Current news in Honduras
July 3, 2009
Given the current news in Honduras, where Pure Water has been working for 8 years, I am reminded of a more hopeful time for this country. One month after becoming president, Manuel Zelaya hosted a reception for Rotarians at the presidential palace. I was fortunate enough wrangle an invitation. In his remarks President Zelaya, a former Rotary club president, talked about his hopes for the country and the importance of the “Four Way Test” and how these principles shaped his values and it was the motto by which he would govern. The spirit of the Rotary credo is making right decisions which will be beneficial and fair to all.
Fast forward to the events of this past week. There appears to be little evidence that decisions made in the past three and a half years were based on the ideals of the “Four Way Test.” Honduras finds itself in a thorny position with Manuel Zelaya in exile after being removed from office. While my opinions are of little consequence – I will leave that to government officials, policy makers, and Latin American scholars to sort out – I want to share the effects of political uncertainly has upon the Pure Water Honduras staff, our projects and the people we serve. The country is still functional – life is almost normal. The people are accustomed too poor roads and power outages – so now is no different than before. In the urban areas there have been peaceful demonstrations with upward of 40,000 people protesting the possible return of Mr. Zelaya. In the rural areas there appears to be little effect of the “hybrid” coup. I refer to the military action to depose the president as “hybrid” because the military acted with the consent of Congress and the Supreme Court. Life was a struggle in Honduras last week and today is no different.
Pure Water is working in a remote region of Trojes, near the Nicaragua border. For more then 10 years in the 1980’s, the Contras army had invaded the area forcing many people to flee the region. Trojes is one of the poorest and one of the most neglected regions of Honduras. In partnership with UNICEF, Pure Water is providing clean drinking water, hygiene education, and proper sanitation to 30 communities in the region. This week’s events have had little effect upon these projects. The staff continues to work.
For our project management staff in the nation’s capital of Tegucigalpa, working is more difficult. Store closings, increased power outages and general anxiety hamper the staff, but they still are able to move about the city. This staff also continues to work.
As long as it remains peaceful in Honduras, our staff will continue to work to improve the lives of those who live without clean water and proper sanitation. There is work to do, and they are committed to getting that work done.
We continue to hope that the current events in Honduras will not affect our staff, volunteers, projects and friends.
Carolyn Meub
Executive Director
December 4th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Thanks for the update as to the working conditions …lesley
December 4th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Carolyn: I am happy you are continuing your Honduran effort. I hope that this will continue, in part because I may need your help.
As you are probably aware the entire concept of a centralized filter only makes sense in an environment in which water delivery to “subscribers” is continuous. Otherwise, when pressure is removed (or seriously reduced) in the distribution piping there will be incursion of contaminants into the piping. This not only makes the centralized filter ineffective, but actually detrimental in that subscribers will never know when, or if, their water is safe. My impression is that intermittent water distribution is the single, most serious cause of “Montezuma’s Revenge” throughout Latin America. When I reviewed published literature on Honduras I only found one area that showed continuous water distribution. This is why I am going to be really hardnosed in insisting that Cristales show the capacity to provide continuous water distribution before I actually allow the creation of the centralized filter. Other than that we will probably want to provide individual slow-sand filters to homes in Cristales. This gives me cause to be interested in your manufacturing capacity in the Trujillo area. When I visited the Taller I got the feeling that it was moribund, and maybe on the way out in favor of your plastic extrusion capacity in-Country. Can you please bring me up to date on your experience of plastic vs. concrete??
Dean