Click on the title to see what I've been up to. Unfortunately, some family stuff kept me from going to Guatemala in October and January. Next January I should have some stories though!
This community in the Guatemalan highlands (think the middle of nowhere) has been waiting literally for decades for a chance at clean water. They commissioned the initial, overly-expensive design from a local civil engineering firm. They purchased the rights to the spring they needed. They bought the right-of-way from that spring to their community. All they needed was a better, cheaper design and the means and guidance to build it. That's where Engineers Without Borders and Marquette University stepped in.
Our five-person team, led by my boss at work, has been working for just about a year on the design of the system that will finally give these people what they need to have a little more comfort in their lives. It feels good to have the design phase behind us, but now the real work is beginning-- building the damn thing! 26 kilometers of pipe won't dig themselves into the ground.
One of our team members, Amy Mikus, is down there for the summer helping to build the water system we devised. It should take a full year to get everything up and running if our funding pulls through.
Take a look at the article and the slideshow. The photographer that went down on the January trip was phenomenal... I think there's a link to some of her other work up on that page somewhere. She has some other pictures of Guatemala on her personal website that were also taken during the trip.
Check out Engineers Without Borders if you're interested in what they do. Even if you're not an engineering student, most student chapters will take anybody who is willing to pitch in a pair of hands to build anything from bridges to water systems anywhere from Guatemala to Kenya.
