For the past two years, we've been bringing you updates from Guatemala whenever a Missouri S&T group is down there to make water improvements for local villages. We have received our first dispatch of 2008 from Adam Nanney, one of the students who will be working in Guatemala for the rest of the week. Adam says he'll send a photo or two with his next transmission.
We arrived Saturday January 5 in Guatemala City at 2:30 p.m. After retrieving our luggage we rented a van and began the trip to Antigua. The trip was about an hour. We arrived at our hotel at about 5 p.m., which was very nice. The rooms were well equiped with cable TV, individual bathrooms, and other comfortable amenitities. All the students went to Pollo Campero that night for dinner. It is a national fastfood chain in Guatemala that specializes in chicken products. The next morning, the hotel provided an amazing breakfast for our whole group. It included eggs, pancakes, sausage, rolls, and beans (a local breakfast food). After breakfast, the group met with John and Dorthy, two Canadians who our working on a project in a small village about an hour outside of Antigua in the highlands. The group then traveled with John and Dorthy to Sacala, the village were they have been working. The village desires to install a system that will privide the whole village with clean drinking water.
More after the jump.
We arrived at about 10 a.m and then attended a meeting with the local water committee. At the meeting, the students discussed their purpose for coming to the village, and the town expressed what they desired in a water system. A translater was present to aid in the communication and try to get over the language barrier. Our desire was to learn about their current water system, develop possible plans for improving the system or installing a well in the town. After some communication difficulities during the meeting, the group received a short tour of the village. The group then returned back to Antigua for the night. We split into two groups and each group ate dinner and got on the internet separately. Tomorrow we plan on visiting Ecofilter, a company in Ciudad de Viejo that produces a simple water filter device.
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