My New Year 2013 began with a
spirit of adventure and service. I
traveled to Guatemala to participate in a project designed by Engineers without
Borders (EWB) – UWM Chapter. I
spent a week in a small village called Visiban located in the Mayan region of
the Cuchumatanes Mountains in Northwestern Guatemala.
The team consisted of two
professional mentors and six UWM students. Their project this time was to build a Spring Box. Most springs in a mountainside do not
have a steady or adequate flow rate. A Spring Box is a structure engineered to
make optimum use of a natural spring.
It functions as a point of collection of water and also to protect the
spring water from contamination. The EWB team had designed
the Spring Box and they oversaw its construction by the local masons.
The team also educated the
local population about the importance of clean water and the need for good
hygiene related to water. The
outreach involved relationship building with the village elders (la committee),
speaking in Spanish, communal living in one room in a school house using
sleeping bags, no electricity and usual amenities, and slippery terrain in the
mountains at an altitude of 10,000 ft. where it rained often. Temperatures were in the 40s at night
and 60s during the day.
The Spring Box was
successfully built and a steady flow of water was achieved from it. The next phase is to build a Holding
Tank and then to pump the water to the village at about 600 ft. above. This is an unusual approach due to the
lack of power infrastructure. Most
of the Distribution Tanks built by EWB in this area during the past five years
use gravity fed water distribution.
In this village, there was no choice but to use a spring at a lower
altitude and to pump the water up.
Here, EWB will need a significant amount of sponsorship to pump the
water up to the village of Visiban.
A fund raising event will be held on Feb. 23, 2013 by silent auction
beginning at 3:30pm in the Union Building at UWM. For details, please contact me at Tel: 414-227-3121 or email
me at mvedula@uwm.edu
