Cerro Iglesia, Panama – Completed

Cerro Iglesia I, Panama Implementation Trip

By Ross Mau

On April 28th, I left Austin, Texas and flew to Panama City, Panama. 2 Days Later I was joined by Laura and Alysha and we were on our way to start the first project for Engineers Without Borders – Central Texas Professionals. Our project entailed delivering spring water to a small community of 4 families. There were three main components to our project, the toma, or spring box, the tanque, tank, and the water line to the houses. I think Laura was the only one that had any idea what to expect, due to her 2 years with the Peace Corps serving in community nearby Cerro Iglesia. It was through Laura’s connections in the Peace Corps that EWB found this project, they were the local Non-Governmental Organization that would be helping us with this project.

Las Lajas: Before going on site we met up with a group of Peace Corps Volunteers at the beach town of Las Lajas that were getting together for a movie night. We had the chance to learn a lot about the area and what the different sites were like that the volunteers were working at.

The region that most of the volunteers we met were serving in was called the Comarca Ngobe-Bugle. The Ngobe are the largest indigenous group of the 7 left in Panama. Along with the Bugle, they formed this region out of the neighboring provinces. It is somewhat similar to the reservation systems in the United States. The area is fairly impoverished, where the typical annual income in the area we were working in being just a couple of hundred dollars. This fact made it quite impressive that our community was able to organize an aqueduct committee that saved over $100 towards the cost of the project.

Cerro Iglesia: The next morning after breakfast we had about a one hour ride up to our site. The only method of transportation, besides walking and horseback, is catching a ride on the back of a pick up truck with a large metal cage over the truck bed. These are referred to as ‘chivas,’ which means goat. If you could see the condition of the roads they have to drive on you would understand why they are likened to goats. We met with Javier, the president of the aqueduct committee, and scouted out the site of the spring, as you can see to the left.

Everybody was eager to start working on the project. It was apparent that one of the main difficulties would be getting materials to our work site. There’s one road that connects Cerro Iglesia I to Cerro Iglesia II (As well as a bunch of other smaller towns). The site we were working at was another 20-30 minute hike down a path off the main road. Luckily, right where the path met road is where the school was located. They were happy to let us dump materials there, so this became a head quarters of sorts for us. A large percentage of the community is ‘Adventista,’ which means 7th day Adventist. This community was very centered around the Church and school, which shared facilities. The entire community, not just the families we were helping, made us feel well received, and were very helpful. It was also great to have the local Peace Corps Volunteers, Jessica and Adam, put us up for our time there.  I went back to Adam’s, where I’d be staying for the rest of the 3 weeks, to settle in. Here’s a couple pictures of my temporary home.

As we got to work the next couple of days set the tone for the entire trip. Our first tasks were to get materials to the school from the nearest city, San Felix, and to get the mason started on the spring box, which would feed our water system. Laura had two contacts that she had worked with before in Panama for these jobs. Neither one of them showed. As she put it “The two most reliable workers I know in Panama have bailed on us!” We spent some time scrambling to find another mason to work with us and other truck drivers who would take materials up for us. A lot of our time was spent working around chiva drivers’ schedules and getting our materials up in much smaller loads on these pick up trucks throughout the 3 and a half weeks we were there. We found another mason, Jose, who had to travel from the neighboring province, Bocas del Toro, to build our spring box. This ended up being a positive experience, because Jose had never traveled for work before and he was also Ngobe, so he fit in well with the community. Many of the skilled and higher paying jobs are held by Latinos, so we were happy to help improve the skill set for the Ngobe people by hiring Jose and give him the experience of working with EWB. We also found a man in the village, Ezekiel, who would build our tank for us.

I’ll spare you all the day to day details of the work, and possibly note all of that in a timeline in another entry. Instead I’ll give you a rundown of a typical day. It started by waking up around 6am. Towards the end of the trip I didn’t really have any dry clothes, so I’d put on whatever was least damp and make the 30-45 minute hike down to the school. (Upon request I’ll share photos of how disgusting my feet got from being soaked constantly.) The day often started hauling materials down a steep path from the school to the worksite, which was another 15 minutes of hiking with sand, rock, re-bar or even 95 pound bags of cement. One might normally be inclined to complain about work like this, but after witnessing how hard the community (men, women and children) was working doing the same tasks it was difficult to feel sorry for myself. This photo doesn’t quite do justice to the trail we had to hike up and down to get to the worksite.

Around noon we’d head down to the main house for lunch. Lunch was usually rice and lentils. My favorite treat was when we had friend plantains. We occasionally had avocados or eggs in the mix too. Even if the meals were basic; Melida, the matriarch of the family, did an excellent job of making sure everyone ate well. She was quite the cook.

After lunch work would resume, usually until it started raining…some days this happened at 2, others it would hold off until 5 or 6 when we were done working. Some days when we weren’t working with concrete or something else that could be damaged by the rain we would continue to work in the rain because we didn’t want our days to be cut short due to the ever tightening schedule. Just about every day towards the end of the trip the walk back up the mountain was in the rain.

A little rain is no reason to stop a soccer game.

After two weeks Alysha had to return to the states. Laura helped escort Alysha back to Panama City since Alysha didn’t speak spanish, and the travel back was far from simple.

Can you spot them on the chiva?

We were starting to worry about finishing on time. We were two weeks in and nothing was finished. Between Alysha’s departure and mine a week later everything started to fall into place.

First Jose finished the toma.

We had a majority of the trenches dug for the PVC tubing.

And the tank was almost finished.

Unfortunately I had to leave before we were completely finished. Almost more unfortunate than that was the awful illness that kicked in on my 6 hour bus ride back to Panama City. Laura stayed a few more days after I left and saw the project to completion. She installed a hand pump to get water to one of the houses that was above the tank, installed faucets at each of the houses and built a latrine. She didn’t have time to build all 4 latrines, but instructions and materials were left behind so that the Peace Corps could help the family finish them when there wasn’t as much rain. It was a lot of work, but we finished what we set out to do.

There is no way we could have possible finished without the hard work of the EWB volunteers, Peace Corps Volunteers and most importantly the hard work and dedication of the community. You’ll see here what I’m talking about when I said I couldn’t feel sorry for myself busting my back carrying materials.

Literally everyone who could, did pitch in. This photo was taken when the school children helped us carry down the cement blocks for the tank. We were stressed about the tank schedule one day and mentioned our concern about getting the 110 blocks down since we couldn’t pull anyone off their tasks. Javier told us not to worry, because after school every child above 3rd grade was going to carry down a couple blocks. It was like watching an army of ants at work. I was quite impressed that the entire village chipped in to help out this subset of its community.

A special thanks goes out to everyone that made this trip possible through their generous donations. As well as Adam, Kristen and Jessica for putting up with us in their homes. If you’d like to help out in future projects please donate here.