SPA phase 4: Latrines

Here I sit at the Peace Corps HQ, finishing up the SPA paperwork. We did the last of the construction Tuesday, and had to leave at 6am the next morning for our last administrative trip to HQ during our service. Besides all the other stuff going on (which will probably appear in the next post), we are meeting with our boss to go over the project details to make sure all the recordkeeping was done right. While we were at HQ, we also took time to take our Language Proficiency Interview, or “LPI”. This is a standardized evaluation the US Government uses to test foreign language skills in its employees, and we have the right to take it as we exit service, in case we should ever want to work for Uncle Sam again. I assumed I’d not gained any proficiency since training, since I work in a non-Spanish-speaking site, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I’m now rated squarely in the middle of the “advanced” category. This is a big improvement from the “intermediate-low” I came to Guatemala with, and the “intermediate-high” I left training with. The interviewer says that I still make plenty of errors, of which I am WELL aware, but my comfort and fluidity with speaking makes up for it in casual conversation, increasing my understandability. He also says I now use the subjunctive enough to further reinforce his claim of “advanced” status.

But that is not what I’m here to talk about; today we have the last post about the SPA project. Tuesday’s work was pretty straightforward, the latrine. We actually only built a single unit (huh) because no one was really interested in having one. Also, to my disappointment, the one they wanted was the less-fantastic “ventilated latrine” type. These are built in essentially the same way as the ones we built with Charlotte a few months back: better than pooping in the field, but not at nice as the fancy composting type. They don’t give you compost, and you have to move them every few years when the pit beneath them fills up. This is extra problematic in our local soil, where the pit walls have a tendency to collapse, causing them to fill in even faster than they otherwise would.

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When we arrived at the participating house, we found a mixed situation. The good news: the family had already dug the 8-foot deep pit as they’d agreed to. The bad news? All the rain last week had caused the pit to fill completely with water, giving it the deceptive appearance of a shallow muddy puddle. We spend the first hour of work tossing in buckets with a rope attached, to dewater the hole. Despite this setback, we got it done: the last of the four technologies.

Emily was gone for much of the time we were building, collecting the last of the photos of the finished projects as well as the signatures (thumbprints, in most cases) of the people who donated labor. I can’t imagine how we’d have ever finished this if there were only one of us. That was subjunctive, by the way, for any of you who were wondering what “subjunctive” was in the first half of the post. It doesn’t come up often in English, but it seems to sneak into about half of the sentences you hear in Spanish.

We’ve also had to go back and deal with some problems. Most of our tanks leak (aieeeeee!) because we have a cold joint between the base and the walls. This is not as big a problem as it sounds; it just means that the plaster is no longer an optional extra. We are kicking in a bit of money to plaster all the tanks, thanks to the generous donations from several of you who know who you are. I once worked with a contractor in Oregon who told me that “Being a good builder ain’t about not f*cking up, it’s about knowing how to fix the f*ckups when they happen.” True, that.

I was having the obligatory mosh drink during a work break with one of the families, and noticed this cat. I’d seen her before, but now she had these strange brown stains on her fur. “What are those marks on the cat?” I asked.

“Burns!” they told me.

Huh. Weird. “How’d that happen?” I asked, remembering that cats around here love to sleep at the very edge of the wood stove, the only toasty warm place on the house.

“The neighbors next door ran out of firewood, so they tried to burn the cat instead!” the lady said. There was a pregnant pause, then everyone exploded in laughter. I like these people, they have a good sense of humor.

We still have a lot of other stuff cooking in the coming weeks, but I want to celebrate the end of our construction with the fruits of Emily’s work, a little montage of “before” and “after” photos. Enjoy!

pisos de cemento– concrete floors

pilas– water tanks

estufas mejoradas– improved woodburning stoves

letrinas ventiladas– ventilated latrines