In these photos you can see the progression of digging out the trench; the almost finished landfill with its view of the beautiful Agua Caliente forest; me throwing myself into it before it was ready for trash; the landfill with its tank for dangerous runoff; with community members getting the trash cans ready; a trash pick-up site; the committee putting the first trip of trash into the plastic-lined landfill; and the main group of people I worked with after we inaugurated the landfill with trash (along with the PCVs replacing me).
The history of me working with Agua Caliente is quite interesting. It is a village of Sija, thus I only visited it from time to time; I didn't get to LIVE and work with these people, just work with them, which makes it much more difficult. I first arrived in March 2009 to help them with their tourism project (hot springs). However, all they seemed to want was money.
I stopped working with them for a few months, until my Peace Corps boss told me to go back. Then I learned that they were just skeptical of outside organizations because they also promise and never follow through. Thus, in September 2009 our relationship solidified when I showed that I was committed to them and they showed that they wanted projects, not just money.
We did a diagnostic of the community and identified that the community wanted to confront their trash problem. Thus I presented the idea of building a sanitary landfill, placing trash cans around town, and implementing a collection system. They liked it, and so did Peace Corps/USAID, because they gave us the $3300 necessary to build it.
The project took more time than I expected to complete it, but in the end, it allowed me to stay a little bit longer. It wasn't that the community didn't want to work, it was just that we had to wait on unforeseen elements that slowed us down and that the community members, for example, had to plant their corn.
On Wednesday, they finished the landfill and on Thursday, we inaugurated it with the first bags of trash. They had saved their trash up for 3 months so as not to throw it in a ravine, thus the load was pretty big, but from now on they will be sorting it, recycling and composting what they can, and taking the rest up every 2 weeks. Ideally, this landfill will last them 10-15 years. To keep smells and flies away, they will pack dirt and a bit of limestone on top every couple months.
This project has been a huge success thanks to the determination, the unity and the positive attitude of the community members of Agua Caliente. As I told them, this was not my project, but theirs.
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