In Which I Finally Figure Out the WATSAN PCV Job Description and Have Some Idea of What My Job Will Be

Sometimes when I think about what I’ve learned so far, I come to something I’ll call an overwhelmed blank—I know that I have learned things, probably many of them useful, but there is so much swirling around in my head that sometimes I can’t seem to think of any! It has been an intense 6 weeks so far, where time seems to alternate between slowing down to a crawl and sprinting suddenly ahead. I’ve been mostly very busy, but also very bored (mostly while sitting at home for 2 days this week with that one illness that every volunteer seems to get at one point or another—yippee!) and I’ve been overwhelmed (like when 2 days later I hiked up a mountain at around 10,000 feet—not sure I was physically prepared for that, but the photos are worth it!). And I have definitely learned things…. *drumroll please*….

Yes, people, I am finally confident (after 6 weeks) that I have some semblance of a job description for a Water and Sanitation Peace Corps Volunteer. Yay! I’ll break it down what I’ve learned into a few categories:

How Not to Die 1: Speak Spanish: As I’ve mentioned, we have language classes most mornings, split into different levels based on 2 interviews, one from the first day here and the second was just last week. There are 9 levels—I began at Intermedio-Medio and then last week moved up 2 levels to Avanzado-Bajo, although I am still in class with Intermedio-Alto. I think that the distinctions between levels are very minimal, and even a little random since they’re based partly on what kind of day you were having the day of the interview last week, but my Spanish has definitely improved since I got here!

How Not to Die 2: Peruvian Culture and Survival Techniques: Every so often we have charlas related simply to just living in Peru and Peace Corps policies. Early on we learned how to distinguish between real and fake money, and we’ve since covered topics like how to find a good taxi, how minimize your risk of being robbed, health (physical and mental), and cultural differences related to dating and alcohol. As an American (especially a female American), I have to be careful not to give the wrong impression to men I meet in my community—men and women are rarely friends, and even something as simple as accepting an invitation to grab an ice cream can be interpreted as “I want to have a serious relationship with you” and/or “I want to have your babies.” And it is also almost funny how much time we have spent learning how to say “No, thank you” when someone offers us food—people tend to show appreciation or affection with food, so it is kind of rude to refuse it, but if you’re visiting multiple people a day who all try to feed you, the calories can definitely add up and a lot of volunteers gain weight if they aren’t careful.

The alcohol culture is pretty different as well—Peruvians often drink sitting in a circle with only one small glass and a large bottle of beer, passed around so that everyone drinks one at a time. In more conservative areas, women may be expected not to serve themselves. The combination of sitting in a circle to socialize and not being able to determine how much you take can make it difficult to regulate how much you’re drinking (and being wasted in front of the community is generally a pretty bad idea), so we actually practiced ways to decline alcohol when it’s offered.

Job Descrip Part 1: Community Diagnostic: We have spent a lot of time going over how to conduct a Community Diagnostic, the survey of our communities that every volunteer has to complete within the first 3 months on site and present both to the community and to the Peace Corps. It kind of feels like I’m writing my BA all over again, except in Spanish, but it’s really important. The purpose is to get to know the community better and to be able to design informed projects later on. Basically I will be conducting a bunch of interviews in order to understand people’s needs (what is the water like? common health problems?), habits (do people already know how important it is to wash their hands? do they use the latrine or take care of business out in the fields?) and resources (what time are people available for meetings? how much can people afford to pay for new infrastructure? who wants to work with me?). Without this kind of information, it would be very difficult to implement a truly useful and sustainable project. To help us with this, we have practiced interviewing people in the community, writing interview questions and ways to organize information to make sure we’re covering everything. If you’re ever done a SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), we covered that, too, except in Spanish they call it FOTA.

Job Descrip Part 2: Non-Formal Education and Behavior Change: I am intentionally saving the actual construction project component for last, because I am not going to be out digging holes or building bathrooms every day like you might imagine—education and awareness about healthy practices (like hand washing, the link between germs and disease, etc.) and cultivating the interest necessary to build something that the community will put to good use will actually be a much bigger part of my job.

Consider some failed projects: Brand new water systems have been build only to fall into disrepair and disuse because the community isn’t organized enough to pay for and carry out necessary maintenance (this is actually the reason why the water system in Santa Eulalia where I’m currently living is under-chlorinated—very few people actually pay the monthly water fee, there is no system in place to make them pay, and then there is no money for maintenance). Latrines have been built only to end up as tool sheds because the families don’t know how to properly maintain a latrine and/or don’t understand why using the fields for their needs can cause disease—these are the kind of project failures we’re trying to avoid. So we talk a lot about non-formal education to promote behavior change—basically the idea is that instead of lecturing, it is more productive to have some kind hands on activity that will sort of guide the group towards coming up with your intended lesson on its own. I’m a 22 year old gringa—who am I to tell Peruvian adults what to do? But if they own the idea themselves, they may really believe it.

Job Descrip Part 3: Buildin’ Shit!: Finally! There is a reason I showed up in this country with gloves and boots. So far at the training center, we have constructed:

Compost Piles and Worm Bins: Composting is actually pretty easy if you have the space—the trick is to keep it hot by allowing oxygen to circulate throughout the pile (keep an open hole in the middle and stir it around every so often) and keeping the correct ratio of green (green plants or wet vegetable peels) to brown (dried out dead things) compost. It doesn’t smell so hot, however. But the end result is abono—an awesome soil additive for your garden that will hold a lot of water and has some extra nutrients. For super nutrient-rich soil, you want a worm bin. Keep your dirt and organic material damp and fill it with worms—they’ll eat it up and leave behind some really rich soil as well as a liquid that you can also add to your garden as fertilizer. We have one in the ground and a second that hangs from a tree to prevent animals from munching on your organic material.

Micro-relleno/ Mini Dump: If you can’t recycle it or compost it, please don’t burn it! Except that’s what Peruvians do. A small dump is a potential solution—you pretty much just dig a hole with a little channel around it to keep out water, compacting and alternating layers of trash with layers of dirt. It’s not perfect, but it is preferable to the smell (toxic fumes, actually) of burning wrappers.

Sand Filters (Schmutzdecke!): A sand filter cleans turbidity (dissolved dirt and whatnot) and bacteria out of your water in a pretty bizarre and definitely fun-to-say way. Ours are essentially large garbage cans filled with layers of rock, gravel and sand. A plastic tube runs from the bottom of the garbage can (held down by the rock layer) and out the side of the garbage can near the top (kind of like a straw). You pour water in the top, it filters through the sand, gravel and rocks, and comes out clean on the other end of the tube. The secret weapon is the Schmutzdecke—a layer of green algae-type gunk and bacteria that forms on top of the sand, which forms after you’ve been pouring water through it twice a day for a few weeks or so. You wouldn’t want to drink the Schmutzdecke, but what it does is literally eat the gunk out of your water. Killing bacteria with bacteria? Supposedly it works—England actually uses a larger scale Schmutzdecke system to clean its tap water. Unfortunately ours are not yet operational—first off, I don’t think we cleaned our sand enough (because really, why would you clean sand? It’s pretty much dirt, right? Not!) so the water comes out more turbid than it goes in. But hopefully they will get there!

Grey Water System: Grey water is waste water that isn’t sewage—it has maybe been used for washing dishes or showering, but hasn’t been down the toilet, so it actually can be reused. We built a system with an outdoor sink, and the drainage is distributed underground—we want to plant a garden on top of it, some plants will apparently digest soap residue so it doesn’t stay in the ground. There is a ton of ways to make grey water system, and they are really important to prevent standing water—for example, if a community has a communal water tap, the runoff shouldn’t be allowed to puddle around the base because it can attract disease and mosquitoes. If you have a basement with a sump pump or gutters on your roof that kicks the water out into some kind of underground perforated tube, that’s also a grey water system. You could also switch to organic detergents and drain your washing machine into something like this that would keep your garden or lawn effortlessly watered via underground tubing. Mom, I’m picturing this at our house, and it’s awesome. Just sayin’.

We have also covered:

Water disinfection via SODIS: I have no idea what that acronym means, but did you know that if you fill a clean, clear bottle with contaminated water all the way to the top (no air) and leave it on your roof on a sunny day for at least 6 hours, UV rays from the sun will kill most of the nastiness in it that can make you sick? That’s SODIS.

Types of water systems: We have visited several water systems just to see how they work—and by several, I mean I visited one when we hiked up into the sierra yesterday and the rest of the group also visited 2 more the day that I was home sick—and have discussed the components of each. I won’t bore you with them.

We still haven’t gotten to latrines or cocinas mejoradas, but we will! All of these are potential projects that our community might appreciate—we are by no means required to implement any or all of them.

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I hope this lengthy description gives y’all (volunteers from the South are infiltrating my vocabulary) a better idea of what I’m up to and what I’m actually going to be doing when I get to my site! We will find out on Tuesday where we are going come November 27^th-ish—I’m pretty excited to know for sure. Of course, being sick means I missed our final interview with Jorge, my APCD (Assistant Peace Corps Director, I think) who is largely responsible for selecting my site. Which means I told him in passing that I much prefer the coast to the highlands, but who knows if that actually matters. Que será, será y lo que pasó, pasó (whatever will be will be, and what happens, happens!).