The Water is Flowing

In the community of "concrete village," a migrant farming community living in a hollowed out shell of what may have been a barn or farm equipment shed that was never completed, lives about 10-12 families, with as many as 10-12 members each. Since there is limited running water, a few hose faucets appear around the perimeter of the building, there are only one or two makeshift showers that stand like sentinels in the middle of the "courtyard" where children play, women cook on open fires and daily life is lived out.

The showers are serviced by a single hose, and are built next to a large wash slab, where mostly women and children wash their clothes daily, before hanging them on simple clothesline that criss-cross the area like a spiders web. The challenges are many, but today we are addressing the standing, stagnant water that pool just outside the shower (no plumbing, so no drainage), alongside of the water running off the concrete wash slab. It attracts insects and the community chickens that drink from it, as well as breeding disease.

A new trench with more slope will help, but we are thinking perhaps of even adding PVC pipe to collect and move that water away from the area. PVC is expensive here, and by removing the water altogether, we remove one of the opportunities for the chickens to drink, despite the challenges that represents. Furthermore, we cannot find what we need to funnel the water into the pipe, so we opted to fill the new trench with stone to help drainage, and ended the day with flowing water, a nice alternative to the standing water we discovered the day before. Will the water continue to flow? The Lantern Hill team will monitor it, and if more action is necessary that will have to wait for another week and another group. It's one of the frustrating pieces for we as Americans, who are used to seeing projects through to completion, and wanting that closure. Here, that is not always the case. Patience and persistence are often required.

However, the highlight of the day as is so often the case at the village and other locations where we serve and are served by the people of this area, were the opportunities to interact and build relationships with the people. Like the woman in the end unit who has barely, if ever spoken to the LH team, who did allow Colleen to stand with her at her wash slab, separate from the one in the village courtyard, where she often isolates herself. Or for Asidra and Tiadora (probably not the correct spelling), who both invited us into their homes as we measured for the new platform beds we would later build.

The progress here is often slow by our standards, but how many of us would allow strangers to simply walk into our neighborhoods and enter our homes to do building projects, or to pick up our children and play with them without first getting at least a criminal background check on us? Yet, it happens here with some frequency. You can begin to understand the apprehensions of these simple, hopeful and loving people. God is most certainly at work here...I'm thankful to play some small role in that.