Nourish and the Health and Sanitation Campaign

Little known fact about Peruvian transport: 12 people can fit (barely) in an 8 person van.

As our 12 person team squished into the van for the first time Monday morning, everyone talked about our schedule for the day. We headed to Ciudad de Dios to begin our 6 week project. After seeing the sites briefly over the weekend, we were excited about getting to work and discussed how our ideas would neatly work within the community. Our plans included building pilot latrines in a least one home in Ciudad de Dios. Before we got to Ciudad, we were convinced our approach was the best… little did we know.

As soon as we began talking to folks around the village, we found out many more homes than we thought already had latrines. We visited the community leader’s home to see how his latrine worked. His family taught us about how the upper class within the community is lucky enough to have their own, functional bathroom facilities. We noticed some major differences. Their design seemed perfect…but it was too close to the waterline to be completely sanitary.

Our previous design was not exactly the same and we wondered how accepted it would be within the community. After much discussion, we decided to go ahead with our VIP design that we are still currently working on perfecting. And so ended the first day of the first week…

This was part of the area where we mapped, which had an amazingly intricate irrigation system.

Tuesday brought our group to another village called Cerro Blanco. Many of the villages are close together but no one knows for sure who lives there. Another element of our project is knowing how many people live in each part and where they live. We will be giving health assessments to the citizens to see where their health needs concentrate so we can later build a clinic serving those needs. The task of the day was to map out the different zones…this proved to be a little more challenging, but with the help of locals, it was done quickly and efficiently.

For the first time, we all were able to interact with local people as we walked around and observed the place they call home. Many people told us how much they appreciated what we would be doing. Simply hearing that what we are doing means something to the citizens gave me a renewed energy for the day and hope for the rest of the project.

Even with all the planning and strategizing, we had time to see the miracle of life. The dog at our hostel gave birth to 5 pups. The dog had been sporting a fashionable yet oversized plaid sweater since we got here. Unbeknownst to us, she had begun having contractions. We finally discovered what the jacket hid as 5 small puppies became new members of the Nourish International family.

Now that we have a clearer idea of what we need to do, we can visualize our final project and who it will benefit.