Chapter 25: glaciers, avalanches and drinking water

Chichubamba—What fascinates me is that no-one died. One night in October, 2010, An avalanche came roaring down the valley below the Apu chichon glacier, pictured above, heading directly toward this agrotourism community on the border of Urubamba. Someone lucky enough not to be in the line of fire had a telephone handy and notified the people downstream. And into their streets they ran, racing from house to house, telling their neighbors to flee. The avalanche worked its way between the hills pictured below down toward the valley where Urubamba is situated. 

The straight stretch of road pictured here goes directly uphill into Chichubamba, whose water system was damaged in the slide. Rocks piled up at the edge of the community. But Everyone made it to safety. It proved to be a very effective rescue for a community without a modern emergency infrastructure.

Sometimes news accounts attribute landslides in Peru to earthquakes. But glaciers can also be a cause. In April 2010 a huge ice chunk measuring 500 by 200 meters came off a glacier, and landed in a lake, causing a 23-meter-high tsunami that swept away three people, destroyed a water processing plant serving 60,000 residents, and caused flooding 20 kilometers away

Local officials were said to see this as another indication glaciers are disappearing in Peru, home to a whopping 70 per cent of the world's tropical ice fields. There is worry that within 20 years  warmer temperatures will cause them to melt away altogether. (http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/storm_watch_stories3&stormfile=PeruFlood_aprtwelve_12_04_2010)

The problem  has generated some interesting proposals, including the effort by four men from the village of Licapa to whitewash loose rocks around the summit of one mountain with lime, industrial egg white and water, in hopes of helping the mountain to cool down by reflecting more of the sun’s rays back into space, thereby growing a microclimate for preserving glaciers. They whitewashed two hectares in two weeks. (http://www.markawasi.com/paintmountains.html

When our Global Outreach team from Seattle arrived in Urubamba, a shaman performed a welcoming ceremony in which he called on the spirits of the mountains, the “apus,” to receive and protect us. The rock fall that threatened chichubamba suggests that the apus are not always benevolent spirits.

A few days after our arrival in Urubamba we met Alejondro Huaman Laurel, president of chichubamba, who told us his community filters 45 cubic meters of water each day. Mr. Laurel, pictured below with one of the ProPeru home water filters,  took us on a tour of the community’s water system.

We strolled past the small drainage channel through which a steady stream of glacial meltwater flows:

Along the path were walls of rock piled up from the landslide a year earlier:

Clearly visible were water pipes yet to be repaired from the avalanche:

We got a look at the filter used to chlorinate water:

 

The trees in the background of this photo below are eucalyptus –non-native trees that have been introduced. Most of Peru's native forests are gone, and non-native species which have severely impacted the native ecosystem, have replaced them.

I mentioned that Chichubamba is involved in agrotourism. Cow breeding is a source of income, complemented with textiles, ceramics, the breeding of guinea pigs and beekeeping. Guinea pigs don’t need a lot of help reproducing; when we were installing stoves in people’s homes it was all we could do to keep from stepping on the “cui.” (They call them “cui” because that’s the squeaky sound these critters make as they are scurring around the dirt floors, awaiting the moment when they become the next meal. In a later visit, some of us purchased fresh honey from a local beekeeper, who blew smoke into his hive to calm the little critters and then let members of our group such as Dr. Patty Read-Williams, below, play with the bees.

The folks at Chichubamba are pretty user friendly. After our tour of the waterworks, Mariaelena, a lady whose home was situated near the reservoir, offered Joe Lerman, our translator, fruit from her prickly pear cactus.  It was quite sweet and tasty. Then she invied us in to check out her dog, which would willingly suckle a couple kittens living with her.

Afterward, Mariaelena posed with her grandson and Global Impact’s Seattle visitors Ena Lee and Amanda Gary. With its dirt floor and gaps between exterior planks, Maria Elena’s home is humble, but she nevertheless is living in a community with a clean, chlorinated drinking water system.

Next: Conclusion of the Inca Diaries—my favorite photos.

Chapter 24: Water

El Marcado, Urubamba, Peru, August 24--¨Agua pura! Agua limpia! Ceramica! Filtros de agua! Informacion!¨

Lynn Morrison and I were hawking water filters while ambling down the aisles of the central market in Urubamba. I was shouting and she was passing out small leaflets, telling Urubamba locals, vendors, and campesinos that there was a demonstration of clean drinking water filters just outside the market and down the street. 

ProPeru's Tavia Trulson shows ceramic water filter to Urubamba woman.

Surprisingly, the vendors, who couldn´t leave their stalls, were among the biggest takers. They wanted to know more about pure water, clean water, ceramic water filters and how many soles they cost. But others were interested as well, such as this gentleman who stopped to talk to Amanda Gary and Ena lee, two Global Impact volunteers from Seattle:

Lynn and I were just the latest manifestation of volunteers promoting the Kantu Ceramic Water Filter Project for Pro Peru, the agency coordinating and supporting our public health tourism adventure, Global Impact, which is the program supported by several Seattle community colleges. The Kantu is Peru’s national flower, and It often grows near water sources like rivers and streams. Images of the Kantu typically appear on the side of the water filters like the one below:

Here’s what the flower looks like:

These ceramic pot filters are impressive for their sophisticated simplicity. They are made from a clay, sawdust and water mixture that is pressed, aged and fired in a primitive process developed in Guatemala  in 1981 by an NGO (non-government organization) called “Potters for Peace.”  The design is unpatented. It was shared with the world. The filters meet stringent World Health Organization standards for screening out parasites and killing microbes.

The  world needs these filters. According to ProWorld (the parent organization for Pro Peru), at any time, half the world’s hospital beds are populated with people suffering from water-borne diseases, and about 2 million people die annually from diarrheal diseases, most of them children younger than five. While Lynn and I were promoting the filters, our teammates were back at the ProPeru office doing the “barro (mud) stomp”—crushing and mixing the fine clay from Cuzco with finely-sifted sawdust from local carpenters. Water is then added, and for two hours we mixed this recipe by smooshing it with our bare feet:

Then we crammed the clay into a mold from which the filters were pressed. Afterward they used a 20-ton hydraulic jack – the kind you might use to lift up a tractor or heavy vehicle – to squeeze the clay into shape:

Then  the filters were set aside to dry for  a month, prior to being fired for 12 hours at 850 degrees Centigrade. The mixing, baking temperature, and cooking time are critical because the pores of these ceramic filters have to be the right size, To ensure that water seeps through at the correct rate. The filters are painted with a silver colloidal alloy that will kill microbes that make their way through the pores. They are tested for efficiency prior to use.

Showing us the ropes on filter production and promotion was Mercedes Durand, water filter project coordinator for ProPeru. Born in the province of Urubamba, she received her bachelor's degree in Anthropology from La Universidad San Antonio Abad del Cusco. Upon graduating, she began working at a home for abandoned children and later as director of "Integrando," a pre-university school where she taught social sciences. Additionally, she worked as an Area Director during the 2007 Peruvian national census. 

Mercedes gives the barrow its initial compression before use of the 20-ton jack.

The press we used for initially shaping the pot was designed by Mercedes´ father. As the photos indicate, the press employs a long lever for the initial squeeze, and that 20-ton jack to finish the job.

by next year, ProPeru hopes to have a pressing machine, as well as a way to make its own silver colloid, which is expensive to purchase from Europe.

Linda Nguyen, Seattle, and ProPeru's Ernestina remove greenware from mold.

After drying for 30 days, 36 filters are fired at one time in a large oven, then soaked in water for four hours before being tested for their pour-through rate. Successful filters remove 99.8% of microbes. The filters are set into large plastic collection buckets with faucets such as this one pictured below.

They are rated to last for two years. ProPeru keeps track of the families who have them.

Production is just the first phase of the filters program. The second is public education, and today two teams took turns mixing the clay or working the market to distribute information and keep people aware of the importance of clean water. We set up a demonstration table next to a street mime who danced for dinero, and then several of us broke up into groups of two to yell out our announcements and pass out small information sheets.

We didn´t have to buttonhole. People nodded to us gringos or approached, signaling they wanted the information.

Now that you know a little bit about the filters, here’s a quick quiz:

How many of these Peruvian water-born diseases can you prounounce?

Hepatitis A - Viral disease that interferes with the liver function.

Typhoid fever - A bacterial disease causing high fevers. If left untreated, mortality rates can reach 20%.

Leptospirosis - Bacterial disease causing high fever, severe headache, vomiting, jaundice, and diarrhea. It can result in kidney damage, liver failure, meningitis, or respiratory distress.Recovery can take months.

Schistosomiasis - Caused by parasitic trematode flatworm Schistosoma. Fresh water snails release a larval form ofa  parasite that penetrates the skin of people exposed to contaminated water. Worms mature and reproduce in the blood vessels, liver, kidneys, and intestines releasing eggs, which become trapped in tissues triggering an immune response. It May manifest as either urinary or intestinal disease resulting in decreased work or learning capacity. Mortality, while generally low, may occur in advanced cases usually due to bladder cancer.

Fascioliasis - Occurs in many areas of the world. The Andean highlands of Bolivia and Peru have the highest rates of human infection. Usually recognized as an infection of the bile ducts and liver. Can also affect the gallbladder and pancreas. Nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, fever, rash, difficulty breathing.

E. Coli--Think Jack In The Box.

Giardia - A microscopic parasite that causes the diarrheal illness known as giardiasis, which can cause weight loss and failure to absorb fat, lactose, vitamin A and vitamin B12. In children, severe giardiasis might delay physical and mental growth, slow development, and cause malnutrition.

Cryptosporidiosis - A diarrheal disease caused by the protozoan parasite Cryptosporidium.

Cyclosporiasis – Transmitted by consuming food or water contaminated with C. cayetanensis. Symptoms include watery diarrhea (sometimes explosive), loss of appetite, bloating, stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, muscle aches, low-grade fever, and fatigue.

Let’s put this in perspective:

Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at any time.

Along with diarrhea, Contaminated water causes:

• Fever

• Anemia

• Malnutrition

• Stunted growth and development in children

• Dehydration

• Constipation

• Stomach pains

• Cysts, and

• Gastritis.

Distributing the filters.

Remember CQAcllaraccay? That was the place up near the Maras salt mine where we first flourided the teeth of children, who were also taught the importance of washing their hands. Remember the school’s slogan? (Our children are the generators of hope.)

We went back there on September 2 to provide some of these water filters for the classrooms and help the instructors teach the children about drinking clean water. In the photo below, Drs. Chuck Morrison and Patty Read-Williams relied of ProPeru’s Joe Lerman as translator to the teachers.

 Afterward we got together for a group photo of the school, teachers, kids, filters and that slogan.

other members of our teams met with the youngsters. In the accompanying photo, our pharmacist, Jasvir Karu Singh held in her hands a top, spun by one of the youngsters.

The morning of our visit we brainstormed on the things we needed to tell the instructors. But there was one issue that we couldn’t quite get around: What good does it do for children to drink clean water at school if they just get reinfected at home? They get reinfected in at least two ways – by playing in the dirt where their dogs defecate and leave parasitic worms, and by drinking water with microbes and parasites. We could deal with part of that problem by emphasizing hand washing, but how to deal with the cycle of bad drinking water that comes from the taps such as these?

Here’s my answer: According to John Mundy, a staffer at Pro Peru, there are about 50-60 families in that community. That means kids who are drinking clean water at school are going to return to 50 homes that don’t have clean water, where they will be reinfected.

To me,  breaking that cycle means coming up with 50 filters for those homes. John tells me the filter/bucket combinations cost about 73 soles – about $27 U.S. each. You can’t just buy them outright for the families; they have to have some buy-in. So let’s say they get subsidized at $20 a unit, that’s $1,000 for 50 families.

These are obviously ballpark figures, but if there’s one thing that should be obvious. it is this: There is gonna be some way to do this.

--------------------------
Agua pura! Agua limpia! Ceramica! Filtros de agua!

Besos y abrasos

Roberto

Chapter 23: The stoves of Little Afghanistan

CCotowincho, Agosto 26-- The tall, boxy stetson the Quechua woman wore couldn´t hide the fact that this grandmother was not even five feet tall. The lines on her mocha-colored face disclosed her years. She stepped out of the clinic into the bright noon-day sun and her small eyes glanced in my direction. I was close enough to the doorway that she extended her hand. I wasn´t one of the clinicians who had waited on her, but she extended her hand nonetheless. She was grateful.

Inside the clinic there was an oblong rectangular poster, a 360-degree view of the Urubamba valley as seen from CCotowincho, which is called ¨Afghanistan¨by the locals for its rugged, stark landscape. To one side you can still see the scar where a landslide deposited a pile of rubble along this border of Urubamba. The poster, which showed the soaring mountains that ring this valley included a slogan: "Una comunidad de viviendas productivas." (A community of productive housing.) The aspiration is noteworthy. Many of the homes in CCotowincho are as humble as the sod houses of  pioneers of the American prairie. A ditch beside one home where we installed a stove  served as the latrine. Much of the earth is chalk-like. These people are the poorest of the poor. And yet the slogan on that poster may be spot-on."Everyone who lives here is coming from a worse place," observes Joe Lerman, an aspiring doctor and one of the local staff at the ProPeru office in Urubamba. This is a community whose homes and lives are literally rising from rubble. The dirt these people walk on has become the stuff of new lives and buildings that stand as evidence of a stubbornly indomitable spirit.

  If the slogan is not yet the reality, it represents the aspiration of these people who live in the service area of Urubamba and have their own ¨president.¨ (In Peru, outlying areas have presidents; cities have mayors.)

We had visited CCotowincho earlier in the week as a preparatory visit for installing stoves. The president had met us and asked whether we might set up a clinic for a handful of residents who needed attention. ProPeru had expected our clinic to run for a couple hours while part of our contingent installed stoves. But when the clinic opened, the handful grew and the clinic ran into the afternoon. One man had experienced problems urinating for two years (due to an enlarged prostate), so he drank less fluids, dehydrating himself. A woman laid her son on a gurney and told the clinicians he wasn´t well. Patty, a doctor from South King County, collected a urine sample, smelled it, and realized the child was dehydrated. Apparently the mother had been taking herbs that slowed her lactation--or perhaps the effect was passed to the son through her breast milk. A mother with three teeth missing sat on a bench and nursed her baby, who kept her eyes locked cautiously on me while I played peek with her. She reached up to touch her mother´s cheek, and the mother recoiled; did she have another tooth problem? People came in with back and knee pains, probably caused from years of packing heavy loads. There was a case of bronchitis and another of epilepsy with possible brain damage from falling. Another individual had gall stones.

While this was going on, I and Avaleena Bhati worked on a stove that for the time being was outside a house. The family´s plan was to expand the house, eventually enclosing the stove. Avaleena was born in Pakistan and came to the United States as an infant. She lives in Seattle and hopes to go to the University of Washington to study to become a physician´s assistant. her boyfriend is studying to be a physician, and they plan to marry in December. Supervising and guiding us was Christina, a volunteer, who returns to the states on Monday. We slathered on the sun block and got to work, eventually running out of barro--mud--that serves as the glue for the stove parts. A neighbor came to the rescue by mixing up some more, and Jaime Olave, director of the stove project, shown below, put on the finishing touches with a trowel.

This is how the finished stove looked. The chimney will be extended when the new room is added around it.

Installing cleaner-burning cookstoves isn't just a matter of showing up with some ceramic tiles and a wheelbarrow of mud. It is a socio-political endeavor at which Jaime excels. The first day we visited CCotowincho involved Jaime checking in on a housewife to see how she was using the stove and whether it was working for her, then knocking on some doors to see whether residents were using their stoves successfully. The photo below shows what one of them looked like. Note that instead of sitting on a burner the pots sit in a well, where they trap more of the heat, which means water boils faster. The pots sit on iron re-bar, which is easily replaced. Jaime has made several modifications to the original stove design making it easier for the homeoner to maintain and repair. The concept is that, if ProPeru ceased to exist today, the stoves could still be maintained affordably.

The picture below, taken August 29, shows a "four-burner" stove Jaime Olave built for a local "restaurant."  There is a bedroom door right beside the kitchen. Until this stove was installed, with its chimney, smoke was continually filling this kitchen and escaping into the bedroom. for several hours each day. Note: Smoke in a room reflects the light from a camera flash. There is NO smoke reflection in this kitchen.

 The next day, August 30, we were back in town, installing a stove in this room, which served as the kitchen and bedroom for a home complex. The object in front of the door is the metal mold around which we situated the bricks and ceramic plates used to construct the stove.

 Opposite this small building, a new one was arising, using adobe bricks built from the same type of "barro"  we used to create the stove.

Our stove-building team included several Global Outreach staffers from Seattle, including Amanda Gary, a biology student, and a couple of rug rats who wanted to watch the gringos. I introduced myself to them and they disappeared around a corner, giggling and calling my name. Then they got into the act, imitating the adults by grabbing handfuls of mud and passing it off for me to bring into the other crew members who were slapping it over bricks and tiles to build the new stove. Curbing their enthusiasm proved to be a real quality control challenge until Amanda slowed them down by teaching them some verses of "Row Your Boat." Here she is, leading the chorus:

 I would like to add that a few days earlier, our ProPeru team had visited this home as part of a   a COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) survey. Surveys can be tricky when the man of the house is illiterate. The little girl pictured above assisted. It's not clear which adult woman she was describing, but our preliminary indications were that on a scale of 40, that individual  showed a score of 35. Questions dealt with phlegm, coughing, tightness of chest, limits on home activities, sleep patterns, energy levels, etc. The high score comes as no surprise when there's no chimney and the kitchen is also the bedroom. I'd like to add something here here in closing, but I'm not sure what else there is to say.
Love,
Robert

Chapter 22: The Inca salt mine and agricultural research station

Maras,  August 21. The high plains above Urubamba are primarily farmlands that incongruously look out over glaciated, dry mountains. It's strange, thinking of farmers growing crops at 11,000 feet in a land so arid that the mountains which frame the vista are crested with ice but barren of snow. It's Sunday, and we are heading for Maras, a Quechuan community where, in the coming days, we will flouride the teeth of school children,  teach them to wash hands, and install water filters in their classrooms in what, at first appearance, looks like a futile attempt to interdict the cycle of parasites that feed on them. But today the health issues don't hold our attention. We are driving to the canyon where the children of the sun used that sun to evaporate water from a briny mountain stream in order to collect the water-borne salt. 500 years after the fall of the Inca empire, their descendants still gather salt in an estimated 6,000 evaporation ponds, raking the crystals into mounds and then bagging the salt for distribution.. From the road above, it looks like an industrial Superfund cleanup site, a bleak landscape of yellow brackish pools and ground poisoned with chemicals.

 Within those pools, laborers toil under an unrelenting sun.

 Salt-laden streams are channeled toward the ponds, encrusting the surrounding landscape.

 The view is almost surreal:

 A barefoot worker rakes the salt crystals into piles to further drain and dry.

 Pyramids of salt will be gathered and bagged.

 At a shed on one side of the canyon,the bagged salt awaits distribution.

A few miles from here, there are natural depressions, 500-foot deep sink holes caused by leaching of calcium-rich soils. Research that turned up seeds has contributed to the theory that the Incas studied the impact of the natural microclimates in these depressions to learn about growing crops.

 Note those  rocks set into the sides of the terraces. That is an Inca stairway, without bannister. They are not easy to descend.

 They are easier to climb , but it's still 500 feet back up to the top.

 Next time: Installing stoves.

Love,

Robert

Chapter 21: The Apu of Picchu and other observations

Although I did wax poetic about it a couple chapters ago, I have an admission to make: Machu Picchu wasn’t the thrill I had anticipated. I mean, the Incas had it down well. Great stone masons! Effective administrators! Wonderful architects! Gotta love those guys. But hundreds of years before Macchu Picchu the Mayans had constructed Chichen Itza, which I had the good fortune to visit  in 2010. Those Mayans were amazing. Have you ever noticed how light streaming through the gaps in venetian blinds bends and casts shadows with jagged patterns on a wall?  For example this photo from my college days:  (I hope the photos come through. Theoretically, they're attached, but the Internet can be funny at times.)

The blinds work like a lens that bends the light. The Mayans created the same effect with a the levels of a square pyramid which they situated to catch the sun’s rays on the solstices so that light undulated down the side of a staircase creating a snake-like movement to signal that it was time to plant or harvest, or whatever.

Machu Picchu is wonderful, but the Mayans help keep these things in perspective. They could have taught the Incas a thing or two. But people still  go oooh and aaahhhh at Machu Picchu—my colleagues, for example:

Some visitors hold their hands close to this sacred rock to feel its “energy”:

Others meditate:

Some of us just hike up that long trail you can see on the hillside below to visit the sun gate, where we get spectacular views of the site. (This was a 1,000-foot ascent and took almost an hour.

When I got to the top I was able to look right across at Huayna Picchu, that tall mount that serves as a backdrop for the ancient city. For a video on what it’s like up there, please go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF8kXFQrNpY From those perspectives, it’s not hard to see why the Incas thought the mountains were spirits, or Apus. The cliffs are amazingly sheer in places, leaving the mountains standing like sentries to guard the passes to the Inca strongholds. Anything coming off those slopes does so with a lot of spirit.

By the way, here’s what the Inca trail looks like near the sun gate. Try running up that hill in sandles, or whatever they wore. The podiatrists must have been well paid.

The llamas take it all this pretty stoically. They’ve been watching outsiders show up for hundreds of years, and they can appear pretty blasé—these two for example.

Here’s another pair watching me take their photo after getting off the bus:

And yet…There are some interesting things to discover at Machu Picchu. For example, here’s the Inca’s own personal privy. Bet you didn’t know he had his own, did you?

And you remember those magazines you used to read as a kid that had photos with images hidden in them that you had to discover? Check out this rock arrangement – I don’t know if this is supposed to be the Easter Bunny or the Playboy Bunny, but either way he/she  looks a little grumpy to me.)

You may notice that these rock walls for the buildings in this photo aren’t as fancy schmancy as the fine stone work in this wall behind Jill Wakefield, the chancellor at Seattle Central Community College.

Apparently the quality of the stone work had a lot to do with how important the particular stone formation was. There was a lot of quality that went into the one below, for example, because it was designed to catch the sun’s rays coming up the valley on the solstice.

Oh, here’s probably my favorite shot: I wonder – is that a golf course?

Wish I could share more about this place

Love,

Robert