A Huge First Step

About a month ago a woman came to my door.

I'd seen her before once, last year, when I was completing my community diagnostic. I met over 100 women, but I remembered her right away. She was what my dad might call a spitfire.

Not in the negative sense. She just had a lot of spirit and fight in her, which it was evident despite only spending 10 minutes in her living room.

And here she was, wondering if I might be able to help her find transportation for a reforestation project.

It turns out that I have no clue where to find trees to plant ... or any big truck to transport them for that matter. But I remembered that she had been very vocal about her frustration with the lack of sewage or latrines in her neighborhood.

"How's that going?" I asked.

And then the floodgates opened.

The truth is I had been thinking about starting an additional project. My other projects, now in their second year, have found a kind of stability, and I was keeping an eye out for something more to do in my service.

Latrines had crossed my mind in the days previous. But I only had 8 months left. Subtract an entire month for a combined chunk of Peruvian holidays, and it was really more like 7 -- maybe 6 1/2. I didn't have time to do a latrine project.

But it's like God mocked my preoccupations and handed me one anyway.

It's possible that I know even less about how to plan and execute a latrine project than I do about reforestation. Nonetheless, I sat down with the woman, a really sweet señora named Dylsia, and the health promoter for that sector, and together we stumbled around to find our first step.

"We have to do a survey," I said, sounding very confident we did, in fact, need to do that. "We have to be prepared with charts and data to show that the latrines are a real necessity."

Together with Anita (the health promoter) and Dylsia, we agreed that I shouldn't be physically present when the questions are asked due to my incredible foreign-ness that sometimes makes people nervous. So I wrote it up, gave them the copies, and the two of them hammered it out.

And let me tell you, there's a real necessity.

Of the 44 families in the neighborhood, only two have restrooms that can be considered sanitary*. Additionally, nearly 95 percent drink untreated water, and fewer than half even have a place to wash their hands.

Cases of parasites and malnourishment are way higher than in the district capital (only 2km away). Work is temporary and scarce. And the average family (~4 people) live on $35 a week.

The sector is scheduled for sewage soon, but no one knows when "soon" will come, and if the families could even afford to put in bathrooms when it arrives.

So, we met with an NGO called Cáritas, a Catholic organization that works with latrine projects all over Peru, to see if we could count on their support, which they said we could.

Now the ball was in play, and all we had to do was call our first neighborhood meeting.

Thirty people came, including the district governor (a jovial authority figure who also happens to be my neighbor), and I found myself stammering like an idiot in my nervous Spanish while everyone got rained on outside the local store.

I'll be honest. The meeting didn't start great. No one wanted to speak or really participate. But thanks to some rousing words by the governor, we were able to form a committee!

Which I know doesn't sound like a lot. The planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation are all in front of us. But it's a huge first step.

And despite being soaked to the bone, tired and hoarse, I left that meeting on cloud nine. Because it's happening! It's no longer just an idea or something we talk about. Even if we are denied funding from the first door we knock at, we have a team now. Fighting together. And playing to win.

*Meaning that the human waste is deposited in a prepared hole or septic tank rather than left in the open air.