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Tuesday, January 19, 2010
After a dynamic two weeks of intense work, our four teams have started our third and final week of work in El Salvador. Wrapping up interviews with program administrators, local clinics, and our comprehensive community surveys, the Infrastructure team has started the initial analysis of our findings.
Backtracking to the beginning of our journey, the Infrastructure team -composed of Sky, Melissa, Adam, our fantastic interpreter Hilda and myself- has set out to design and execute a comprehensive baseline study of the impact of potable water on two communities in the Tierra Blanca region, La Amistad and La Solidaridad, that have had potable water for two years. No study or investigation has been done on these communities since they’ve received access to water, having been the very first two communities in a distribution system originally designed to accommodate five. Three other communities are currently in the construction, implementation, and testing phases and are projected to receive water access within the next several months.
The first week of our work was heavily based on assessing the current potable water conditions in our region of interest, learn about the structure, mechanics, pricing, and logistics of the system, and conduct in-depth interviews with the coordinators of the Infrastructure program, Luis and Dina. Since a large aspect of our study involves assessing the impact of the health of the communities, next we decided to visit the local clinics in Tierra Blanca and interview the doctors as well as the dynamics of the clinics themselves- there being significant differences between the public health clinic and the private ones. The process of interviewing, discussing, interviewing, and discussing some more revealed interesting personal agendas amongst the different stakeholders, potential conflicts of interest, and drew heavily on the inefficiencies of the previous administration, suppressive and corrupt political climate, as well as a renewed sense of energy and hope in the communities after having put the FLMN into power in the spring of 2009.
Our second week was the most challenging one thus far, having started with the development of our baseline survey and being taken into the communities to start the household interviews. The first version of our survey was eight pages long and had 74 dense, multi-faceted questions… a recipe for failure, as we soon learned. As we very painfully found out during our first group meeting with the first family in La Amistad, our design was inherently flawed- the questions were too lengthy, too wordy, too academic, too open to interpretation, and so on. We also failed to create a comfort zone with the family by not having introduced our objectives clearly enough and by including a representative from La Coordinadora with us during the interviews- something that we later realized created a feeling of discomfort and was highly likely to skew the results of the answers. During the evolution of the design process, the survey changed at least four or five times. It was drastically cut down, irrelevant and repetitive questions were taken out, questions were broken down to the simplest language possible (that including colloquial language), the logical order of the questions was changed, and two new sections were added. We also changed the format of how we presented ourselves and asked to be left alone with the families, at which point we immediately started developing a rapport with the person we were interviewing, all while stressing our neutrality and the independence of our research. After having gone through this process our experience changed dramatically- the answers and feedback from the two communities started pouring in immediately, with much fascinating (as well as some concerning) information coming to light. Here are a few of our many findings:
– The water distribution system has no drainage; the water that is delivered to the families is used and then dumped either onto the dirt “patio”, in the street (loosely speaking) or onto plants, or collected in some sort of containers. This creates a constant presence of mud, stagnant water, and an increase in the presence of mosquitoes. There is also a heavy presence of animals and livestock walking through the properties, defecating, and drinking the stagnant water, which creates a brand new set of problems and potential illnesses. Add to that the scores of barefoot children running around in the mud and dirty water, plus additional water deposited from the rains of the winter season.
– There was little education of the benefits of potable water, leading many families to question it and even distrust it to the point of not using it for weeks. Much fear was created at the initial stages of purifying the water with chlorine tablets (which appears to not have been done correctly), which created a sense of panic over the different color, smell, and taste of the new water. A myth consequently spun out that chlorine is responsible for kidney problems and kidney failure.
– There are substantial gaps in communication, understanding of the pricing process, as well as service delivery> community politics appear to heavily influence which families will become beneficiaries of particular goods or services, as opposed to legitimate needs.
– The levels of education between community members range from no education at all to an average education level equivalent to fourth grade, however there is a genuine interest among community members to learn new skills and methods for income generation. The ones mentioned most frequently were tailoring, sewing, making bread, cosmetology and hair cutting, electric work, and carpentry.
– Though a substantial body of varying responses was collected, the majority of families agreed that their and their children’s health has visibly improved in the two years of having potable water. The two areas of vast improvement are the decrease in the instances of diarrhea and parasites.
– The communities of Amistad and Solidaridad are almost entirely ran by women in a way that was as shocking as it was exhilarating: the women do everything from running the households to building homes, excavating, selling, working in the fields, leading community groups, and pretty much everything else. The men are the minority both in physical numbers as well as the influence they have in the two communities.
stagnant water run-off in the streets of the Solidaridad community
*for some additional photos, which I will be updating in the next few days, feel free to visit www.lucynajodlowska.com/go-to-my-day
