PROJECT “TEN BY TEN BY TEN”

By operat11 on May 23, 2010 in Messages

By our OSDW reporter

10 rain catchment systems
For 10 indigenous schools with the greatest need
In the first 10 days of June

Getting ready has been an eye-opening, and at times, deeply-moving, experience. We were not prepared for what we found at the indigenous school at Quebrada Pastor.

We arrived at mid-day as the question of whether there would be a school lunch that day was up in the air. The large, rambling school has 307 students, but has no water an average of 20 days a month.

School officials showed us the kitchen where school lunch is cooked five days a week. For many students, school lunches are all they eat that day.

Everyone counts on those school lunches — the students, the parents, the teachers and the community as a whole. School lunches are central to the community’s well being. The government supplies the food and the parents cook it.

Parents in school kitchens. Most students eat only one meal a day -- at the school. If bad water means no lunch, they do without that day. Sometimes parents have to decide between using doubtful water or serve no lunch.

Although it was nearing lunch hour, the normally busy kitchen was empty. The parents who were cooking that day stood outside, their eyes on a path coming up a hill. A handful of students stood around. Everyone was waiting — but for what? What’s going on here?

We were told there was no water to cook lunch that day. They had sent two older students with large cooking pots to a distant water hole and were waiting to see if the water they brought back was clean enough to use — or whether lunch would have to be cancelled.

For most kids, it was a question of whether they ate at all that day. The waiting continued. Two older boys approached struggling under the weight of large cooking pots half – full of water. One parent looked at the water and sadly shook her head, no. Two others looked and nodded yes.

They decided. They’d take a chance and use the water to cook rice and yuca for lunch and hope for the best.

The waiting students ran off to tell their classmates the good news — they’d eat today.

As the parents headed into the kitchen to get busy, we asked school officials how often this ”wait and see” drama played out.

“Most school days,” we were told, “we don’t have water on average 20 days a month.”

Our survey team looked at the school’s long zinc roof-line and pulled out the measuring tape.

The roof was ideal for installing a hundred feet of 3- inch guttering to catch the rain and feed it into a rain catchment tank.

But having just witnessed all this, we decided on the spot to install two 600-gallon tanks for the school.

One would be fed off the front of the roof, the other off the back. The two tanks would sit next to each other just feet away from the kitchen.

The kids could come and drink their fill, and the kitchen mothers would always have safe, clean water to cook.

Quebrada Pastor school is located in a rain belt so the tanks will refill as quickly as the water is used, or even overflow.

The students won’t have to study while wondering if they’ll eat that day. School officials won’t have to inspect pots of murky water to see if they call off lunch – or cook it, and risk making the kids sick.

These two 600-gallon tanks will change the lives of 307 students, the teachers, parents and the entire nearby indigenous community

OSDW supporters who donated the two tanks will be giving again every time it rains.