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Water For Humanity in Central America & Haiti
by: Steven G. Herbert
Master Gardener Class of 1999
(updated December 18, 2005)
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Instructors
Steve Herbert (left) and Ken Bannister (right) assist Abel Ortiz (center),
director of a Honduran center for sustainable agriculture, in obtaining
a dowsing reaction. |
Immediately following the conclusion of the '99 Master Gardener course, I was off to Honduras in Central America to apply that knowledge in the wake of Hurricane Mitch, at the invitation of the U.S. Partners of the Americas and Farmer to Farmer programs. As a dowser with experience in locating water for African villages during Peace Corps service, and as a committee member of the non-profit Water for Humanity Fund, I and fellow dowser/hydrogeologist Ken Bannister trained rural farmers and agricultural promoters how to locate water by this ancient art. This empowered these people to find water themselves with simple and inexpensive tools, freeing them from dependence on professionals and expensive technology.
In concert with water dowsing training, we also taught Hondurans applications of dowsing to agriculture. By use of a pendulum and a series of charts, farmers learned how to dowse such things as needed macronutrients, soil amendments, sun/shade requirements, planting and harvesting times, soil texture and pH, problem diagnosis, and much more. Agricultural dowsing has been compared with soil test kit results with very close agreement.
In the West African country of Senegal, in addition to agroforestry and dowsing projects, I also conducted a side project of designing and building composting latrines. This I promoted in Honduras as well, explaining the advantages of creating a valuable resource and soil amendment out of waste, while protecting groundwater and improving health and sanitation at the same time. I urged them not to follow the example of America and other First World nations in their wasteful and environmentally ludicrous habit of flushing human waste away. I asked them to think of water as the sacred and miraculous substance that it is and not to treat it with such disrespect.
Since that first two-week trip, I spent seven weeks the next year traveling overland to Honduras to repeat these trainings while doing the same work in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua on the way down. Spending three months tin 2001, January through March, I added to the above work by training people to use portable drilling equipment donated by Water for Humanity and Heifer Project International in Honduras and El Salvador. This has empowered them to not only find water, but now to drill for it themselves. In 2002, trainings in appropriate pumping technology were added. Also fellow dowser Don Nolan of Wisconsin initiated a similar dowsing and drilling project in Nicaragua, and that the first composting latrine has been built in Honduras.
Later that same year, I was invited to Haiti to institute a water resources development program based on that established in Central America. During my three and a half weeks there and in the Dominican Republic, I had a request for water filtration technology. Since then I researched and developed a household slow-sand filtration device. This is a quite efficient appropriate technology, which can be made with local materials and easily maintained. Its further advantage is as an alternative to chemical disinfection, most commonly by chlorine, which is carcinogenic and often not cost-effective. The other option to boil was also no longer needed, eliminating the environmentally harmful practice of burning wood. During my month in El Salvador in 2003, a prototype was built for a rural health organization, adding further to their water resources development and sustainable agricultural programs. For 2004, the focus will be on these filters, composting trainings and building latrines. |
For additional information, please contact
me at:
Steven Herbert
Post Office
Box 824,
Colchester, Vermont 05446
or email: waterdowser@hotmail.com
| Additional photoos from Central America |
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|
Participants
in a three-day dowsing and drilling course practice drill operation in
Santa Ana, El Salvador. |
Abel
Ortiz of Honduras beams as he experiences a dowsing reaction for the first
time with the L-rods. |
|
|
Benito
Jasmin and Baptist missionary Wayne Niles display home-made augers designed
for hand drilling in the north of Haiti. |
A
prototype slow-biosand filtration device built for rural families in El
Salvador. |
 |
 |
Instructor
Steve Herbert demonstrates how to dowse with a pendulum and agricultural
charts. |
Charts
such as this can be used to dowse soils for nutrient levels, pH, texture,
contaminants or amendments, plants for sun/shade requirements, treatments
or problem diagnosis, dates of planting, harvest, frost, etc. |
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|
| A
model of a double vault composting latrine used in instruction. |
The
first composting latrine is completed at a center for sustainable agriculture
in Singuatepeque, Honduras. |
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