South American Adventure: March 2013

In early January, I traveled to the city of Paramaribo with my village leader to purchase the supplies needed for the Clean Drinking Water project. We spent a week in the city purchasing everything and monitoring the loading of the truck.

supplies waiting to be loaded in Atjoni

After a 3 hour ride from the city, we reached the village of Atjoni where we would load all the supplies onto boats headed for my village. It took a total of 4 boat rides to get all of the supplies to the village. One of the boats sank in transit. Luckily we only lost 2 bags of cement!

loading supplies onto the boat headed to the village

all 45 tanks on one boat arriving to the village

huge welcome from the members of the village

bringing the tanks into the village

The community immediately got together on implementing the project. The women of the village have made over 1,400 cement blocks by hand that are used in creating the foundation for the tank stands. The men of the village are hard at work building the stands and the rain catchment structures for the Durotanks.

durotank stand construction

rain catchment structure construction

Two months have passed since we brought out all the supplies and I am thrilled to say the project is COMPLETED! We have all 45 Durotanks up and already FULL with rain water. We were very fortunate to have the construction phase completed as rainy season was beginning. My village is incredibly thankful with their access to clean drinking water. On a daily basis at least one person will tell me how thankful they are or bring me to their house to show me their Durotank. They are very proud of them.