Goodbye, Perú. Our visit to Perú was an amazing experience. We were able to build a well, repair desks, build new desks and paint a schoolroom. What a summer! Unfortunately, the UAB Engineers Without Borders will not be returning to Perú until next when hopefully some of our Civil Engineering students will implement their senior design project. We want to thank everyone for all their support and encouragment not to mention hard work that made this project a success.

The UAB Engineers Without Borders will be tackling another region of world with our next project. We are currently looking into projects in Zambia, South Africa and Haiti. We thank you for your support and sincerely look for your continued support in this worthy project.

Thanks again! ¡Mil gracias!
 

Many people in the world lack clean water which is extremely important to life. When some families have access to water, they are constantly exposed to waterborne diseases. It is reported that 670 millions people live in countries facing chronic and widespread water shortages and more than a billion people lack access to safe drinking water(World bank, 2007). Even if some people can have access to safe drinking water, their condition of poverty and the fact that they don’t insist on the principles of hygiene contribute to worsen their health condition.

Our project in Iquitos, Peru have two major components. The first one is the construction of wells to give access to clean water to the people of the poor remote village of Llanchama and the second one is the Hand Washing With Soap and Hygiene(HWWSH) intervention in order to emphasize on the benefits of hand washing at three critical moments: before eating, after using the bathroom and after cleaning a child who has been to the bathroom.

There is no pipeline system in Llanchama. The people generally use the water from the river for their consumption. Sometimes they use the water from the springs but many animals use to be around those springs contaminating them. Thus a well’s construction project was extremely needed.

Most of the people in the village do not have latrines. They use the bush. And most of the times, according to their revelations, they forget to wash their hands with soap. Some of them did not understand the importance of the soap in hand washing. Therefore, the hand washing project was a must.

We started the Well and HWWSH project on May 24 with the students and professors of the School of Engineering controlling the Well part and the students of the School of Public Health controlling the Hand Washing part.

We met the local workers in order to explain to them what kind of well we want to build in the village. It is a motor pump well type which should be able to provide the village, of about 60 families, with clean water. The local workers started the perforation of the well on May 25. They chose a place surrounded with trees where they said that they should find water. They worked hardly almost every day using drills, wheelbarrow, picks to do their job for the benefits of their community. We had some difficulties in finding water at the first place where the workers started digging. We decided to move to another place and finally with insistance the workers found the water for the people of Llanchama. The water from the well is kept in a 1,500 liters tank which is connected to a filter. Before the water gets to the tank, it is purificated by the filter. From the tank there is a pipe with a faucet that the population can use to pour water in their containers. Actually the people of Llanchama are enjoying the water of the well. They are very grateful for the project.

Regarding the HWWSH project, it was conceived in three parts: a pre-intervention questionnaire whose aim was to assess the knowledge , attitude and behavior of the population of Llanchama toward hand washing with soap, some education sessions whose aim was to improve the practice of hand washing and hygiene and the post-intervention questionnaire whose aim was to determine the impact of the intervention on the attitude and behavior of the population. We had to stay in close contact with some responsible in the Ministry of health in Lima and some responsibles in the regional health district in Iquitos in order that we could obtain the approval to start the project.

The first day we went to the village, we were introduced to the people by the municipal agent and the director of the primary school. We presented the project to a group of parents and ask them for their collaboration

The participants were selected randomly from the list of the members of the Parents’ association of Llanchama under a voluntary base. Since many teenagers are parents in Peru, our target group was people aged from 15 to 70 years old. The participants were informed of their selection and invited to come to a meeting with us. Some of them were given the consent form to read but for most of them we read the consent form loudly and ask them to sign it if they agree to participate in the project.

In the first week we administrated the pre-questionnaires, during the two following weeks we made the education and practice sessions and in the last week we administrated the post-intervention questionnaire. Through the questionnaires we could see that many of the participants have a blurred perception about clean hands and dirty hand.

Many of them were asking for a latrines project also since, as we said earlier, they use to go the bush to defecate. In the education sessions we had almost all the participants to who the questionnaires were administrated. We talked about what we learned from them through the questionnaires, the contamination way, the benefits of hand washing in preventing disease mainly for the children. We also talked about the three critical moments where everyone should wash his hands. At the end of every sessions we talked about water purification with chlorine, or by boiling the water. We also had practice sessions of hand washing at the end.

To make sure that the message would be understood and kept, I wrote a song in Spanish about Hand Washing. At the beginning and at the end of every session all the participants sang the song with us.

Here is the lyrics of the song in Spanish and English:

Spanish                                                                        English

En este pueblo                                                 In this village

Nos lavamos las manos                                 We wash our hands

Para proteger a los niños                              To protect the children

En este pueblo                                                In this village

Nos lavamos las manos                                 We wash our hands

Con jabón así siempre                                   Always with soap

Manos limpias                                               Clean hands

Niños sanos                                                    Sane children

Debemos lavarnos las manos                     We must wash our hands

Después de usar el baño                              After using the bathroom

Debemos lavarnos las manos                      We must wash our hands

Después de limpiar un niño                         After cleaning a child

Y antes de comer                                          And before eating

Así debe ser.                                                 That’s the way it should be.

All right reserved

Copyright: Junior Bazile, MD.

June 2008.

All the participants were eager to sing the song that they really liked. They attended the sessions with they children and those were always happy to sing also. At the end of the project all of them could sing the song without watching the lyrics.

After the education sessions, we had the post-intervention questionnaires. We could see the significant change in the response of the participants compared to the pre-intervention questionnaires. For some questions, they just remembered the lyrics of the song to provide the answers.

On June 14 for the 79 anniversary of the village of Llanchama in Iquitos, Peru, the students and the professors of the school were involved in all kind of activities. From the rise of the Peruvian flag, early in the morning, to the soccer games in the afternoon, they invited the population of Llanchama to attend different type of entertainment for the day. We were very active in the morning, accompanying the leaders of this poor remote village in all the activities.

Persons from all the age groups participated in the events with much determination in order to make the celebration a success.

79 years since this village exists. However up to the present time, there is no electricity, no running and clean water, no latrines system, no land lines phone there. Beside that, the quality of the road that leads to the village is extremely bad.

The people were very happy to celebrate that day. They were dancing, singing, playing and drinking their prefered beers: Pilsen, Iquiteña(from Iquitos), Cusqueña( from Cusco). Those kind of activities always carry joy to the people and can prevent them from keeping thinking(at least for one day) of all the difficulties to which their lives are hung.

Photo taken from http://www.slshrimp.com/Projects/Rhyncho.html

This is el “suri”, the grub of a palm beettle (Rynchophorus palmarum). This fatty grub is sauted or fried and prepared in various dishes shown below. According to ethnobotanist James A. Duke, approximately 62 percent of the suri grub is protein. Insect fatty acids are highly unsaturated. Also suri are rich in thiamin, zinc, riboflavin, copper, iron, and niacin.

Juane is a regional dish that is prepared using the leaf of the bijao plant. The leaves are stuffed with rice, spices, usually chicken, egg and an olive. Iquiteños consume enormous quantities of this delicacy during the San Juan festival, along with tacacho, or mashed sweet platains, and cañazo, liquor made from sugar cane.

Juane de yucca relleno de suri

This juane is prepared with a puree of yucca and suri.

And this is me eating suri! The heads are crunchy but otherwise it was delish!

Caldo de suri con yucca, papa y platano - This is a soup prepared with suri, yucca, potato and sweet platain.

Cebiche de platano - Local fish marinated in lime juice with diced onion, sweet platain, aji (local chile) served with yucca. Delish! It won 1st place in the food contest.

The following blog has some good information on ´suri´: http://singingtotheplants.blogspot.com/2007/12/suri.html

San Juan festival takes place every year from June 23-25, although officially it is June 24 that marks the festival. It is an amazing celebration of water, culture and regional food. Since St. John was associated with water baptism, water is the gift of life for this region. It revitalizes the earth, plants and gives home to multitudes of animals.   

According the some sources there is a legend, that a message was said to be given to a man from the Jibaro tribe after he saw an apparition in the jungle while hunting. He proclaimed a miracle to his village, and dreamed that night that St. John the Baptist spoke to him and instructed him to build a church in his name.

The festival is marked by regional music and dancing and all day long events. Llanchama held it own San Juan festival with tons of activities.

 Dancing: Madre Llanchama and the dancers are celebrating and revitalizing regional and local traditions through music and dance.

This folkloric dance is to teach us to protect and care for the environment specifically the trees. The area surrounding Llanchama is being more heavily deforested for commerical rather than local purposes. This dance is intended revitalize the local cultural roots and promote regional pride.

Padre Aguaje and Madre Llanchama: These are the spirits that protect the trees teaching us to care for the plants and the earth that give us life through the products they provide us.

Music

This guy has real talent! He can play the recorder (quena) with his nose, very amusing to watch.

Raising the Humisha.

 A palm treet that holds presents and when chopped down people fight for the gifts.

Here we are preparing to chop down the humisha. The dancers, several professors, Junior, me and Madre Llanchama danced around the humisha.

Junior dancing around the humisha with Madre Llanchama (Doña Yolanda).

Madre Llanchama

I met a Columbia University student named Cina who is here in Iquitos studying the Belen fish market. On Sunday, the 15th we decided to explore and we took a trip upriver.

We arrived in Padre Cocha, a small town about 3o minutes upriver on the Nanay, to find a motorcross tournament in progress. This tiny town was overwhelmed with crowds of people to watch the tournament along with a couple of local bands playing cumbia and crowds of vendors just like the fair.

These boys were sitting in a small tree watching the action, mostly motocyclists having to hop off and push the moto up the imbankment!

I can´t explain how amusing it was to see this tiny town host a motorcross event - a surreal experience. But as you might imagine, do the conditions of the roads and the excess of motorcycles in the Iquitos area, motorcross is a popular event.  

Afterwards, we enjoyed the sunset on the Boulevard in Iquitos.

 Saturday, June 14th was Llanchama´s 79th anniversary.  The festivities began with the raising of the Peruvian flag and the San Juan Bautista municipality´s flag.

The local school children assembled to sing the national hymn and the town´s ama mater.

And then the real festivities began with lots of music, food and games. The children´s games were first.

Egg Race

How many times can you bounce the soccer ball on your foot? The winner did it 5 times!

Others like myself unfortunately couldn´t bounce it more than once, but one girl managed to head butt the ball as well.

Can you dance cumbia and eat? Well, these kids were attempting too.

Not running with scissors, thank goodness but with paper under foot.

 Now, for a bit of sumo wrestling.  

The professors of Llanchama´s school organized all these games for the anniversary. It was a bit of a project to organize all the events and the keep track of the kids. I got to hand out the prizes, yah!

Prof. Elena with her two kids and one extra!

 Prof. Franchesca

After this we enjoyed some freshly fried fish, quinoa, aji (local chile and hot sauce - yummy).

Next, there was a soccer tournament involving the local towns but I was exhausted from all the games.

I just had some chillout time and later took a swim in the Nanay River. How refreshing!

And no, I didn´t tip the canoe over into the Nanay, I really went for a swim!

The last light was waning, the road was desolate and empty, lighting flashed above in the clouds. It was a dark and stormy as five people were walking unsteadily down the lonely dirt road in the pouring rain. The four men and a women were laughing as they slipped and struggled to remain upright as the rain continued to pour down turning the dirt road into soup. There wasn´t another soul to be seen for the next hour but finally as they crested the last slippery hill - lights, humanity, sadly no motorcars to been seen. Well, if you guessed I was walking from Llanchama to Nina Rumi with a group of professors from Llanchama. We finally arrived back to Iquitos very late and wet just wishing for a hot shower.

The reason for our late night was because on Saturday, June 7 the school had a cook-out Peruvian style. It was much like our backyard BBQs: music, plenty of food and drink with the company of friends and family, not to mention the ubiquitous fútbol! The photo above is the school´s director in the yellow dress shirt and several of the other professors.

In this photo, I holding a lovely 2 mos. old girl named Cinthia Amanda and Prof. James (PE prof.) joins me in a pre-game smile. I enjoyed a game of futbol with the boys not the men they play too rough (rugby-like)but I had plenty of fun with all the kids and profs.

Junior also played several games of fútbol and there was plenty of singing and music!

Now that I am back in the states, I am sorting through my pictures and picking the best ones for this blog! I’m not much of a writer, so I am going to do a photo essay of my trip to Peru. Most of these photos are generally in chronological order.
This is my roommate, Lanka. We are enjoying a hot cup of cafe con leche.

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

For any tourist arriving in Iquitos, , the first thing that capture the attention is all the activities in the streets. Many people , many vehicles. Iquitos is a city, which is the capital of the department of Loreto, located in the middle of the Peruvian rainforest. Something else that attracts the attention is the artistic aspect of the city. Almost everything in Iquitos is used with an artistic approach. The walls around the streets covered with all kind of multicolored scriptures for advertisement, the big boards for advertisement, the buses multicolored with many scriptures. All, absolutely all here is art. However one object which is the heart of the art, according to our opinion, and which makes a lot of noise in the streets, keeping everyone awake, is the motor-car. The moto-cars are the principal means of transportation in Iquitos. They are imported from China, cost about 4,000 to 6,000 soles ( $1,450 to 2,200 USD).

Those two weeks April and I have used the moto-cars a lot to get to Llanchama. Unfortunately there are about 4 or 5 moto-cars drivers that cover the section Iquitos-Llanchama. When we don’t find the moto-cars to go to Llanchama, we take the buses that stop at Nina Rumi. From Nina Rumi to Llanchama we walk 30 to 40 minutes.

While the buses don’t arrive in Llanchama because of the mud in the road, the moto-cars do, and they are reliable.

We will keep enjoying the great experience of the moto-cars which, even though noisy, is extremely interesting.