Vista Alegre Water System

The new pump arrives !!

The VA crew executes the Gringo plan for spring box

The completed security cover DONE !!

The new pump installed - 400 folks now have WATER !!

Fallout continues from the Cero de Oro burial ground adventure. In addition to the arqueologists coming next week, I led the intrepid PCV expedition of Will Jensen and Gabe G up the hill. We discovered more amazing artifacts: a nicely painted pottery shard, some intact jugs, a shard with some intricate markings of a face?, a mummy torso with crossed arms and legs, some very fine cloth which had two colors stitched into a checker pattern and some brightly colored cloth. The site continues to amaze excite and sadden me that all this culture and history is being destroyed. Hopefully, not for much longer.

Fiestas Patrias – the Peruvian equivalent of 4^th of July, is the 28^th. But true to form, the party has already commenced, with the usual bombs at night and early mornings. And parades. And music. And excessive drinking. Living a block from the Plaza and Muni is convenient, but the daily round of fireworks in getting annoying.

A long bike day (yes, I still love my bike) brought me to San Antonio to see Diebe progress on biodigester #2, which wasn’t much. He’s been busy harvesting yucca and working on his house, so has made no progress since last visit. A better result in La Quebrada water system, where the new well enclosure is ½ done and work continues on new water lines and house connections. This is complicated, since many newer homes did not connect directly, but through a neighbor and now must be re-plumbed.

Continuing out to Vista Alegre, I was delighted to find Caritas has delivered the new water pump (!!!) and I attended the first JASS (water committee) meeting and explained about what would be involved in system cleaning, disinfection, chlorination and maintenance. The more pressing issue is how to protect the beautiful new pump (2hp Pentex – 220VAC 9 amp) from theft – which was what happened to the first one. There were about 10 people at the meeting and 12 different security plans, all argued with vehement force, often at the same time. It was totally unintelligible to me, compounded by the lack of anything except my single pen and piece of paper, which was quickly covered in inept drawings. Discussions about how much each family should pay were equally futile. While PC always prizes “community participation”, it’s time for Peter, the Caritas boss and I to make an “executive” plan. But, the good news is that the 200 folks in the village will soon have access to some beautiful water.