El Salvador Week 3

I can not believe it has already been three weeks! This week has been an exciting week doing field studies. We went to a community in La Libertad named of all things Los Angeles. It is a very poor community in which the government had installed solar toilets to each household. We met with the community leader who took us around to each household to inspect the solar toilets. The first household we went to had a family of eight. We inspected the inside of the toilet and all three chambers were cleaned. The head of the household stated that they had just cleaned it yesterday. There were two problems with this explanation. One, only the oldest vault should be cleaned, the other two remain to be treated by heat generated from the solar panel. The other problem was there was no evidence that the toilet was being used and as we found out later from the community leader it was not being use. The other toilets we visited with varying degrees of use. Some had the solar panel covered with plastic and sitting under large trees. it had to be explained to the head of the household that the panel needed have availability to the sun. A series of questions were asked of the household to get a better insight on the use and acceptance of these latrines. We also mapped the toilets in the community to be used for a later study.
After we finished with the study, we went to lunch at a place overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The food was great, fresh fish, rice and ice tea. Upon leaving the place, I fell down the stairs and bruised my knee. My cohorts made sure I saw the doctor at the Ministry who gave me something for pain and the inflammation. I found the ice was sufficient. It only amounted to a skinned knee. My dignity was hurt more than my body.
I will be making a hotel change at the end of next week to a hotel in a safer neighborhood. I cannot get used to going places, like the grocery store and Wendy’s and have armed guard, with rifles, standing at the entrance. I was told there are at least 4 or 5 murders in San Salvador per month mostly between gang members. I will feel much safer at the new hotel and will be able to walk around due to the heavily guarded tourist area.
Today one of the woman I work with is taking me to Santa Ana. another city in El Salvador, to look around and have dinner. It is the place that she grew up. I will be going with her family which include two young children. I miss my grandsons so it will be good to be around children.
Next week we will be finishing up the interviews with the solar latrines and also visit communities with compost latrines It will be interesting to see the difference in acceptance for the different types of ecological toilets. Until then……….