Thursday, December 13, 2007

Chris Brings Tanks to the Altiplano

(Manager of Learning) MOL is a concept that my boss loves, and that's exactly what has gone on during this tank building taller headed by Chris, the new PCVL boss, and JICA (the Japanese Peace Corps-type organization).
The girl, Leydi, taught us how to find cactus fruit and showed us which ones were ripe and which ones still needed time. They tasted like a mixture of kiwi and raspberry, and we learned something from a 6 year old. That was very gratifying.

A view of Beautiful Oruro from the hill we were building the tank on. These suburbs don't have a car in every garage, let alone two. But they are working together, men and women and children all working really hard together. It was great because it helped changed the opinions that Chris had about the altiplano. He was really impressed and complimentary. He served his first two years in the Santa Cruz region.
Here is a picture of the tank being built. A little bit too much concrete and sand mixture (1 to 3 mix) was put on at this part and it sluffed off. They fixed it when it had dried a little more and it shouldn't have any effect on the strength of the tank.
These tanks can be used to harvest rain water from your roof and it comes out of there clean and drinkable.

Old Bones

These bones were dug up at the original site for the 30,000 Liter tank being constructed on the outskirts of Oruro with my PCVL boss Chris. The Jaw bone is strange, take a closer look. The marble was already in the eye, maybe put there by the kids who hung around. It was dug up with the pottery beside its head, which led us to believe it might be really old. We moved the placement of the tank.