie, Tamara, Marjorie, Jim, Hector

Paul & Katie are both software engineers from San Diego, California who came along for the ride because Paul’s mom is Jim & Marjorie’s pastor (thankfully they both spoke Spanish, so they were very helpful). Tamara is a civil and environmental engineer from Maine and is the wife of a Rotarian. Jim & Marjorie are both engineers (mechanical & chemical respectively) from Maine and are members of the Freeport Rotary Club (actually Jim is the president). So, if you add that up, there were five engineers!

We were incredibly busy all week, visiting communities, meeting with the local filter manufacturer, local Rotarians and doing lots of administration. Sometimes having groups come from the states can be more work than help. If they don’t speak Spanish, if they have no real skills to offer the project and if they have no decision making power then it is a lot of work for us with no real benefit on our side. However, this was not at all the case with this group! As I said before, they were all engineers, two of them spoke Spanish and they were all incredibly intelligent, helpful and flexible. Tamara was able to help us evaluate our lab procedures for our water analysis, Paul & Katie helped with translating, Jim brought us a great filter carrier (they weight 300+ lbs) and Jim & Marjorie fixed a whole lot of problems that we were having with the project (sometimes you need the guys with power to step in and set things straight).
Filter carrier

While delivering and installing filters in El Conal we were treated to three different types of oranges. First, the people that were working with us climbed up into the trees to get them down for us…

And then peeled them for us…

We also visited the hospital to donate some supplies…
From Left: Marjorie, Dr. Peraza (Assistant Director), Jim, Dr. Mejia (Director), Dra. Marly (Rotarian)

And went to Zorca to deliver de-parasiting medicine to filter beneficiaries…

Marjorie & Tamara deparasiting

By the end of the week we felt very satisfied with all the work we had done, but also a little tired and slap-happy…
Nineth