Day of the devil

Overwhelmed. One year later, that is still the word that describes how I feel here.

There are many things that I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around. The extreme generosity of strangers and friends who are little more than strangers. The lack of education, even in educated people. The heat.

But today I am mostly experiencing the now familiar feeling of overpowering uselessness. The water project construction I focused my entirety on last month is dead in its tracks: the Honduran government (SANAA) still hasn’t sent the tubes to start building the system, even though the communities have been digging the trenches for over a month. The foreman overseeing construction is getting restless living there without any work due to lack of materials. The local NGO Alfalit is buying materials bit by bit to keep the communities and the foreman from giving up, but its staff are getting frustrated with SANAA’s lack of participation in the contract the two organizations signed to cooperate on the project. Even the two communities are fighting amongst themselves over the little bit of sand, cement and rebar being provided to them for the shared system that will benefit them both.

It will be months before the system begins to be constructed in earnest, and months after that before it is done, and then what will come of it? A community leader whose land is immediately below one of the storage tanks already has his eye on using “his share” of the paltry quantity of water the system will provide to irrigate his vegetable field, which could potentially cut off those below him from receiving any water at all. It is likely that even after being educated on the disease-eradicating benefits of chlorinating their water, they still probably won’t do it because of local lore that chlorine causes sterility and the cop-out excuse that they are too poor to buy it. And after all the back-breaking labor and millions of lempiras put into the construction of the system and education of how to use it, it is still only a system of weak plastic tubes. It may very well be destroyed by a hurricane just like the several storms that swept across the north coast last fall, damaging dozens of similar systems that still haven’t been repaired.

Will having a water system really result in anything besides a lot of frustration, disappointment and interinstitutional and inter-community strife? I have to hope so, or I may as well quit now.