Reflections on Christmas and Development

On Saturday, December 16th, 2011, I was invited to attend a chocoletada – an event where you drink a warm milk chocolate drink and eat panetón, a take-off of the Italian fruit bread panettone that is very popular in Peru for Christmas. But this chocoletada was not like any other – it was a way to earn votes. The next municipal elections are not until 2014, but one of my ex-colleagues at EMAPA Huacho is already trying to win as many votes as he can in order to become the next mayor of Santa María, a district next to Huacho. And one of the ways he wanted to achieve this was by organizing a free chocoletada in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in town.

His friends were asked to come along and help make the event run smoothly. There was music and a kid’s show, followed by the distribution of hot chocolate and panetón. While everyone was busy enjoying their treat, the candidate mayor made speeches and brought up people from the community to talk. But instead of talking about the holiday season, the talk was about how the community still has no water or waste water and thus uses communal latrines, and how if he is elected, he will change this. There were testimonies from elders in the community talking about difficulties and struggles that they face. It just goes to show that no matter what event you are attending, politics always seems to be brought into the mix here.

RIP my USB

Hello everyone,

I am writing to you today with a frustrating story. My USB is dead. Essentially... when I went to Tarapoto last month someone passed me some documents, and I guess their computer was infected because it acted weirdly on my computer. I thought I had lost all of my files... but turns out that they just became invisible, and a few weeks later we were able to locate them (after I had replaced the few that were missing). Now last week I tried opening a document that I had on my USB, but it said that it was corrupted, so I went home, uploaded a newer version, and it worked fine.

Today when I got to work I couldn't open a single file, I couldn't delete a single file, and a coworker tried his best to save the files but nothing could be done. We tried for hours to format the USB but it wouldn't work, I don't know why. Then I went home for lunch and plugged it in, and I was able to recuperate some of the files on my laptop, and then all of a sudden my computer couldn't see the USB anymore. Like it disappeared. The red light won't turn on, and now it won't work on my computer or on another computer at work, either. So it is dead. I would have liked to format it but... if my computer can't see it then that is pretty impossible.

Another busy day at work - hectic but oh so fun :)

Hello everyone! :)

I hope December is off to a good start for all of you! As I mentioned in last blogpost things at work have picked up quite a bit - and by that, I mean A LOT. So here it is: another 'day in the life of Sheila' as an intern at EMAPA Huacho.

Juan and I have known for a few weeks now that we would have a meeting this morning at 11am at the municipality (like city hall) with citizens groups to discuss bringing water and sewer systems to their area (slums in the southern part of town). Last week we were busy getting all of the required calculations done and documents completed to determine where to build a new well, how deep it would need to be, the minimum flow required, how big of a reservoir we would need to build, and how many homes we could provide service too (also included are a project hospital, school and market). Yesterday afternoon I met with the head of the slum to go over the current and projected population numbers and so that he could give me a better idea as to where each slum is located exactly and what its boundaries are. From there I had to go back into the documents we created last week and update the figures - only to realize that we had significantly underestimated the number of inhabitants, upping the budget from 6.8 million soles to 8.9 million soles (or roughly $2.6 CAD to $3.4 CAD). Woops. At least it's a good thing we doubled checked before presenting it to the municipality.

Making powerful decisions

Hello everyone,

I'd like to share with you what I've been doing at work for the past few days, because it's been quite eventful. And soon I promise to update you on my trip to Tarapoto (just need to find the time).

Two weeks ago (before I went to Tarapoto) we had a meeting at the municipality with a citizen's group from the south (where the urban expansion is) because they want water and waste water connections. We decided that we would visit them this week (on Tuesday) and have a follow-up meeting at the municipality next Tuesday (Dec. 6th). Our visit went well on Tuesday, and we told them that we would put together a preliminary budget so that when we are at the municipality we can talk about financing and who will cover what costs. So we started working on that (Juan and I). Well, Wednesday at 11am we got a call from the general manager of EMAPA saying that he wanted the information by 8am on Thursday so that he could look it over and start looking for financing from his end. Less than 24 hours! Ouf, so we kicked things into high gear. But then on Wednesday afternoon there was an emergency in the construction side: they are digging trenches to put in the plumbing for water and waste water somewhere in Huacho, and one of the electrical poles was not properly installed so it fell over and was leaning against a house. Luckily no one was injured and the electrical wires didn't break, but it could have been much more serious. So Juan spent most of Wednesday afternoon there (and I needed to talk to him to move on with my work) and he only got back at 5pm.