EWBbolivia

It’s our last day in CETHA and our project is officially completed! This weekend has been super busy! It’s been filled with lots of painting, interviews, and everything else that comes with constructing a rainwater harvesting system with a huge concrete tank!

Us, professors, and most of the students at CETHA wolfpack style in front of our first flush diverters

Gabe and Christina showing/explaining the rainwater harvesting system

Hurray! Wes wants to note that he jumped high, but the camera shutter was too late. :P

Us again, normal and all

Rewind to Friday, the students left early that day to go home for the weekend, so the professors here were able to help us all weekend. Aside from implementing our rainwater harvest design, we’re also assessing for future projects. Some of our assessment work includes surveying, soil testing, and lots of interviews. We were able to interview the school’s nurse as well as Damian and Zolio (our contact and professor here at CETHA). These interviews really helped us get an insight in what they needed: water supply and knowledge in water technology. Meals here are generally starch, starch, and more starch. But they’re delicious and filling! But because they’re mainly starchy food, we’ve been missing snacks like peanut butter and cookies! Some of the snacks Gabe and Axel brought back from their last Cochabamba trip were Oreos and peanut butter, which we ate Friday night! They were amazing.

Oreo & Peanut Butter night!

After our night snack, we all hiked up a little mountain right beside the school and star gazed on mini stone benches. Star viewing here is unreal! The Milky Way is literally splashed across the night sky with stars twinkling like fireflies. Some of us even saw our very first shooting star!! Right next to the school is a big farmland with cattle, goats, and donkeys roaming around. Sometimes, they cross through our work site and we have to scurry to get all of our materials out of their way. There’s this one bull though that’s been chilling at the top of the schools main pathway for the past three days and we almost bumped into it on our way to our star gazing site! We weren’t able to see it until Ben flashed his flash light towards the bull’s direction and BOOM, two bright eyes with white horns were looking our way. We ended our Friday watching a couple of episodes of Workaholics before calling it a night. It was a nice and relaxing way to finish off our labor intensive day.

Saturday was just as busy, if not busier. Aside from finishing up major parts of our design, we started focusing on all of the details…which seemed to all add up into one big project of itself! The best part about having a hard work day is sleeping even harder during the night. Sunday was our big day because it was our last!

We used Sika Top Seal to seal the interior of the tank

Applying Sika Top Seal

Final cleaning of the tank

Re-sizing the ends of PVC pipes using a heat method

This morning was the best breakfast yet, hot chocolate and fried bread that was almost like a flattened fried doughnut/funnel cake. It was scrumptious.

We made our final list of small tasks to get done for the day and installed the last portion of the pipeline. Side note: we were interrupted momentarily by a herd of cows through the work site, but we fended them off successfully.

There will be a few tasks for the professors and the students of the school to complete, but we have prepared a checklist of scheduled maintenance for them to perform throughout the year. This ensures that the project will remain effective for years to come. After finishing work, we loaded up a car with our team, the professors at the school, and some of the students to go play sports at a nearby school. We played an intense game of soccer followed by two close volleyball matches. The teachers from the schools played our group in both sports. We showed a lot of improvement and everyone got involved in volleyball. We played until way past our normal dinnertime, but it was a great way to spend our last night. We piled back in the car and rushed back for dinner, but it wasn’t even cooked yet. The students cooked tonight, a delicious rice soup with lots of potatoes, carrots, and tomatoes. After eating until we were stuffed, we came back to the dorm to play cards, relax, and pack up for our trip back to Cochabamba.

We made it back to La Paz after staying a day in Cochabamba. More pictures and updates to come after a good nights rest! Thank you all for following our project!! We are beyond happy that it's implemented. A special thank you to everyone who helped us on this project!