CENTRAL AMERICA
EL SALVADOR
ASAPROSAR
In El Salvador I have worked with the Salvadoran Association for Rural Health (ASAPROSAR – www.asaprosar.org) on seven previous occasions, training dowsers, presenting water resources workshops, and promoting water filtration devices. They are the owners of one of the DeepRock HydraDrills (portable drilling equipment) donated by WFH (here in partnership with Heifer Project International), to who I have also given training on operation and maintenance. Last year, with a grant from WFH, I purchased 30 ceramic water filters to introduce to ASAPROSAR target villages. This year, I intend to follow up on these projects, especially the water filters and hopefully buy and distribute more. In addition, there is interest in my helping them with a latrine project and I would like to introduce the composting latrine design which I have been building in Honduras and Ecuador.
Mira Flores
This community, near the international airport, is a principle target village of the local NGO (non-governmental organization) Manos Amigas (Helping Hands) based in San Salvador. Manos Amigas collaborates with the US-based (NY) NGO Pediatricians for Central Americas Children (PCAC – www.latininos.org) who first contacted me for help with the water situation in Mira Flores. When I arrived in 2006, the villagers had no water except what was brought in on a tanker truck at exorbitant prices. I did a dowsing survey, and the site I picked next to the new clinic was later drilled by the US-based sectarian NGO Living Waters International. They hit water about where I predicted and there was so much water that it was spurting ten feet out of the ground! Next, in 2007, funding was provided by a WFH restricted fund for the construction of a composting latrine on the other side of the clinic. The purpose of this was to eliminate the need to use precious water in flush latrines, provide a more hygienic alternative to the pit latrine, and protect the groundwater. This trip I would like to see what more I can do about the water situation, perhaps dowse and develop an additional well, offer trainings, and observe the completed composting latrine. There is a possibility of collaborating with a chapter of Engineers Without Borders on this as well. In addition, I will offer further help to Habitat El Salvador in promoting composting latrines. Last year I also provided the clinic with a ceramic water filter, so this year I would like to promote and possibly distribute more water filters in the target villages of Manos Amigas.
San Jose Villanueva
Here I taught a dowsing course on the largest organic farm in the country, owned by my host in San Salvador, Melinda Altschul and her family. Melinda has the idea to establish a center for appropriate technology modeled on Gaviotas in Columbia, and I would like to explore further the possibility of setting this up. I also have a request to assist with the projects of Pediatricians for Central Americas Children related to water resources in this community.
US PEACE CORPS
I have collaborated with US Peace Corps volunteers before, both visiting their host villages to dowse and they interpreting for me. If time permits, I would like to offer a dowsing course at PC headquarters in El Salvador, water resources courses in villages selected by Water & Sanitation director Angelina Zamboni, and further collaborate with Rolando Barillas, who is a director at PC and also a volunteer with the POA program. In addition, there is a Peace Corps volunteer working in a village near the Guatemalan border who has requested my assistance.
HONDURAS
CEASO
Honduras was where it all started when I was first invited by the US Partners of the Americas program (www.partners.net) in 1999 to help restore water resources in the wake of Hurricane Mitch by training dowsers. POA collaborates with a network of Centers for Teaching and Learning in the country and the Honduras Conservation Corps. The CEA network and HCC were the recipients of the first drill donated by WFH, which I trained people to operate and maintain in addition to the whole gamut of water resources workshops I have given them over seven previous visits. On every visit I am hosted by one of the CEA centers, located in Siguatepeque, a center for sustainable agriculture, run by the Santos family. This and other CEA centers have requested my return to conduct more dowsing trainings. I also want to follow up on the project last year in building slow-sand bio-filters for households, promote and possibly distribute the ceramic water filters, and explore the possibility of establishing a factory to manufacture the ceramic water filters in the northern highlands. I would also like to further collaborate with Habitat for Humanity’s office in Siguatepeque to promote the composting latrines. Furthermore, I have been invited to visit the site on the Cayos Cochinos islands where composting latrines based on my design have been built, and offer a variety of workshops there.
Norma I. Love Foundation, Mocoron, La Mosquitia
Quite by chance, while on my 2006 visit to Honduras, I was invited to visit the remote Mosquito Coast to do a survey of dug wells and pumps in various states of disrepair. Now that USAID is putting in a water system there, WFH’s help with wells is no longer a priority. However, this organization has asked for a composting latrine as a pilot project to introduce them to the Mosquito Indians, and were provided funding from WFH to do so. I would like to visit them again, to assess their needs since hit by Hurricane Felix, and provide guidance in building, maintaining or using the composting latrine
SOUTH AMERICA
ECUADOR
Lunahuasi, province of Puerto Quito
A grant from WFH in 2002 funded the development of a dug well for a center and school for shamanism, native spiritual traditions and indigenous medicine in the Amazon rainforest (www.familyluna.com). During my first visit to Ecuador in 2007, I visited Mr. Eduardo Luna at the site of his organization, Lunahausi, in the Andean rainforest, and saw the completed well. The next year I met with them to help rehabilitate this same well on a project to install tiles. This year I would like to return to assist Eduardo and his brothers to install a manual pump on the Lunahuasi well, and begin a well project in an adjacent village.
Cotacachi
Vermonter Pete Shear is former director of the Central America program at Burlington College and currently directs CASA (Inter-American Center for the Arts, Sustainability and Action www.casainteram.org) from his home there in Ecuador. The first year he invited me here to give a series of three dowsing and water resources workshops as part of a team of many experts in sustainable development. At that time some seed money was given to construct a proto-type composting latrine. In 2008, I visited two communities initiating ecotourism projects and supervised the beginning of construction of composting latrines there. I would like to return again to follow up on this project and offer more trainings there in the northern highlands.
Manabi
Here on the Pacific coast it is very dry, as moisture drops east of the mountains paralleling the coastline. At the request of Heifer Project International, in 2008 I returned to the province of Manabi to give a two-day dowsing and water resources workshop to an organization called UPOCAM, who I had met with in the first year. This group is planning to start a dowsing organization and I would like to revisit them to encourage this and offer another workshop. Over the last two years, funding from the Amherst UCC was provided for the construction of a culvert so that rain water could fill the tapas (a kind of reservoir) in the community of Santa Rosa. I would like to revisit this project as well. As time and funding permits, I expect to visit other locations around the country with Heifer to offer trainings and initiate projects.
Vilcabamba
If time and funds permit, I will visit this rainforest land preserve and eco-center (www.ieeni.org).
IF TIME PERMITS…
Guatemala
In 2006 I taught a dowsing workshop at the Mesoamerican Permaculture Institute (IMAP) near San Lucas Toliman on the shores of Lake Atitlan. The class selected a well site which needs to be drilled. Following that, solar or wind pumping technology needs to be selected and tank and distribution system set up to benefit this center for sustainable agriculture and the surrounding village.
Belize
This is the only Central America country I have not yet visited, but I would like to visit the projects of the US-based NGO Sustainable Harvest International (SHI – www.sustainableharvest.org), and since they also have projects in Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, set up a collaboration.
Bolivia
WFH committee member Silvana Castillo visited an organization called Jarana in this country while there on another project. A WFH grant was awarded in 2006 to purchase drilling equipment for this group, and they have requested someone come to present a dowsing workshop. I would like to do this for them, possibly with Silvana, and observe how the drilling project is going.
MY “WISH LIST” FOR FUTURE TRIPS
ASIA
India, state of Tamil Nadu
Brother James Kimpton, Catholic missionary, dowser and director of the local NGO Reaching the Unreached was the first recipient of a grant from WFH. He has received a WFH grant every year since, and over that time, several other Indian NGOs have been funded by WFH. India has received more funding at this point than any other country, and thus a visit by a WFH representative is advantageous to meet its beneficiary organizations, offer trainings and visit completed and prospective projects.
AFRICA
Senegal
WFH once gave me a small grant while I was serving as a US peace Corps volunteer, which allowed me to dowse all over this country in West Africa. Later another grant funded the digging of a well here, in addition to the well project I did while there with funding through Peace Corps. Being familiar with the country and being somewhat able to speak the language I would like to start more projects here. The NGO Potters for Peace is exploring the possibility of establishing a ceramic water filter factory here, and I would like to assist with that.
Tanzania
Having done only one project so far on this entire continent, I feel WFH needs to establish more of a presence in Africa. Over the last year, I have been communicating with a Jacqueline Ambrose of Hawaii, a former resident of Tanzania and who is acting as a liaison for a project with the Anglican Church of Tanzania Development Office near Tabora. I am happy to say that WFH has awarded funding for a rainwater catchment structure at the Kwihala Primary School. I would like to visit this project and offer various trainings at the same time. Also, another project is in the works through a Mr. Harry Twitchell of Vermont, a friend of fellow Danville Chapter member Frank Swift.
Kenya
For years, the Mathengeta Water Project here has been struggling to materialize through liaison Mark Fulford, WFH Advisor, and his contact, Mr. Edward Chege. A personal visit could help get this rolling. Also, there is the potential to do projects in this country with a US-based NGO called Expanding Opportunities (www.exop.org). It is run by a woman by the name of Beverly Stone, who lives in the Belfast area of Maine and who Mark Fulford and I have met with.
Burkina Faso
I have been in touch with Sobonfu Some about helping her with her project Walking for Water (www.walkingforwater.org), to benefit the people of her native tribe of the Dagara. She is the wife of Malidoma Patrice Some, the author of the incredible book Of Water and the Spirit.
Ghana
Monica Weston is a native of Sweden, and director of a US-based NGO called World of Hope International (www.wohi.org). We have been in touch also about the possibility of a WFH collaboration on projects in this country.
The Gambia
Recently I met a man at the Common Ground Fair in Maine from this country who would like to do a variety of water projects in The Gambia, a tiny English-speaking country enclosed within my host country of Senegal. Mr. Njie would be happy to be my translator in both countries should I visit.
CENTRAL AMERICA
Panama
Chuck McLure of my same hometown of Littleton, NH, has approached me for help with a remote area of southern Panama where the local Indians are in great need of potable water sources. |
