Today was a day.
It started with me semi-waking up from a REM cycle thinking "man, this is the best sleep I've gotten this entire trip, I'm finally comfortable and peaceful" the rain was pouring but it's always nice to fall asleep to that. The second round of storms at night usually drip down a bit on my face, so I started to wake up a bit more from that, and all of a sudden I heard a huge splash. "Uh oh" I thought. "Either a portion of the roof caved in, or I'm about to smell dinner again here soon." And then I smelled dinner. And sobbing. My mosquito-net-mate/co-project lead/dear friend Kassie got sick before she could even fully stand up. I got up to rub her back and we calmed down, and thankfully she was feeling pretty good and helped me clean everything up. And by helped I mean she basically did everything. Thankfully it didn't really get on anything, so that was nice. Once we finally got done with that, we walked out to the bathroom. This is at 1am in the pitch black night in absolute pouring rain down a steep and muddy hill behind the school buildings.
There was no way anyone could ever make it there on their own in a moment of crisis. After the latrines we hung out in the kitchen area (I haven't specified this yet, but by "kitchen area" I mean three covered picnic tables outside the kitchen where we eat all our meals. It was dry and we could talk without having to worry about waking anyone. At about 2-2:30 we went back inside and tried to go to sleep. I tried really hard to stay up with her, and was super sensitive to every movement in the room, afraid I'd be smelling someone else's dinner that same night. Apparently Kassie fell asleep, and I probably did an hour later, but then I wake up in the morning to her not looking good. Apparently she got sick in the latrines and I didn't even hear her leave. This entire timing is so unfortunate because this was going to be our first day on our own project, and I had to rush around in the morning to rally the troops and make sure everything was ready.
Sorry that was probably way too much detail, but it was something that consumed my mind all day so this is representative of my thought process.
We finally made it on the truck, and had to take two since we had so many people. I sat in the cabin in the back seat, but had an eye on Kassie the whole time She was deemed good enough to leave the school and take the 40min car ride over rocky roads to go to Joyabaj. When we got to town, we checked in early to the hotel and Michelle (Dr. Federle's wife) and Kassie took the day off and tried to take it easy there.
After waiting and waiting and waiting, Mincho finally came with some people we could tour around with. Originally we were gonna split up into two groups, one doing general house surveys in the town, the other (my group) would check out possible tank locations. However, we realized that the community doesn't know we're gonna be there, so we shouldn't have six gringos roaming around people's yards. So Mincho had José (new logistics coordinator for EWB-Guatemala), Francisco (representative and maybe engineer for Joyabaj), and some concordes (representatives) from La Tribuna. They asked us where we wanted to go, so we went through to the end of the community to where we thought the high point was located, however the locals were convinced it was the low point of the entire area. After taking some elevations and coordinates, we affirmed that it was a high point, however not quite high enough to give a ton of pressure for a system of 300 taps. Everyone taking us around thought we were crazy for wanting a tank there, and they said they had a better location outside of Joyabaj. So we went there next. It was about a 15-20min drive from La Tribuna to this location, and Mark and I were getting nervous that the scope of our project called for something this vast. The elevation of their location was good, but the location was much further than anyone on our side was comfortable with. They haven't bought the land yet which is good, but we all came back more confused than expected; a common theme of this project. I emailed Steve right when we got back to the hotel (about 3pm) asking to meet up asap to ask why he thought a student chapter was capable of such a project. I haven't gotten a reply yet, but I'm glad I could take that time to organize my notes and thoughts since Kassie was still asleep. I wanted to be able to coherently present the day's information to her when she woke up.
We went out to explore the town at 4, and I was hoping to buy some souvenirs or something, but most of the stores sold second-hand items, from toys to tools to clothes. They were all American goods anyways. Kinda a bummer as a tourist, but also a bummer that they're not selling things they're making. We did go to a bakery, so those items were original, and as we were checking out, a little boy came in cuz he saw us from the street and he said "I saw you guys in La Tribuna, what are you doing here?" (More eloquently, and in Spanish). It was just cool that a community member recognized us, even though we're the only gringos in town, but he seemed really excited to see us and asked questions about our project and seemed really interested. Pretty good for a nine-ish year-old.
We headed back to the hotel for dinner where I got a chicken sandwich with chips and a limonada (I deserved it), and man was it good. Thankfully this time we finished early enough to get to the ice cream store. I got Oreo swirl and it tasted amazing. I also deserved that.
We headed back to the hotel where my body could finally relieve itself of all this "deserving" and I got ready for bed. I WAS SO TIRED. I could barely stay awake at dinner. We've worked hard onsite this trip, but this was the most tiring day. Leading the entire trip today and thinking of the right questions and talking to all these new people made me exhausted. Unfortunately Kassie wasn't better at night, she was feeling better when we came back for dinner, so she started eating food but was unfortunately too excited and ate too quickly. Poor girl could not catch a break. After trying to make sure she was set and comfortable, I could lay in bed and write my blog, but I fell asleep with my laptop on me (so this is why this post is late). I had an incredible sleep though, I only woke up once. It was nice to just be tired and comfortable and just fall asleep so easily. Ahh it was great.
2025-02-18