I leave El Gusano this Thursday night or Friday morning. That's 3 days more, tops, in the place. I'm gonna miss it a lot. I have a ton of pictures so I'm pretty ready to get home and dive deeper into the editing process and work with sound as well. I'm just trying to collect some final stories and some pictures that were so basic that I overlooked them.
I'm excited to share the stories with anyone who will listen of the people I met. Let me know if you want to see some, and I will try to make it happen before I leave for Argentina on the 19th. Lots of stories, a complex issue. I put two pictures on www.flickr.com/photos/brittanykamalei of a lovely woman in the community, Lupe. It's a good place to start.
I hope all is going well on your end, wherever you are. Please send me updates, I'd love to hear about it!
Besos!
martes, 23 de junio de 2009
lunes, 22 de junio de 2009
Clean Water in Tamaula
Francisco Laguna is one of the elders in the community who has spent his time working in the States but now is in Tamaula to stay. He said that potable water is not an issue during the rainy season, but that they suffer much during the dry season. Each house has a water tank that collects rain water and can store up to about 500 liters. Once the rain stops, their supply dwindles quickly.
The government helps provide water during the dry season, although they are an unreliable source. They bring up a truck of water generally once every eight days that they pour into large water buckets alongside the soccer field, if they remember.
Francisco says that what the community really needs is for each family to have a 20,000 liter water cistern, which is about $600 each to construct. About eight families have already built these, yet the remaining 37 families cannot afford this cost as they struggle to buy food each week. It would cost $22,200 to build a cistern at the rest of these houses. That’s $22,200 for an entire community to have potable water, which is the cost of a semester for of college some of the students who have volunteered Tamaula this summer. While this cost could be gifted by a private donor, there’s an even more sustainable way to go about funding the construction of these cisterns that, over a few years, would be a cost to no one, and even a financial gain to some.
The government probably spends a quarter of the $22,200 in gas and labor costs each year in bringing up water to the thirsty community. If this cost comparison was shown to someone in the local government in Guanajuato, they would be able to see that if they made this investment of $22,200 this year in building these cisterns and stop trucking water up on a weekly basis, then after four years they would have gained the money back in savings gained from a proper reallocation of financial resources.
Although a private donor could gift this money to the community to construct the cisterns, it is better that the government recognizes this plan as a sustainable, effective means of providing a necessary service to its people. This way, they can enact this plan and both save money for themselves over the years and begin to regain the trust of its people.
Another problem is that many people, such as the government, don’t believe that these are real problems because almost everyone in Tamaula lives in a fancy, large house, often times furnished with the riches of the north. However, this supposition is false. The men who migrated north to find jobs sweated over years saving enough money to build these expensive houses. Although water no longer leaks through the roof during the rainy season, new problems have surfaced and continue to abound in Tamaula.
Ignacio Laguna was able to afford an comfortable, one-story house for his wife and daughter, Clara and Luz. The luxuries of this new home include a bathroom, three large bedrooms, two televisions, a large kitchen, and solar panels. While this family lives in Mexican luxury, they continue to use electricity because they cannot afford to replace the dead batteries in the solar panels.
Mexico is full of towns like Tamaula with stories like the Laguna family. The question that political scientists, social critics, and many migrant families are asking is, “Will Mexicans continue to have to migrate to the US in order to provide for their families, or is there another way?” May we never stop thinking creatively and may no box constrain us as we re-imagine a new way.
The government helps provide water during the dry season, although they are an unreliable source. They bring up a truck of water generally once every eight days that they pour into large water buckets alongside the soccer field, if they remember.
Francisco says that what the community really needs is for each family to have a 20,000 liter water cistern, which is about $600 each to construct. About eight families have already built these, yet the remaining 37 families cannot afford this cost as they struggle to buy food each week. It would cost $22,200 to build a cistern at the rest of these houses. That’s $22,200 for an entire community to have potable water, which is the cost of a semester for of college some of the students who have volunteered Tamaula this summer. While this cost could be gifted by a private donor, there’s an even more sustainable way to go about funding the construction of these cisterns that, over a few years, would be a cost to no one, and even a financial gain to some.
The government probably spends a quarter of the $22,200 in gas and labor costs each year in bringing up water to the thirsty community. If this cost comparison was shown to someone in the local government in Guanajuato, they would be able to see that if they made this investment of $22,200 this year in building these cisterns and stop trucking water up on a weekly basis, then after four years they would have gained the money back in savings gained from a proper reallocation of financial resources.
Although a private donor could gift this money to the community to construct the cisterns, it is better that the government recognizes this plan as a sustainable, effective means of providing a necessary service to its people. This way, they can enact this plan and both save money for themselves over the years and begin to regain the trust of its people.
Another problem is that many people, such as the government, don’t believe that these are real problems because almost everyone in Tamaula lives in a fancy, large house, often times furnished with the riches of the north. However, this supposition is false. The men who migrated north to find jobs sweated over years saving enough money to build these expensive houses. Although water no longer leaks through the roof during the rainy season, new problems have surfaced and continue to abound in Tamaula.
Ignacio Laguna was able to afford an comfortable, one-story house for his wife and daughter, Clara and Luz. The luxuries of this new home include a bathroom, three large bedrooms, two televisions, a large kitchen, and solar panels. While this family lives in Mexican luxury, they continue to use electricity because they cannot afford to replace the dead batteries in the solar panels.
Mexico is full of towns like Tamaula with stories like the Laguna family. The question that political scientists, social critics, and many migrant families are asking is, “Will Mexicans continue to have to migrate to the US in order to provide for their families, or is there another way?” May we never stop thinking creatively and may no box constrain us as we re-imagine a new way.
lunes, 8 de junio de 2009
Adventures abound
I spent the past 3 days in Tamaula, another small rural community in Guanajuato where FCB works and has some projects. They work with some groups that provide goats to families and others that provided some equipment so that a few families can make and sell goat cheese in larger quantities in the community. I loved the family I stayed with. The couple was Ignacio (Nacho), Clara, and their daughter Lucy (Luz). They were so great to spend time with and talk to. Clara and I talked about everything from healthy diets for children to discussing the similarities in her Catholic and my Protestant backgrounds. Shaw and I listened to many stories from Nacho, including how he crossed the border 3 different times (which required several attempts each time) to how he got in an really bad car accident in the states that required so much medical treatment, including a new set of teeth, that he had to go back to Mexico where it was cheaper. In that community, if there is a man over the age of 20 or so, you can ask what part of the states he's been to and there's a 95% chance that he's been. They're all back though, bc life in the states is rough. No jobs, as they kept saying. Not all went illegally though. I think about 9 guys had visas to work with a landscaping company in Washington. One man had a story that just broke my heart. He was working in the states and met his wife (also Mexican) through the company they were both working for. They had a daughter together and were living pretty happy lives. She had gone through the process and gotten papers, and he was working on it, until he got pulled for a minor driving infraction, didn't have a license, and the cop asked him to show his papers, which he obviously couldn't, so he got sent to a holding center or essentially a jail, with all the other people who were gonna be deported. This happened in Alabama, where I'm pretty sure it was illegal at the time for the cop to take the liberty to ask for documentation-that's only legal in a few counties, like Durham County near where I live, for example. Anyways, now he is working with the goats in Tamaula with his father, waiting for Obama to change the immigration laws to allow people who have family legally in the states who were deported due to a minor, minor infraction to be able to return to their families. His wife has another child on the way. Thankfully, they're coming to visit Tamaula next month so that he can see them and his daughter will stay with him for awhile while his wife returns to have the child in the states. C'mon Obama. There are families that are divided due to racist police officers and others all down the system. This is injustice.
So many other thoughts but I've gotta go get ready to go to another community now. I'll write more on the water situation there in my next post.
Shalom.
So many other thoughts but I've gotta go get ready to go to another community now. I'll write more on the water situation there in my next post.
Shalom.
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